Why Child Care Is So Expensive
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Québec has had subsidized daycare for almost 25 years, and the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/affordable-daycare-su...
> In Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, a day of child care cost on average $10 in 2016
> Quebec’s program, which introduced low-fee, universal child care in the province in 1996, centered on a few core premises: that if the government helped make child care accessible and affordable, it would allow more women to join the workforce, increase childhood development and social skills, and ultimately raise revenue for the government through increased payroll taxes. In at least two of those objectives, the scheme has been widely successful, says Pierre Fortin, an economist at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and the country’s leading expert in the economics of subsidized child care: It’s increased participation of women in the workforce, and cost efficiency.
> Since beginning the program more than two decades ago, Quebec has seen the rate of women age 26 to 44 in the workforce reach 85 percent, the highest in the world.
> Early estimates anticipated the program would generate 40 percent of its costs via increased income taxes from working parents. Instead, it generated income taxes to cover more than 100 percent of the cost. “In other words, it costs zero, or the cost is negative,” Fortin said. “The governments are making money out of the program.”
The program isn't perfect; there are a variety of issues that have popped up over the years, but since we were literally the first in the world to offer such a comprehensive, sweeping, subsidized plan for the entire provincial population of ~7.1MM in 1996 that was then used as a model in various Scandinavian countries, I'd call it a rousing success.
I understand what the quote means but, honestly, this is one of the big wrong points of our society: that caring for the children full-time is NOT being part of the workforce.
This is one of those cultural ideas embedded in XXI Century logic which only does harm and transmits the wrong message: people’s life is as valuable as the money the work or the “job” they have, and of course, caring for the family is not a proper job.
That is so wrong on so many levels.
I am not claiming that it is easy, the best or the most engaging or whatever. I only claim that society has given up on valuing raising one’s children and keeping the household together, and this is terrible.
That is to say, caring for a child is a service that costs X. But it is being performed by a person who's skills are valued at Y, where Y > X. That represents an economic loss that doesn't have to happen, if instead you substitute someone who's most highly valued skill is worth X for that caretaker.
Now, that ignores the benefit of having a child's own parents care for them, which may or may not change how you evaluate the question depending on your perspective on these things.
The people who choose to stay at home often either have multiple kids (higher X) or earn little enough (lower Y) that it's not an economic advantage for them to work. But those people would be a net loss (to the government) in the Quebec system too.
We should subsidize childcare in efficient group settings, but we should also pay women that decide to stay home and do that work from public funds at decent salaries.
Only then, when women are free to choose their own destiny free of financial pressure can we say we've made the kind of difference in the world we want to see.
EDIT: In fact, there are probably many different childcare arrangements that women would pick: alone, in groups with friends or relatives, or in the employed laborforce. All of these should be realistically on the table.
EDIT2: While practically speaking in our current society, women would be the most affected, this should apply to any primary caregiver regardless of gender identity.
FYI, "comparative advantage" has a specific meaning, it isn't just a synonym for "advantage, but in economics".
Being a part of the workforce in this context means you are contributing income taxes. A full time parent contributes $0 in income taxes from their labor and hence is not a part of the workforce.
The value of raising a child full time is not at issue here and you're attacking a straw-man. A subsidized day care gives a parent the option of returning to the work force if they wish. This could be because they want to work, or because they have to to feed their family. The parent comment was pointing out that this choice does not result in a deficit to society but rather in a net surplus which makes it worth it to implement and offer regardless of how parents choose to raise their children.
Theoretically, we should just grant parents a tax exempt voucher per child every month that is exchangeable for cash or daycare at equivalent rates. That way you aren’t disincentivizing stay at home parents or other familial care (like grandparents or shared part time parenting).
This same statement can be applied to healthcare (our family's health is one of the most important things we have, why do we outsource it to doctors?) and cooking (nutritious meals are the keystones of a good life, why do we let anyone else cook for our family?)
Also how is giving someone a choice to work or raise kids misguided? Are you assuming people don't get satisfaction from their work? Or that there can't be a balance?
I'll agree that we worship at the corporate alter too much, and that our society actively works against raising a family, but helping lower the cost of childcare is encouraging families.
As it stands right now people aren't having kids because it is so expensive, and telling them "your values are wrong, stop working and have a kid instead!" isn't going to change minds en masse.
But in the context of this discussion, “productivity” is an economic term for the production of goods or services, and the generation of income for the workers. Child rearing does neither of those things directly, so as an economic activity, it doesn’t register and thus those parents are not part of the workforce. Again, that does not mean it is not a valuable thing to do for both the child and society, but it also does not directly add to GDP, generate income taxes, etc.
There is definitely a good sized segment of America that views homemaking as occupying some position below earning a salary. My wife (a homemaker) encounters this routinely among a certain set of career aspiring women.
There are some (mostly women) who choose this. There are many many more (mostly women) who do this because they don't see any other choice, either due to cultural pressure or due to financials.
There are also studies that show it's good for the kids to be with other kids and in a more structured learning environment than a home can offer.
It's not that childcare is undervalued it's that most women want to see themselves as more than just responsible for bearing and rearing children.
What you are defending is the classical conservative relationship model. Nothing wrong with that. Indeed it can be pleasant for many people. For many more it is not a satisfactory way to live their life. It's also often not satisfactory for the working partner that rarely gets to see their kids.
Now, where it gets interesting would be more flexible models like they are common in the Nordics, e.g. both parents working 60-80% and alternating childcare and household duties on different days/weeks. THAT is a progressive and for all sides positive model.
I would absolutely chose that over punching a clock everyday.
You have to do the cooking and cleaning and laundry anyway and you're also leaving an aweful lot out of the good stuff out in your description.
For example, in lower COL places in the US, it usually costs the range of $100/day for a nanny that works 8 hours a day, and for higher COL places (e.g. Palo Alto) it could even be say $300/day. Daycare (with groups of children) can be a bit cheaper, for sure.
But the point being, to have tax credit that matches that kind of effect, we'd need at least tax credits of $90/day/child for stay at home parents, to make sense, and including weekends too (i.e. 365 days a year).
If childcare is so expensive, maybe in two-parent households, one parent's job should be to raise the children while the other works.
They can, and some do, but there is the tricky problem that women tend not to want to be married to men that make less money than them.
They can, and often do. I know of several executives where I work who have stay at home husbands. This arrangement may not be as common as the traditional one, but it's more common than you think
I see it more as a way of self-sufficiency and financial independence from the spouse. I believe one of the wrong points in our 'free' society is that it's perfectly acceptable to basically rely on your spouse for financial stability. That is a frequent source of abuse, resentment, unfulfilled dreams, and the regular 'i raised MY kids' narrative during divorce proceedings etc..
> people’s life is as valuable as the money the work or the “job” they have,
Unfortunately this is the world we live in, especially with the lack of social safety net provided by the state. Someone must go out and make money in order to sustain a certain level of quality of life.
But here's the opposite view point: as parents, both my spouse and I would rather have either myself or my spouse be a full time carer of our baby, than sending her off to daycare and have both of us working.
What do you suggest is the solution then; other than making enough money / hitting the startup lottery jackpot and retiring before having kids?
