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Why Child Care Is So Expensive

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#71

Post by ouid »

>"In Massachusetts, which requires one caregiver for every three infants, the average annual cost is more than $16,000. In Mississippi, which allows a one-to-five ratio, the cost is less than $5,000."

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?

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#72

Post by vturner »

ng12 wrote: post #59
vturner wrote: post #21

This may be somewhat off-topic, but I'm often surprised that leftist policies like the article advocates are often proposed at a national level? Why is this? Why not propose a state-sponsored child-care system in a leftist state - California, Washington, Massachusetts, etc. I'm not trying to start a war here, simply genuinely interested why people on the left push national social programs versus propose them in very…

Because those states already taxed their citizens to the breaking point. It's much easier to pass it off to the federal government where you can't escape by moving to Florida.

That is interesting. I wonder how other national programs are generally funded (or would be funded, Medicare For All for example). Are they massive wealth transfers from low tax to high tax states?

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#73

Post by watwut »

cortesoft wrote: post #43
jandrese wrote: post #4

We definitely felt this. My wife ended up quitting her job when we had our first because all of the child care options we investigated were going to require basically her entire after-tax income to support. 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 en…

If she did have a career she wanted to continue, the calculation is pretty strong on the 'riding it out until school'. You have to count ALL the salary you are going to make for the next 30-40 years of working, because sitting out for 5 years will have an effect on your income your entire career.

One problem is that it affects not just her, but whole family. When she is in full time work, then husband have to say no to later meeting, to switch with her on all those celebrations and competitions and so on. There is more coordination, work and stress for everyone, not just woman in question.

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).

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#74

Post by ChaosDegenerate »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #67
tasogare wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but a LOT of women prefer office work over raising children 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 whe…

...assuming that women in Japan can choose at all.

oooopssss... and what do we have here? A little colonizer mentality? ;-)

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#75

Post by jefftk »

georgeburdell wrote: post #19

As the article notes, the reason is regulation and women entering the workforce. 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…

> foreign au pairs

https://www.steffanslegal.com/blog/first-circuit-holds-that-...

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#76

Post by OnlineGladiator »

watwut wrote: post #55
ChaosDegenerate wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, somehow the society at large has no problem with exactly opposite generalization: that women prefer to work over staying home with their kids. 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 so…

Women marched for right to work and education. It was not males forcing them to, it was literally movement by women.

The right to do something is different from the want to do something. How many people have fought for their right to vote? And yet how abysmal is voter turnout every year?

The desire for education is very different from the desire for work.

I am not saying there are no women (or even the majority of women) who want to work because it is their choice. But I think we are making it a gender issue when really it isn't. Do most men want to work or do they have to? Social mores have dictated the man be the provider for centuries, if not millenia.

I think it depends on the individual more than the gender.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#77

Post by maerF0x0 »

Goodhart: When the metric becomes the goal, it ceases to be a good measure... (paraphrase)

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.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#78

Post by cortesoft »

ChaosDegenerate wrote: post #39
cortesoft wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very careful about making that large a generalization (that all else being equal, women would prefer to stay home over working). 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 rais…

well, somehow the society at large has no problem with exactly opposite generalization: that women prefer to work over staying home with their kids. 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 so…

I have a problem with either generalization. I think we, as a society, need to support all choices a family makes (both parents working, or either parent staying home with the kid), and not judge parents for making any choice that works for their family.

I find it very troublesome that you keep referring to women staying home to care for the kids as 'following their maternal instinct' and men working outside at an office as the natural state for men. Saying that "Women define male attractiveness based on his socio-economic status" is downright offensive, and is getting into red-pill incel territory.

There is nothing 'natural' or 'evolutionary' about how we divide up labor in our society. Up until 100 years or so ago, we didn't even have the idea of 'childhood' that we do now. Parenting was not a full time job, kids were just expected to basically raise themselves and tag along while mom and dad did real work. In evolutionary terms, men haven't 'evolved' to work away from home while women raised kids; both parents did work (varying by society type, e.g. hunter-gatherer or farming) to provide resources for the family. Both men and women worked to provide those resources, and kids just hung around. Obviously, women fed babies the first year or two, but after that kids were pretty much on their own.

Your view that men and women naturally live together like a family in the 1950s for all of our history is a great example of a 'just so' explanation for our current gender politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#79

Post by PaulHoule »

raincom wrote: post #17
PaulHoule wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See this Liz Warren book: 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 w…

What is DQN?

Japanese slang for "Delinquent"

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#80

Post by glofish »

jperras wrote: post #7

It doesn't have to be this way. 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 lo…

The article specifically calls out the Quebec experiment as having a negative impact on the children:

>So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids.

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