In the second presidential primary debate, she confronted former Vice President Joe Biden for an op-ed he wrote in the 1980s in which he criticized expanding a child care tax credit. “I think we have to have a broader conversation about whether we value women and whether we want to make sure women have every opportunity in the workplace,” Gillibrand said at the debate. “When the Senate was debating middle-class affordability for child care...[Joe Biden] voted against it, the only vote, but what he wrote in an op-ed was that he believed that women working outside the home would, quote, ‘create the deterioration of family.’ He also said that women who were working outside the home were, quote, ‘avoiding responsibility.’"