I don’t really see the moral panic in having children being raised together in groups rather than by a dedicated or househusband.
First off, what if someone doesn't want to be a stay at home parent? Why force traditional values on them?
But, in terms of pure economics, let's put it at an extreme.
Child-care is too expensive, a woman who would otherwise go on to make breakthroughs in medical science stays at home.
The lost value to society is in the literal millions.
This scenario only has to be repeated a few times before it becomes economically irresponsible to not offer subsidized child care.
And, given how large the population is, this situation will happen.
The ideal of capitalism is that people are rewarded for their contributions to society overall, by providing value for others (ideally increasing net happiness!) people are reimbursed.
Now I'm not going to even try and say that is what always happens, obviously things have gotten a bit off kilter, but by and large I'd say that for many jobs out there, that is still true.
And the thing is, some people have an outsized impact, potential is on a curve, and if a single person on the far end of the "can help out humanity' curve is not enabled to do all that they can do to help out, then we all lose out.
In a very large share of people work either in bullshit jobs or unnecessary jobs or are replacablable.
On the other hand, if children would get more love,maybe more of them would grow to be exceptional?
>Child-care is too expensive, a woman who would otherwise go on to make breakthroughs in medical science stays at home.
This sounds like a fun game.
Child-care is subsidized. A child who would otherwise have been raised by a loving parent is raised by minimum wage daycare workers who don't care about the child.
The child consequently develops antisocial behavior disorders and shoots up a classroom full of children, one of which would otherwise have gone on to make breakthroughs in medical science.
No it doesn't. Rates for Stockholm, Sweden (PDF): https://forskola.stockholm/globalassets/forskola-och-skola/f...
In short:
FULL-TIME RATES
Full-time rates apply to children in the ages of 1-3, who are in childcare for more than 30 hours a week.
Child 1: 3% of household income up to maximum a fee of 1425 kr/month (roughly 149 USD)
Child 2: 2% of household income up to maximum a fee of 950 kr/month (roughly 99 USD)
Child 3: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month (roughly 50 USD)
PART-TIME RATES
Child 1: 2% of household income up to maximum a fee of 950 kr/month
Child 2: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month
Child 3: 1% of household income up to maximum a fee of 475 kr/month
Every family receives child allowance[1]. Child allowance for one child is 1250 kr/month for one child. Two children: 2650 kr/month. Three chidren: 4480 kr/month.
[1] https://www.forsakringskassan.se/privatpers/foralder/nar_bar...
According to wikipedia (0), the top rate is 60% and kicks in at $70,800. What's your source?
> That $149 per month is deceptive when you are paying very high tax rates.
According to the OECD (1), the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita is $31,287 a year, which comes down to $2607 per month, of which $149 is 5.7%.
According to the same OECD, the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita in the US is $45,284 a year. According to the OP's article, the cost of childcare is $16,000, or roughly 35.3%.
Would you argue that's deceptively high when you are paying little taxes? I wouldn't. If having children is to be considered a basic human right, why not equally consider universal the ability to raise them regardless of income bracket?
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden 1: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/sweden/
I am generally not one to rail against the government running efficient programs for general welfare, I support single payer healthcare in the US and many progressive policies. I do however think we need to consider the line where anything you buy has the government involved in re-distributing resources to make it cheaper for people with less money.
Ultimately, it might be good to allow economic forces to produce an economy again where single income households can afford to raise children, regardless of the gender of the parent who is earning an income. More work doesn't always mean societies or families ended up better off, parents spending time raising kids should not be seen as just sunken cost because we could have gotten tax money out of them.
Before a stay-at-home parent enters the workforce, they may not have the money to pay for the childcare that would free up time to work. Essentially only governments have both the money and the incentive to invest in making childcare widely available.
>So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids.
> But young Canadians who were eligible for the program experienced, as teenagers, “a significant worsening in self-reported health and in life satisfaction” relative to Canadians from other provinces. So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids.
The paper itself expands on it a little bit more:
> A recent view of effects of previous child care exposure on outcomes in adolescence suggest that more hours in child care in general does not affect test scores, but has a negative effect on non-cognitive outcomes, such as impulsivity and risk-taking (Vandell et al., 2010).
These negative findings have nothing at all to do with subsidized vs. non-subsidized childcare. They're essentially comparing children in daycare vs. children that are able to be raised by one or more parents, full-time.
Would kids be better off being raised by their parents more than being raised by specialized childcare workers? Perhaps. But not everyone is given that opportunity, regardless.
"child care in general does not affect test scores, but has a negative effect on non-cognitive outcomes, such as impulsivity and risk-taking (Vandell et al., 2010)."
Lately. I believe this is serious factor in the seemingly exponential rise in juvenile crimes in our city lately.
I have also been exploring bad learning / testing in the schools along with lots of other problems like bullying and violence.. talking with some people who work in these areas, it appears no amount of money thrown at the schools / teachers / in school counselors / resource officers is going to fix it...
unless things are fixed at the homes of all the kids in the community. I believe in many of these communities one of the prevalent factors is no stay at home parent..
and sadly this has been going on for so long, in many cases the parents do not have the right knowledge or skills to teach the kids as they likely grew up in a similar no at-home parents, stare at the tube and get bigger kind of situation as well.
I am interested in any research into these areas.
Intuitively the extremely poor will benefit (the kid would have been neglected or malnourished &c. without subsidized child care) at the expense of the slightly less poor (the kid would have had a stay-at-home parent without subsidized child care).
Policy is full of tradeoffs (and politics is full of lying about the tradeoffs to get support for a particular policy).
My kids all started daycare quite young (less than a year old) and they LOVE it. I suppose it entirely depends on the daycare just as it can depend on the school your child attends when they're older.
The daycare my kids go to have plenty of activities... they do crafts, draw, have plenty of books and toys, play outside, "sports" and dance classes. There's no way I'd have the time or attention span to be able to do all of that with my kids unfortunately. Some parents can do it, but I think most parents need a break more often than not.
It demands a minimum of 80% participation, meaning that if you wanted to stay at home to take care of your children but use subsidized daycare 1-2 days a week to give yourself a break, it's currently not possible. If a child is absent for more than 20% of the "regular" schedule, then the daycare loses that subsidy spot due to it being under-utilized.
There's a movement to help correct this, but it's not simple due to how funds and resources are allocated and planned for.
It's a "nit pick" for sure, but in my understanding, something that "pays for itself" is not dependent on government subsidies. Quebec has some of the highest income taxes in the country - you pay for such services one way or another.
Plus, according to the linked article, there is not enough space in the subsidized program to meet demand, so there are private options available, which must be paid for out of pocket and covered by a tax rebate. According the to the article, the private options do not provide the same standard of care.
I think you are ignoring the aggregate here. A govt program can "pay for itself" in ways private action cant because the govt can help smooth out risk among the participants.
Your point that this is ultimately funded by taxpayers is correct, but that doesnt mean the program cant generate more in new tax revenue than it costs. Like roads, education, and other areas, reliable and affordable child care can enable a lot.
