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Why Child Care Is So Expensive

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#291

Post by briandear »

> Most of the achievement gap between black and white American students is in place by kindergarten. Meanwhile, dozens of studies of preschool programs since the 1960s have shown that early-childhood education can slash the black-white kindergarten achievement gap in half.

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...

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#292

Post by anthonypasq »

organsnyder wrote: post #157
UncleMeat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't people say this about population growth? The US population is 2x what it was in 1950. Yet nobody says that this depresses wages causes problems. Would we have a stronger middle class if we Thanosed the population? That doesn't seem right.

Population growth leads to more consumers as well as producers. Activating a "dormant" producer segment (as if stay-at-home parenting isn't producing tangible value...) leads to an increase in producers, while the number of consumers stays the same.

dual income houses have more money to spend...

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#293

Post by jdbernard »

organsnyder wrote: post #157
UncleMeat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't people say this about population growth? The US population is 2x what it was in 1950. Yet nobody says that this depresses wages causes problems. Would we have a stronger middle class if we Thanosed the population? That doesn't seem right.

Population growth leads to more consumers as well as producers. Activating a "dormant" producer segment (as if stay-at-home parenting isn't producing tangible value...) leads to an increase in producers, while the number of consumers stays the same.

And I'll point out that your parenthetical is one of the points of the article: that stay-at-home parenting is apparently extremely costly to replace.

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.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#294

Post by HBKXNCUO »

pfranz wrote: post #241
klipt wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is subsidized daycare necessary in these cases though? In America if daycare costs X and you earn Y much greater than X, then obviously you'll make more money going to work and sending your kid to daycare than being a stay at home parent. 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…

Do you care if the country's population drops dramatically? I'm sure many people are fine with that, but if you're a country looking to stay strong economically the math says you'll need to incentivize childrearing somehow. I think subsidized daycare is a great idea as long as it isn't too much of a disincentive for those who want to stay home with their kids. When I was looking into childcare I noticed there were a…

>I think subsidized daycare is a great idea as long as it isn't too much of a disincentive for those who want to stay home with their kids.

Why would you be OK with any kind of disincentive to parents staying home with their children?

>There are other advantages to group care like being able to spot issues that aren't age appropriate. As a parent I don't have a large sample size for most milestones. "Normal" can have a range of a year for many developmental skills, but others can stick out in a group setting.

You don't have to dump your children off to be raised by minimum wage daycare workers in order to put them in a group setting. You can also create these group settings, and gain a larger sample size, by spending more time with your friends and family members who also have children. As a bonus, you and your friends and family members can observe the behavior yourselves, and not rely on the judgment and interest of minimum wage daycare workers, who could get a new job at any point in time and be perfectly content to never see your child again.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#295

Post by distances »

jefftk wrote: post #54
legitster wrote: post #41

It really comes down to the ratio. Our state has a 4-1 ratio for infants (which is entirely reasonable). You are basically paying for 1/4 of a person's time. If you want to put them into a daycare where the worker is adequately paid, that's $6000 a year alone, let alone overhead costs for facilities/admin. No matter who pays for it, raising children is time consuming. And time is becoming more valuable.

For reference, MA ratios (some of the most restrictive in the country) are: 1-14m: 7:2 15-32m: 9:2 33m-7y: 10:1 -- https://child-familyservices.org/wp-content/uploads/ma-regulations.pdf

Just as comparison, in Finland the max ratios are quite close:

>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.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#296

Post by Dove »

abbadadda wrote: post #243

A lot of really good discussion in this article. I just wanted to add a couple of things: 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…

I am convinced the isolated stay at home parent model is not normal human behavior, but a pathology of our particular society which represents an unreasonable expectation derived from an excessive commitment to individualism and independence. It is not psychologically reasonable to expect one person to care for children all day every day. It is not historically or broadly culturally normal. It is not healthy for either the parent or the children to isolate them together like this.

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.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#297

Post by kelnos »

jedberg wrote: post #280
novok wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a lot of this labor is generated by the fact that most kids in america can't go run out and play with other kids in the neighbourhood anymore. Your 7 year old would not be asking for you to endlessly watch her cartwheel and interact with her out of bordem. They would be out playing 24/7 in the local forest, come back for food and boo-boos, be back before dark and be in bed a couple of hours after dinner /…

Unfortunately for those of us who want to parent this way, we risk having the authorities called on us, because the other parents watch too much local news. It's much safer to be a kid now than when I was growing up, but the news makes it seem like it isn't. I would let my seven year old walk to the park by herself, 1/2 a mile away, if I wasn't afraid of having the cops show up. When I take her to the park now, I let…

That is really the saddest thing to me. I remember with great amounts of happiness when I was between 5 and 10 years old and would ride my bicycle around the neighborhood with my friends, go traipsing around the woods, and exercise my imagination. (Getting home and having to sit still while my mother dug through my hair and scalp for ticks was torture, but was worth it.)

My nephew is not yet four years old, so he's probably still too young to be outside playing on his own, but I fear he'll be in the same boat as your daughter in a few years, unable to do anything outside of his parents' line of sight.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#298

Post by jeromegv »

jgon wrote: post #129
F_J_H wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pays for itself...via increased income taxes"? 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 a…

It's also hard to pry apart what "pays for itself" and what doesn't. Quebec doesn't just have incredibly high taxes, they are subsidized by the rest of the productive provinces in the country to the tune of about 10% of their yearly budget. A 10% cut in spending would be classified as incredibly harsh austerity in most cases, and so taking any sort of predictive value from the success of programs run by Quebec is ver…

Lots of incorrect facts in that comments that need to be corrected.

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...

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#299

Post by tristanstcyr »

cjmcqueen wrote: post #238
orev wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re being overly picky and cherry-picking your argument here. I don’t know anyone who thinks that child rearing is not hard work, and all agree that it is valuable. 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, i…

Child rearing produces children that are adults and had the attention of a fully invested parent. Are you sure you're measuring the right thing?

The reality is that the atomic family model is antiquated. In our society, the individual is the unit We must therefore make the individual strong, meaning that we need to support both parents independent all the while having children.

We can observe that the old model was better in terms of a certain metric, but that's not going to help. We need to invest in making child rearing effective in today's world.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#300

Post by com2kid »

petra wrote: post #283
com2kid wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is there is no easy way to know in large swaths what jobs are BS or unnecessary. And of course someone could have a BS job and then later move on to a job that does have an impact! Trying to evaluate the worth of people is pretty much futile, and whenever it has been attempted there have been huge negative outcomes. And even during less extreme historical circumstances, it is just expensive to do, the rec…

My view is that 99% of jobs are either unnecessary or replacable. Heck, even when we talk about Newton's discoveries , other people on similar stuff at the time and would have gotten there. And if it's 99%, why not let the family choose which parent stays with the kid ? Combine that with paying really well to trully important jobs. You'll get reasonably good results with that.

> My view is that 99% of jobs are either unnecessary or replacable.

I think this is a very upper middle class white collar view.

Over 2.1% of Americans work as cooks (!!)[1] and another 3.6% work as grounds cleaning. Just keeping buildings somewhat functional is a lot of work.

Then you have all the people working on sales floors, not everyone wants to buy from Amazon!

3.5% in construction.

7.8% spread across all maintenance occupations just keeping everything glued together.

Another 5.9% in production (manufacturing), even with the incredible amount of automation that has taken place there.

So we're well above 10%, and that is just taking a look at hard to automate categories that have more than 1% of people in them!

https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-detailed-occupation.ht...

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