Why Child Care Is So Expensive • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#331

Post by abcpassword » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:24 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #303

unicornporn wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't have to be this way. 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 o…

Sweden has a top marginal tax rate of 70% that kicks in at around $98,000. That $149 per month is deceptive when you are paying very high tax rates.

I have no idea why you’re being downvoted. That tax rate is incredible and would destroy the earning power of most of hacker news.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#332

Post by spookthesunset » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:24 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #220

Why then don't one of the parents choose to stay at home or work at home (excluding single parents of course)? Either childcare is not a big expense , or there's some kind of societal taboo against raising your own kids at home? Is this part of the bigger bubble that makes raising kids so effortful and costly in time, that people just end up not having them?

> work 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.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#333

Post by kodablah » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:29 PM UTC

Dove wrote: post #296

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 eith…

> It is not psychologically reasonable to expect one person to care for children all day every day [...] It is normal for children to be cared for by many adults throughout the day

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.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#334

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

hnuser77 wrote: post #167

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US consumer was massively expanding (mostly) his credit during the 50s-80s. This is the American "Golden Age". There's no further room to expand credit -- we tried it in mid 90s-00s and it didn't work out. 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.

This completely defies logic, considering that 2 kids is replacement level fertility, the world has experienced generally consistent population growth, and most of the labor ever done in the world has been low-skilled labor.

95-99.9% of the population lived in sustenance or worse from the beginning of time until the Industrial Revolution in England in the 1800s.

And outside of the US Post WW2 -- from the 50s to the late 80s -- no where else on Earth could one working low skilled person afford such a high quality of life.

If you consider farmers in the 1890s as living outside of sustenance, I guess to each their own. But they worked 7 days a week, basically 12 hours a day, including their entire family, just to afford basic accomodations and food and almost literally nothing else. This is staunchly different to what an autoworker at Ford or a Steal worker at United Steal or a salesperson at IBM could afford from the 50s to the late 80s.

Compare that to now, a person working at Ford trying to raise a family of four on his/her own can pretty much only afford sustenance again.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#335

Post by spookthesunset » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #184

mc3 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parent could find some simple side gigs 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 do…

Not so. Child care costs is artificial. In Texas child care was quite cheap. In Maryland costs are extraordinary. People know the demand is there, because there are a whole bunch of type A career minded people who want to climb the corporate ladder rather than look after their little food grubbers. Plus, legislation that forces corporations and government to pay for childcare just makes it all even more expensive, as…

I think you are mixing a bunch of unrelated stuff together in some kind of attempt to bash "modern feminism"

I can agree there is a lot of societal pressure to enroll your little kiddo into a bagillion silly programs and stuff, but that hardly has anything to do with childcare costs or feminism.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#336

Post by makomk » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

orev wrote: post #176

pfortuny wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It would allow more women to enter the workforce”. 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 hav…

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…

It's funny you should mention GDP, because childcare is one of the iconic well-known examples of why it can be a misleading measure. If person A is paid to care for person B's kids whilst they work, that results in higher GDP than if person B cares for their own kids and person A takes the job instead, even though exactly the same amount is being done, because caring for those kids is no longer a service that counts towards GDP under the latter scenario.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#337

Post by kelnos » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:31 PM UTC

mc3 wrote: post #161

yters wrote: post #156

If child care is so expensive, wouldn't the income loss of one parent staying at home be irrelevant? Plus, the parent could find some simple side gigs that fit into at home childcare, or even do paid childcare themselves. 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 al…

> Parent could find some simple side gigs 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 do…

> 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.

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.)

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#338

Post by topkai22 » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:32 PM UTC

bananabreakfast wrote: post #185

pfortuny wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It would allow more women to enter the workforce”. 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 hav…

You're completely missing the point of the parent comment and misunderstanding the concept of what the workforce is. 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…

That’s a problematic definition of in the workforce- in the US 32-47% of people filing tax returns have 0 or negative income tax liability. Paying payroll taxes might be a better definition. Regardless, accounting for value provided in “gray market” untaxed like child rearing, in home work, and volunteer work is very hard and subject to a lot of assumptions in economic models. It’s not a complete strawman argument to worry about it when discussing ROI.

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).

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#339

Post by tharne » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:32 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #222

tharne wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. There are very few things in life as important as raising one's children well. To say that we should incentivize or otherwise coerce people into outsourcing the upbringing of their own children so they can punch a time-clock is beyond misguided. We've elevated "careers" to an almost god-like status where we end up engineering our lives to serve our careers instead of the other way around.

> Agreed. There are very few things in life as important as raising one's children well. To say that we should incentivize or otherwise coerce people into outsourcing the upbringing of their own children so they can punch a time-clock is beyond misguided. 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 (…

Comparing raising children to receiving healthcare is absurd. Raising children is an instinct that's hardwired in each of us. Administering healthcare as we do today is a modern technical skill specific to a particular time and place.

Regarding your last comment about people not having kids because it's too expensive, while that may be a popular thing to say it's 100% false. As individuals and societies become wealthier they have fewer kids not more. The poorest places have the highest birth rates and that's true both within and and between countries. People are free to have as many or as few kids as they like, but it's silly to argue that money is a barrier when we are living in the wealthiest era in human history. Why are people having fewer kids? Who knows, but my guess is that it probably has something to do with historically high levels of access to birth reliable birth control and the decreased importance that most folks place on having large families. Those aren't necessarily bad things, they're just historical outliers.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#340

Post by com2kid » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:32 PM UTC

HBKXNCUO wrote: post #327

com2kid wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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 extrem…

>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. 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 be…

> 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.

You are assuming massive incompetence on the part of child care workers with no prior evidence. At scale of course saving lives will result in the life of a future criminal being saved, but on the whole the # of good people outweighs the number of bad people, thus why society continues to, however slowly, lurch forwards.

In comparison to unknown potential future murders, there are known numbers for how many woman leave the workforce after having kids, 30% of women with bachelors degrees, and 19% with a Masters or PhD. [1]

19% of women with a post graduate degree is huge. How many millions of dollars of investment in education is that? If someone wants to leave work then of course they should be allowed, but if they don't and feel they are forced to? That sucks, and it is a net loss for society.

[1]https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/09/the-number-of-women...