(Note I have no actual knowledge of the specifics, so I'm arguing what is possible, not what is definitely happening)
The subsidies that are required are offset by the increased labour force participation that occurs as a direct result of said subsidies. Conversely, if the subsidies disappeared, then there's a good chance that many of those currently employed parents would have to make a choice – do I remain in the workforce and pay $1-2k/month for childcare, or do I quit my job and raise my child/children?
I've had relatives that live in Ontario that had to make this choice. Daycare in Toronto is $1600/month, and can be around $2500/month if you have two children. If one of the parents is pulling in $50,000/year (net pay of $38,979), and you have to drop close to $30,000 for childcare, for 2-4 years, is it even worth staying at your job?
That the program "pays for itself" in increased taxes implies that the additional tax burden is at least the $1-2k/month required to pay for the childcare.
So if you just cancelled the childcare and reduced the taxes you'd end up at the same place on average, except you wouldn't have non-parents subsidising childcare for parents.
The program was measured to be productive in the sense that the increased expenses for the program was paid back by the increase income taxes generated by more parents going to work IN THE PROVINCE. Since beginning the program more than two decades ago, Quebec has seen the rate of women age 26 to 44 in the workforce reach 85 percent, the highest in the world (and in Canada). More taxes paid by moms (and dads) paid for the price of the program. So yes, you can measure the success of the program and has nothing to do with the provincial perequation system for having a lower GDP.
Also, the birthrate is not among the lowest, it's actually right in the middle (per capita) and ahead of Ontario (which has the most similar economy). Quebec used to be among the lowest rate in Canada and what the program has done is increasing it dramatically, this has been measured by multiple studies.
Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/daycare-difference-quebec-fert... https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2018001/article...
Getting around 50-80k of untaxed labor value for the household is an excellent reason for any family that can manage to have one parent do the childcare job. It’s not so much an affordability issue as it is a cash flow management issue.
In the US both the left and right play a game where the only way to increase tax revenue is tax cuts to the rich. It has never worked...but politicians be damned if they will ever try anything other than trickle down economics.
Any response to the view that universal-childcare-educated children are "DQN" from over in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21745453 ? (I'm not sure I understand it.)
Moreover, they are comparing kids that are in daycare vs. kids that are raised solely by one or more of their parents; the fact that the daycare is "universal" or subsidized doesn't have anything to do with it. Moreover, the studies show that the kids are effectively more impulsive and more prone to risk-taking, and have found zero correlation with their cognitive abilities.
A big part of this is because the workers have to be Francophone, and often bilingual (esp. in Montreal).
> But young Canadians who were eligible for the program experienced, as teenagers, “a significant worsening in self-reported health and in life satisfaction” relative to Canadians from other provinces.
So a success for parents and for the economy, but not for the well being of the kids.
If you read the meta-analysis paper that they link to that describes the "not so good for the well being of the kids", you'll see that they're comparing children that attend daycare to children that are wholly raised at home with one or more parents:
> A recent view of effects of previous child care exposure on outcomes in adolescence suggest that more hours in child care in general does not affect test scores, but has a negative effect on non-cognitive outcomes, such as impulsivity and risk-taking (Vandell et al., 2010).
These negative findings have nothing at all to do with subsidized vs. non-subsidized childcare.
It is a true blessing if a mother or father can stay at home to raise their children. However, over time being a stay at home parent is incredibly isolating. Men are suseptible to depression, but women especially so post-partum. Also, many parents do eventually want to work either part time or full time. The longer one stays out of the work force the bigger the gap on the resume and the harder it is to find work as children grow up. I agree the lowest paying jobs should not be subsidized, but I think the benefits of taxpayer subsidized childcare would be overwhelmingly positive. The quality of childcare makes a big difference in the equation, but parents, especially mothers, should be encouraged to re-enter the workforce if they so choose. Every policy creates incentives and I have no qualms with the ones created by subsidized childcare.
It is normal for children to be cared for by many adults throughout the day, from birth - be they older relatives or simply members of the community. It is abnormal for one person to have to deal with all of their energy and issues. It is normal for children to wander and play and experience a wide and varied world. It is abnormal for them to be kept in a small, unchanging indoor space. It is normal for new parents, especially new mothers, to be intensely supported by their community. It is abnormal for them to be left alone unsupported. It is normal for homemakers to accomplish their daily tasks communally and to be active in their communities. It is abnormal for them to endure years of social isolation, primarily spending time with their children.
I am not sure what a healthy pattern for family support and child rearing looks like in this society, but I think public support for young child care, better connections with older relatives and neighbors for light child care, and light or part time but potentially meaningful work and social connections for parents is a lot closer to normalcy than the current locked together in isolation suffering silently pretending to be happy wondering why you're the only one struggling model we have now. The current model is insane and it is a testament to our toughness as human beings that we all try so hard to make it work and survive as well as we do.
Industrialization centralized jobs to factories, offices, etc. Previous to that, most operated their business as an attachment of their home, whether operating in trades or in aggriculture. So the children, the family, etc, were all together all of the time.
Our family actually works that way as I have a job as a remote developer and my wife is a stay at home mom. It's a great balance as I get to see my kids all day, and my wife is able to get breaks.
I'd argue having the child away from parents so often is harmful as well. Financials aside, that middle ground somewhat exists: stay at home parents that still leverage social environments for their kids. I too don't know how we can get everyone there, but the first step should be recognizing that a non-working parent doesn't have to be an isolated parent.
If anything he seems to really enjoy both going there and coming home. He has tons of friends, and the teachers are fantastic.
I guess this strongly depends on the environment though. Maybe we just found a really good one. It kind of feels the same as having the community take care of the kid.
As for the other 50%, the absence of parenting is bad for a child, since much of development is based on receiving adequate amounts of care and nutrition. However, this amount is satisfiable by engaged parents interacting with kids after work. The relationship between outcomes and sheer volume of hours of care provided by the mother is only weakly correlated after a certain threshold.
tl;dr: Daycare is fine for your kid, don't overthink it. If you're the kind of person who worries about this sort of thing, you're already ahead of the game.
> It is normal for children to be cared for by many adults throughout the day, from birth - be they older relatives or simply members of the community.
My sister engages in a community of stay-at-home parents and homeschooling parents (there is a lot of overlap and she also homeschools) to provide her children with socialization and to also share the burden of parenting all the small ones.
By contrast, in daycare, where my sister and mother both worked professionally at different times, it is common for adults to be split between many children, usually as many as seven or eight per adult (by regulation).
> It is abnormal for one person to have to deal with all of their energy and issues.
See above
> It is normal for children to wander and play and experience a wide and varied world. It is abnormal for them to be kept in a small, unchanging indoor space.
Funny that this is an example! Many daycares are inside only or maybe have a small playground. By the time the child is 5, they're expected to sit still in actual school all day! My nephew and nieces get the pleasure of participating in something called "Forest School" where they're able to socialize with other children their age and learn about nature, shockingly, outside in nature. They're also always allowed in the backyard and have friends in their neighborhood as well. So actually from what I've seen, homeschooled kids and kids with a stay at home parent actually get _more_ outside time. It's the poor kids in day care and school that don't get to go outside.
> It is normal for new parents, especially new mothers, to be intensely supported by their community. It is abnormal for them to be left alone unsupported. It is normal for homemakers to accomplish their daily tasks communally and to be active in their communities. It is abnormal for them to endure years of social isolation, primarily spending time with their children.
Again, see above. Maybe this varies a lot by locale, but here in Texas, none of your criticisms actually apply to the community of stay at home moms and homeschoolers that I have observed in my community.
To be completely clear, I am not criticizing parents who stay at home to raise their children. I am criticizing a society which expects them to do it alone. I am not advocating daycare as a panacea. I am saying any communal support at all represents a step away from the insanity. It sounds like your local community does not have the expectation that stay at home parents should naturally be superheroes. Please take over the world. :)
Families who raise their children in cities have all the same problems.
That said - what are you going to do about it? Our major cities and culture are not setup for addressing these issues at all. We have a hard enough time trying to pass anything through congress. Trying to get some huge child care bill through is nigh on impossible. On top of that - it will, of course, not do anything for people who live in the more expensive regions of the USA because paying for child care is expensive - sure - but the price of housing those children can be just as expensive if not more.
Have lots of kids and encourage them not to move so that there is a large support structure in place foe their children and their children's children.
I disagree that the benefits of subsidized childcare would be overwhelmingly positive. They would be positive only for those who wish to work. For those who wish to stay home (and I believe the number is higher than most people estimate), it makes it an even more expensive opportunity cost and adds even more cultural pressure to conform. And, when it comes to raising kids, I think diversity of upbringing, rather than conformity is the real answer.
I don't understand. What's the difference?
You are using taxes revenues to subsidize uneconomical labor to be economical.
What is so different about subsidizing a entry worker's pay or their child care bills?
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FWIW, the article makes no mention of it, but child care is tax subsidized in the U.S. via the Child Care Credit [1].
I think "modern" parents take their kids to the park to try and socialize with other parents/kids but the unstructured method doesn't seem as effective.
Depression is actually much more prevalent in women, in general, need t just post-partum[0]. I've linked a single reference, but there really is a lot of evidence here (although I think men probably hide it more frequently than women, but that's just my unscientific opinion!).
No matter who pays for it, raising children is time consuming. And time is becoming more valuable.
As you said, we are valuing time more and more. I can't imagine what childcare would costs with a $15/hour minimum wage. A lot of mothers would probably be forced to give up their job.
Childcare costs more than twice as much as our mortgage. We live in a blue state where many businesses feel compelled to pay $15/hour for unskilled labor. We interviewed child care providers who wanted $18-$22 per hour with no certifications, degrees, or training. We looked at au pairs, but the agencies all wanted $8k-$10k up front with no guarantees.
Do infants actually need the kind of attention these ratios imply? What happened to the era when families with lots of kids would just let them play outside all day?
Twins are quite stressful for mothers, and 4 infants would be like having quadruplets. Usually the ratios continue to rise as the children get older. Here's California's rules, for example. From kindergarten (66 months age on average) and up it's 14:1
- Infants (birth to 18 months old) -1:3
- Toddlers (18 months to 36 months old) -1:4
- Preschool (36 months to enrollment in kindergarten) - 1:8
- Children enrolled in kindergarten through 14 years old - 1:14
1-14m: 7:2
15-32m: 9:2
33m-7y: 10:1
-- https://child-familyservices.org/wp-content/uploads/ma-regulations.pdf<3y: 4:1, max 12 children per group (3 educators)
>3y: 8:1, max 24 children per group (3 educators again)
Two thirds of educators need to have a bachelor's degree in early childhood education.
Yeah, you might not be able to afford a nice house or car as quickly, but you get absolute control over how much love, attention, and correction your developing kids receive.
I've met hundreds, and it always strikes me as a more ideal life, because it's steeped in strong community.
Of course there are the isolation exceptions that make headlines in news media.
A lot of parents who chose to stay at home described having multiple young kids as chaos and "just trying to survive." I also get, "It's just so nice to talk to adults." Higher end communities offer a lot of options for temporary childcare; daycare programs that are 2-3 hours, gyms, and groceries offering childcare while you're there that seem specifically focused on stay at home parents. Those aren't options for most people.
Just an hour or two break can really help recharge, or just plan appointments or outings. If you're lucky enough that they sleep through the night or nap, you're still tethered to the house. I really think doing things outside of a relationship helps make parenting more fruitful, but since being a parent is 24/7 you just don't have options unless you have a strong network and are willing to ask/pay for help.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/measuring-the-long-term-effects-o...
It's weird to me the goal would be "make sure everyone has daycare" instead of "make sure people can raise their children".
What would taking the same amount of money and using it as a direct cash transfer subsidy look like?
The solutions in the article are "Medicaid, but for Parents, not doctors."
What we need is "a culture with jobs that will pay enough to support two adults and their children, so that care of children, family, and the community is an expected part of every adult relationship."
I say this as a parent with 6 kids and a wife who has cared for all of them.
* Primarily labor driven. You can't automate, you can't reduce hours, you squeeze 9 hours of child care out of an 8 hour workday.
* Regulation. This prevents the one way to lower labor cost: increasing child to adult ratio. Laws prevent this.
* Real estate costs. Child care can't be moved to cheaper cities and there is even limits on the extent it can be moved within a city before it becomes to costly (in time) for parents to utilize it.
Overall... I think the second reason can be wrapped up into the first one. While legally mandated insurance and such do have an impact, the biggest impact is the limit on child to adult ratio which has the largest impact on costs and that is because it limits the efficiency a single worker can have. If the ratio is 4 kids to 1 adult, the cost will never be below 1/4 the adult's salary. If you expect the adult to be paid a living wage, then in terms of others earning a living wage, 25% of their income will have to go to child care, and that is before counting any taxes or other costs.
Even if that money actually comes mostly from the top 1%, the average money per person works out to the same. This explains why the cost is so high. With regards to explain why the cost is so high, if that cost is being paid by the parents directly or by the rich via taxes and subsidies is not a factor in that cost, only in how it is paid.
That's a bit of a weird point to make, though. That income tax is already going toward paying for government programs. If you divert some of that to pay for early child care, some other programs will be left under- or unfunded.
Left people feel emotionally obligated to spread their “correct” opinions that “help people” as far as possible. Nationally > state.
The main difference is that the federal government can 'print money' to fund spending (the most recent tax cuts were essentially funded that way) and hope that long term economic growth from the policy change negates the increased deficit.
The second reason is that the Federal government takes more of the tax pie than states do. According to this link[2], the federal government gets 65%, states take 20%, and cities/municipalities 15%. And keep in mind that a good chunk of the federal money goes back to the states via federal programs. So if you are going to target your policy initiatives, might as well aim for the biggest slice of the pie.
[1] https://www.chs-ca.org/child-care-payment-program [2] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-breakdown...
I have a child who stopped going to private day care a year and a half ago. For us it was more like $20-24k/yr for child care. There were centers near one of my workplaces that were more like $35-40k/yr/child. Anything near the trendy high tech office spaces in Boston/Cambridge is going to be in that > $30k/yr/child range.
I think there are nice profits being made because:
- The teachers/caretakers make 50% at best of what public school teachers make
- They just in time schedule the living daylights out of everything
- You can easily figure out the gross income of the "school" because the tuition figures are public and you can see the # of rooms in the school and calculate from regulation how many kids are there. They were always 95% full in my experience
- The expensive/fancy ones tend to be owned by big chains & franchises, those are not operations that exist without someone getting rich.
One of the biggest day care chains in the country is owned by Bain Capital.. they've made a lot of money on it. They don't get into stuff that isn't profitable.
My experience was even at the upper end of the market the product is pretty darn bad compared to public school systems in our area. The public school staff is amazing and incredibly professional compared to the private day care staff. Not even close. And the ratios for elementary school are better than pre-school/pre-K at expensive day cares in our area. And even if you took all our local & state taxes and gave 100% to the school it does not match what day care costs. And obviously the state & town do not give 100% of the money to the school system.
Don't forget about the "nanny tax" (Household employer tax). You might not have to pay it this year if you're under the threshold but you probably will next year: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nanny-tax.asp
My current provider is a husband and wife team, and they aren't getting rich. (They charge $50 / day.)
Previously, I used an in-home provider where she ran a smaller in-home daycare, and her husband had an engineering job. They (household) had more money than my wife and I did. Ironically, even though she charged $55 a day, because she provided all food, it was "cheaper" due to time saved on our end.
[1] https://newbooksnetwork.com/emily-oster-cribsheet-a-data-dri...
This is like arguing that the invention of the assembly line caused inflation because you could produce too much.
You contradict yourself by saying 'double supply' and 'inflationary effects'... increasing supply of a commodity (in this case labor) should DECREASE inflation, not increase it.
> it's a simple supply and demand curve. Increasing the number of workers decreases their value.
You are leaving out a crucial factor - the wages that the 'new' workers earn are going to be spent in the economy, growing the economy as a whole. This is increasing the 'demand' side of that supply and demand curve.
This is the same flaw that anti-immigrant people use when saying that immigrants 'take our jobs'. They take a job, but they also create jobs by spending the money they earn. That is what an economy is. Every worker creates more value than they take (otherwise no one would hire the worker in the first place!)
That assumes that the number of available jobs is perfectly-sized and fixed, and that there's no other work that could be done (or no under-employed, existing work that could be done better) if we had more workers. That would seem not to be true.
The childcare discussion cuts to the heart of this, because the language of economic optimization cloaks its real world results - the addition of ever-more third-party intermediaries to raise your own kids, such you can keep on performing the most system-legible labor possible.
What should have really happened is that "full time employment" should have been redefined to 30 hours per week, a few decades ago. By now we should be at 20-25 hours per week. We're in the age of the greatest technological progress in history, yet rather than success, the treadmill is turning faster than ever! All to produce more layers of bureaucracy, overpackaged fast food, or junk that ends up in a river. And then we do our penance lamenting about "sustainability", when the simple answer is to stop overproducing in the first place.
So it's a double-edged sword: you flood the supply side with new laborers while keeping the demand side static, and you increase the general cost of living because you now have to pay for childcare that you used to get for free.
There is historical precedent for it, see 14th-century Italy after the Black Death halved the population.
https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_the_Bubonic_Plague_make_the...
More people going to university -> Demand outgrows supply, universities can charge more and spend more money on appealing things. More student debt.
More workers -> More supply than demand, companies can pay less.
Each worker needs a vehicle. More expenses.
Both parents working, need to pay someone else to take care of kids. More expenses.
More debt/expenses, less pay.
Of course correlation =/= causation, but perhaps it was one of the contributing factors to the 10+% inflation rates of the late 70s early 80s.
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-...
Henry Ford realized that the automobile was not going to change the world unless auto workers were so productive that they could easily afford the cars they made.
That kind of productivity increase is not possible w/ Childcare. I remember a Z Magazine cartoon more than 20 years ago where two women were pondering the mystery of why a child care worker can't afford child care and the unspoken punch line was that it was the perversity of capitalism but, no, it's not that economically efficient to pay somebody else to watch your kid for you. It makes money for the day care center, it makes money for your employer if you go to work, you pay taxes on the money you earn -- it makes money for a whole lot of people who aren't you.
You, not so much.
Universal child care is currently reeling from the discovery that recipients of universal child care in Montreal have turned into DQN adolescents. Maybe "the kids will be alright" in the end, but it is not looking like a program that pays for itself like Head Start.
If there wasn't any overhead, the childcare worker with one infant would pay 1/4 of their wages on childcare, which doesn't leave a lot for housing, food, transportation, student loans, etc. They are only infants so long however...
Actually there is overhead, the child care center has to pay for a building, administrators, marketing, and possibly taxes.
Contrast that to the auto worker, who probably gets a new car relatively often, let's say it works out like a $300 a month, or $3600 a year.
I think auto workers are relatively well paid, so the cost of that car is 5% of their wages as opposed to 20% or more.
Heartbreaking: https://daily.jstor.org/lifesaving-horrifying-history-wet-nu...
edit (typo)
It only made sense if she was planning to grow her career and just ride out the daycare for 5 years until the kid went to school, but even then it's contingent on not having another kid during that time.
At the end of the day being a stay-at-home mom made a lot more sense.
When kids are sick and they are often, you have to deal with it somehow - again either risk own employment and status on the job or own projects or demand that husband stays home some of those days.
The same goes with part time work. I know multiple women who do less then 8 hours a day not because they want to, but because they would need husband to come home from work sooner otherwise to be able to make it all. Had he had a job where he could (or if he was willing to - at least in two cases it is not job but him making excuses), they would prefer to work full time (due to those positions being more interesting).
An interesting fact of our progressive income tax that combines spousal income is that the lower earning spouse is strongly disincentived to stay at home instead of work. This is especially true if one spouse has very high income.
Seems like we've been moving all domestic productivity into the realm of Taxable GDP. Some say it's a conspiracy, for me it's just an observation.
Home cooked meals has become meal prep kits, home delivery. ChildCare has been outsourced (out of the home or a small community of cooperating parents). Household cleaning to cleaning services etc.
But many policymakers will react positively if you relate new policies in terms of the economic growth they promise. It's difficult to do, in this case, though, but I get why they're trying.
Same goes for any other domestic work. Someone who cleans professionally can clean a house faster and better than someone who works in an office 8 hours a day. In fact, I'd bet a professional cleaner typically is faster and does a better job than a stay-at-home spouse who divides their time between every conceivable domestic task.
Honestly I don’t see a problem. We as a society have decided that we would rather be 100% safe rather than accept risk for lower cost, so we enforce strict ratios on children to caretaker ratios, license people, make in-home sprinklers mandatory, etc. $16k per child per year in Massachusetts is that cost.
For what it’s worth, none of my friends put infants in daycare due to the cost. They either got foreign au pairs or hired someone under the table for cash (very common in immigrant communities)
https://www.steffanslegal.com/blog/first-circuit-holds-that-...
I'm hoping your friends are libertarians who disagree with the current political zeitgeist in Massachusetts.
It would be very depressing to hear that your friends are Liberals who publicly support these daycare laws and then privately flaunt them by 1) favoring non-American workers and 2) paying them in cash to avoid taxes
The common orthodoxy is that the achievement gap is caused by and solvable through the schools, but the reality is much different.
Interestingly, the achievement gap between black kids from two-parent households is almost non-existent, however since 70% of black kids are in single-parent homes, the effects of those homes is borne out in the statistics — but the cause is misattributed. “Black” students are treated as a homogeneous group, but really the gap is between “black students from single (or no) parent homes” and white students (of which the majority are from two-parent households.)
The destruction of the black family is what is really behind this so-called achievement gap. The origin of that destruction is a discussion for another time, but the Moynihan Report foretold this back in 1965. The Coleman Report from the same period, also described the achievement gap as being primarily originated from the family, rather than schools. [1]
This article is long, but it relevant: https://www.city-journal.org/html/black-family-40-years-lies...
[1] https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2016/07/13/50-years-ago-t...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/two-parent-family...
Some quotes:
“living in a two-parent family does not increase the chances of finishing high school as much for black students as for their white peers”
“Greater involvement in extended family networks may protect against some of the negative effects associated with parental absence from the home”
The conclusion of this New York Times opinion piece is that structural racism has more impact on the success of young Afro-American kids than single parent households.
What value.
Yes, there are issues with more parents who want their kids to be in it than slots available, and there are about four or five weeks a year when it’s not available, but it does provide excellent child care for kids.
Might that be a cause of declining fertility rates rather than a side-effect of it?
To me it seems pretty logical that some parents in a position to use birth-control to limit the size of their families would decide to do so, given the costs of child care.
My parents are like that.. my mom even moved to live close to one of my siblings and the grandchildren.. but complains every single time she has to watch them because it takes up her valuable retired time... ok.
But in the West many children shuffle their folks off to a home. Kind of tragic all around.
That can't be serious complaining since most financially wholesome retirees are bored out of their minds. Besides the few vacations they take a year, what else is there to do all day?
Pre-school in particular benefits both the children who receive it and the parents who are able to work. A lack of affordable childcare disproportionally falls on women as well, which is something worth tackling.
The other issue not even mentioned here is that childcare and pre-school are expensive but they don't pay well. A larger role from the government would pay these people more and provide more stability for pre-school teachers and children alike.
No, because most parents aren't good at teach their kids basic knowledge.
> Pre-school in particular benefits both the children?
Disagree, it's a virus-fest and a herdish, artificial beginning in life. People who are lucky enough to grow their kids in rural/family/small town settings have it much better.
> A lack of affordable childcare disproportionally falls on women
agreed, but that can easily be worked on
Well if both parents are fairly career driven, it's pretty hard to stay at home for 6+ years until full day school starts, and that is only for 1 kid.. could be 8/9 years with 2 kids close in age. Since it's usually the woman, she is basically giving up any solid career having that kind of work gap.
And you say 'work at home' but you can't have a fulltime working at home job with very young kids. You could manage it to some degree at age 4/5+ but before then you would hardly have any time to actually focus on a job at home.
You mean "work at home" as in, not work? Ever dealt with a toddler? Kiddo will be at your workspace non-stop. You can't just tell them not to either.
If you want to get anything done without distraction, the easiest solution is to park them in front of a TV all day. Not sure if that is the outcome you'd want. Daycare at least gives them a full day of interacting with others their age, learning new things, etc. Not just watching TV or being ignored at home.
> First, although child-care workers aren’t expensive on an hourly basis—their median hourly wage is less than that of non-farm-animal caretakers and janitors—labor is the biggest line item for child-care facilities. Unlike, say, car companies, they can’t cut spending by moving labor to poorer countries or by replacing human workers with machines.
> The industry is highly regulated, perhaps reasonably so, given the vulnerability of the clientele ... Other costs include insurance to cover damage to the property and worker injuries, as well as legal fees to deal with inevitable parent lawsuits.
> Finally, there’s the real estate. The most expensive child-care facilities tend to be situated near high-income neighborhoods or in commercial districts, where the rents are high. And they can’t downsize in a pinch, because most states require them to have ample square footage for each kid.
Their teacher pay scale also tops out at $15/hr, but each teacher represents around a $8000/month revenue stream.
The daycare’s rent is about $40,000 a month.
It seems to me that we need solutions to address the high cost in any case, and the question of whether the government should be more involved is an orthogonal concern.
Unless the argument is that there's not an effective way to control the costs, so the government should help pay for it to not overly burden new parents. But, I didn't see that point explicitly made in the article.
- Child care is a superior good (in the economics sense). As we get richer, we almost certainly spend more of our money on it, as we do in other areas that are substantially driven by signalling (see health care, education).
- It is absurdly regulated and there is nothing close to a free market. My family participates in a child care sharing arrangement that results in several families regularly breaking the law. That is because it is illegal to watch more than 4 children (if at least one of them is not yours) without state licensing.
Even if the workers were making 100% of the costs of childcare, This means that the Mississippi employee is being paid half as much as the Massachusetts employee. Mississippi's economy is clearly not comparable to Massachusetts's economy. Why is the Atlantic treating this comparison as valid?
The difference today is that we measure it.
Regardless, it's easy to be an economic powerhouse when most of Asia had yet to undergo industrial revolution, and the rest of the developed world was rebuilding from war. I don't think it's surprising that wages are stagnant -- our economic output has competition now.
in MA the cost of family daycare is still $6 per hour. This is below min wage and is dirt cheap!!!
Imagine if we paid daycare $25-50/hr ? then the daycare would be truly unaffordable ... how about $103,000/year daycare cost ($50/hr) ???
https://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ASSISTANCE/CHILD-CARE/Pages/Rates...
Great quality teachers (early childhood) SHOULD be able to earn $75-100K + Which means that really daycare should be at least somewhere around $50-75K/year.
California is very different from Vermont which is very different from Mississippi. It doesn't make any more sense for the three to have identical child-care systems than it does for Denmark, Italy and Lithuania.
I don't find his argument that only the federal government is large enough to capture the upside particularly compelling, and his straw-man counterarguments are … strawmen.
Moreover, it's also important to understand what the second-order results of any state child-care policy are. While parents do mistreat their children, I am reasonably sure that child-care workers mistreat children more often. If so, a child-care policy which substitutes non-parent care for parent care will likely result in increased rates of mistreatment.
I am friends with lots of K-12 teachers and have known people who work with kids and families in various other capacities. I would absolutely not care to bet any amount of money that child care workers abuse or mistreat kids at higher rates than parents do.
Why would you think this? I’m pretty sure there are way more cases of child abuse by parents than child abuse by day care workers. Day care workers don’t deal with children with much privacy, there are other kids and day care workers, whereas parents have none of those constraints. Also, for day care workers, it’s just a job, vs. parents who are more emotionally caught up in taking care of their kids (and could make more mistakes due to emotions).
I wouldn't expect that to necessarily be true at all.
Regardless, it's irrelevant: with more and more families opting to go dual-income, childcare services will continue to become more and more necessary. This problem isn't going away; it's only going to get worse.
Is anyone really learning anything from this article? Or is this just a general complaint looking for a boogeyman.
My little theory is that while men still made enough money to support good life in the US (50s, 60s) most women just didn't want to work. If you can have a house, nice car, four kids, vacation home, 40 hour week, no credit card debt, no school debt, and all of that on carpenter salary -- why not to enjoy life instead of spending 50-60 hours at the office?
The dirty secret is that most women work because they HAVE TO. It's not a choice. It's sold to the society at large as something glamorous because -- what? They're going to tell the truth? Yeah, you need to work your ass off 50-60 hours a week, with credit card debt, student loan debt, two cars loan, etc, etc. just to be able barely make it to have two kids at 35 ? Because before that you need advanced degree or two. Actually both of you do... I mean how is that a better deal?
I can see that also from the reaction of my wife friends who stayed in the US working to basically help their husbands as one salary won't cut it. It's not like they wouldn't prefer to stay at home with kids. But, again, it's not like they have a choice.
Childcare is mind numbing work, especially with young kids. Sure, some women (and men) would prefer that, but a LOT of women prefer office work over raising children.
"why not to enjoy life instead of spending 50-60 hours at the office?" is really selling short how much work raising young kids is. It is NOT enjoying life to stay home with toddlers. Maybe once they start school and you get hours to yourself, but before that it is way more time consuming than working at an office.
I know, I have done both. I took long paternity leaves to care for both of my kids, and while I love being able to bond with the kids, I was so happy to be able to go back to work. The freedom I have at the office compared to being home with the kids was night and day. Just being able to go to the bathroom when I need to, to get food when I want..... young kids are non-stop work.
I LOVE being a dad, but the weekends are way more stressful than the weekdays. Wrangling kids is way harder than programming computers.
> It is NOT enjoying life to stay home with toddlers.
> I was so happy to be able to go back to work
> the weekends are way more stressful than the weekdays
I have to say, this kind of perspective on being a parent puzzles me, even though it's pretty widely held. Honestly, many parents I encounter seem almost as if they'd prefer to be their child's aunt or uncle than their mom or dad. Certainly not in title, but possibly in terms of responsibilities.
I get it, raising kids is HARD. But the sense of purpose I feel about writing code that helps my company's investors become slightly richer is totally unlike the sense of purpose I feel about teaching my child about the alphabet, even if many days it feels like a slog.
I like this quote from G.K. Chesterton about the importance of this work. Chesterton is talking specifically about a mother, but I think it holds true whether the primary caregiver is a father or a mother:
> To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
Especially within earshot of my wife. Stuff like that pisses her off to no end, with good reason. She's smart and accomplished and very much enjoys the challenges of a professional career.
The conversation I rarely see people having is wether a people group (men or women, for example) has a long term positive/regret recollection of the choice. I understand that most of the messaging today is that women can (and should) pursue paid employment and so naturally that becomes the narrative that people repeat. But 30 yrs later do women generally regret entering the workforce to the detriment of having / raising children? Anecdotally I know many men regret spending so much time at work and not being more involved in their children's lives, could it also hold true for women?
We pay $42,000 a year in childcare (2 kids, $1,750 /month, which is one of the cheapest options in our area). After taxes its 90%+ of my wife’s entire salary.
It doesn’t make financial sense for her to work, but she’s good at her job, and she’s in a career where taking years off is punishing (law). Honestly though, a big part of it is she wants to work, stress and all. It makes sense to me.
As for me, I would prefer to stay home with them instead of work, but I am the primary earner and am also in a career that punishes people severely who take time off (finance). So here we are.
Do you have any statistics about that? I once saw a map of Japan, which is a place were a good job can still provides for a while family, showing that in every prefectures of Japan except two, more than half of women preferred to be stay at home mom. In two more others it was half-half. Of course there is the cultural context, but it’s interesting that when given the choice for real, most of women would indeed chose not to work.
Also, if one look at jobs that are prized by women, teacher arrive in a very good position. And teaching is basically rising others people kids on an industrial scale.
Sure - but then, lets also not generalize in the opposite direction. How many women get to work, versus how many have to work?
A job rarely gives you that much meaning.
It is an individual matter, I agree. With most women definitely having the preference of staying at home. But for that the right partner is needed, i.e. one who provides enough resources for her and her kids. If this is not present she will go to work. We decided as a society to frame it different just not to face difficult truth, which is society becoming poorer. It's just so much easier to say that somehow nowadays women prefer working to following their maternal instinct.
As a man you are wired to compete with other males for resources to be brought to your partner and offspring. I'm sorry but this is just how it works. Women define male attractivness based on his socio-economic status. Of course if you don't want your wife (and other females and society at large) to look down at you, you will eventually go back to work and work your ass off. She on the other hand, can but she doesn't need to. It's not like you or pretty much anyone will look down at her for not working. Current social fashions aren't going to change five milion years of evolution of the species.
And keep in mind, statistics say than one of the divorce factors is husband making less than wife. From her perspective: this isn't sexy at all.
I think you can replace "women" with people and make this statement more accurate. I don't see why this would be unique to women, whether you agree or disagree with the "people work because they have to, not want to" statement.
https://austingwalters.com/tiny-handcuffs/
My general thoughts are that 90% of people don’t want to work - so yea none of us would if we didn’t have to.
One thing that’s always astonishing to me is that it’s not the the poor are necessarily getting poorer... it’s that we want to give more resources to our kids. You can have 10 kids on a salary of $120k a year, you just have to live on rice and thrift.
It all has actual consequences. Lastly, I remember reading stats about domestic violence rates going down when economics changes so that women earns more or males less. It goes up when it changes other way.
You assume horrible office that expects you to work 60 hours a week. Somehow it is ok for men to work in that horrible office? Why don't men push to work less to actually be with family? Like, man getting to be actually a father and not just a wallet for family?
There was never a time anywhere in the history of the world where one working man could work a low-skilled laborer's job and comfortably provide for a family of four.
anyone that thinks being the primary caregiver is easier than working out of home is delusional. the pressure would probably crush my wife, honestly.
but here we are, the cost of caregiving meeting our standards are high, and unless i also make $300k a year in the bay area, we’re just going to hit a break even point for all the different people that need to replace me.
My anecdata is quite opposite. Women having remorse for leaving children in child care, but they can't stand staying at home. They feel lonely.
No wonder there is so much gender inequality in the workplace.
This does not belong on HN.
> I can see that also from the reaction of my wife friends who stayed in the US working to basically help their husbands as one salaty won't cut it. It's not like they wouldn't prefer to stay at home with kids. But, again, it's not like they have a choice.
Ok, all of that is incredibly sexist. Male here, born and raised under (full) communism, now living in the opposite system and I'm appalled by this attitude. Women work because they have to? Of course they have to. We live in an economic system in which we all need to pull our weight. There should be no class of people (like women) which should be excluded from the workforce based on some ideological bullshit idea from the 50s. It's funny that in the land of the free, financial dependence on a spouse is a badge of honor!
This kind of broken thinking is also the source of the horrors of the US divorce system (for example the absolute batshit crazy spousal support). Let's not even bring up the fact that women also have, like a normal human being, aspirations and ambitions which aim beyond being a childcare provider..
> help their husbands as one salaty won't cut it
Help their husbands? In what way are they helping their husbands? They're not helping themselves or the family? If you look at this from the perspective of 'helping the husband' then there will be a problem in there somewhere. Am a husband. If I can't make ends meet the whole family suffers and the wife isn't helping me, she'll be helping the family.
I love this comment, so I'm going to start here. This very sentence: "We live in an economic system in which we all need to pull our weight". By all you mean which class? Poor? Middle class? Middle-upper class? Rich? Wealthy?
Don't you see how we're tricking ourselves by believing in this false male/female dychotomy? Let's look at it from Marxist perpective: Poor -- male and female work Middle Class -- male and female work Middle Upper Class -- sometimes one of the partners male OR female will work, while the other will not. Upper Class -- both men and women don't work. They earn passive income on their investments, business onwership, real estate ownership, stocks and bonds profits.
So, while we here are arguing if women "should" work or not, the healthy attitude seems to be to do anything possible to be as high on the ladder above as possible. Because the reasons if we work or we don't work have nothing to do with what we believe or want. But they have everything to do with our social status, or as Marx would call it "class". If you are poor you and your partner work. If you are wealthy you and your partner don't work. If you're in one of the middle classes it's a combination. Talking about "women rights" in this scenario is just side-tracking and being blinded by the reality of social classes and social status.
This being said, there is bunch, really a lot of research in psychology strongly suggesting that women are attracted to males who are highly successful. Basically poor woman (low class) will be definitely attracted to a guy in higher class. Based on his class / social status alone. This is basic science of psychology backed by a lot of research. Declining simple biology for signaling reasons just looks so... desperate? (sorry, couldn't resist myself)
I think the real problem is people don't like taking care of kids, and would rather have a stranger do the job. Understandable since kids are noisy, disobedient, stinky little things, but we were all that at some point (probably still are) and someone took care of us.
Then there are all the single parent families, but why are there so many single parent families? Again, I think it is because people aren't willing to put up with each other's imperfections. Yes, sometimes there is real abuse going on that means staying together is actual a danger to life. But, is that the majority of cases? I am doubtful.
So, the real reason child care is so expensive is because we aren't willing to suck up and stick out with the imperfections of other human beings without a paycheck.
Highly unlikely! Maybe for a 4 year old there could be some time during the day. Let's say 1 hour. The type of gig where you can do an hour of work and be paid for it ... won't pay much. Let's say $20. It is hardly worth it. Now compare that to being at work.
> I think the real problem is people don't like taking care of kids, and would rather have a stranger do the job.
I don't think so. Taking care of your own kids is much more rewarding than going to work. If work is better it's because the job is great, not because the kids are annoying. Staying at home looking after kids is a lot easier. If you work you have a limited window to get them ready for care, it's a rush, then you have to commute to work, rush back to childcare after work, and then take them home and get them ready super quick for bed. It is not ideal, and not really a choice based on laziness.
> Understandable since kids are noisy, disobedient, stinky little things.
Ok..... That's one way to characterize them I guess. Seems a bit harsh.
> So, the real reason child care is so expensive is because we aren't willing to suck up and stick out with the imperfections of other human beings without a paycheck.
The real reason is it takes a lot of labour to look after the kids, administer the centre, cook, and also real estate and maintenance of property etc. And people pay for it because they need to work to afford to raise kids.
Be careful; you're stating as fact something that is incredibly subjective.
Regardless, "taking care of your own kids" encompasses a lot of things that are not at all like one another. Teaching a kid how to do math: rewarding. Cleaning up after your kid accidentally dumps paint onto the carpet: tedious and frustrating. In part, kids are noisy, disobedient, stinky little things (as well as many other things, some of them not so negative), and I would not consider dealing with that aspect of them at all fun.
(Your opinion on all that might differ, which is kinda the point I'm trying to make here.)
Well, no. You might still come out ahead even if childcare consumes 60% of the lower earners' after tax income.
Also, the big issue is what to do once the kids don't need such heavy parental attention. Sucks to have lost all your work skills. Also can lead to problematic power dynamics in the relationship.
IMO, unless you find a partner that's going the same direction, you're doing the right thing while you're young.
Its a nice perk that in modern times we can have children in our 50's and still live long enough to see them into adulthood (though maybe not see them raise a family if they follow in your footsteps).
I think the trifecta you're looking for is.. No Kids, No Alimony... And NO CHILD SUPPORT PAYMENTS during the best years of your life. If they call you selfish, ask them if they regret their freedom of choice. Theres a good chance they were never free.
I believe your opinion is similar to climate change denial since all the experts on the subject disagree with you.
Whenever I walk in public, all I can think is jeez ... there are so many random people. Seems like we need better planning. People just have kids on whim, to satisfy themselves, like a life goal. It doesn't make much sense to me. I think mostly ladies want children.
Why should that user feel obligated to have children?
There are other users on this site (I'm not one of them) that argue that the world is suffering from overpopulation. I'm interested to hear your perspective as to why the opposite is not only okay, but imperative.
the world (and Earth) is much better off with fewer people,
it is called quorum-sensing in science, many organisms stop reproducing then they overpopulate, humanity should do the same, if it is a philosophy that is followed, so much better, everyone is better off
Parents can take staggered lunch breaks to watch the children. Children would be in a common area that'd be appropriately gated off. In dual-income families, either mom or dad can take the child to their office.
Benefits:
(1) Both parents can work and be with their child
(2) Children see adults working, not just playing. This is good as children want to be like adults
(3) Non-parents get to spend time with babies and children, which is wonderful!
(4) For nursing working mothers, having the baby there would make nursing much easier than pumping. Babies could even be given little bassinets to sleep and wiggle around in near mom and dad, if they want that.
(5) The child/children can share in mom and dad's lunch.
(6) Cute babies in offices!!! How great is that!?
Speaking from personal experience, when my colleagues have been forced due to circumstance to bring their young children in to the office, the experience has always been positive. However, my colleagues seem worried that one of us may be offended and apologize incessantly. We should stop this and just make it a policy that children are allowed in-office. I mean, a lot of companies I've worked at have allowed dogs, which can't be potty trained, don't wear diapers, and sometimes bite people. Why are children treated worse than dogs?
EDIT: responses to this thread are the #1 reason why we will never have affordable childcare. Americans, as a group, highly highly dislike children, even if they won't admit it out of fear of sounding like a misanthrope.
It's hard to get work done when there are kids in the work area, so I can see why most companies don't encourage this. Especially since some people don't like kids.
Another even better solution is a remote workforce. Then only you have to deal with the distractions of your kid, except during meetings. As long as you can find something to do with the kid, or people are ok with kids on the conference call, it works out.
My employees are used to seeing my kid pop into the frame during video calls, and it's not really a problem.
Well those people can be shunted off into some sad depressing part of the building? Or work from home.
Remote work is great, but it's also very nice and social to bring babies in to the office to meet your friends. What's so wrong with that?