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Why Child Care Is So Expensive

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#441

Post by HBKXNCUO »

fortran77 wrote: post #417
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…

Also why can't men take care of the children and women work? If childcare is so expensive, maybe in two-parent households, one parent's job should be to raise the children while the other works.

>Also why can't men take care of the children and women work?

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.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#442

Post by petra »

com2kid wrote: post #300
petra wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 main…

Some of those jobs are important(1), but most replacable - many people can do that job.

And I'm not saying thry don't carry done value , just that raising your kids well, in my view, is much more important.

(1)are all cooks and restaurant that necessary ?

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#443

Post by defen »

yanslookup wrote: post #248
ben7799 wrote: post #194

I live in Massachusetts.. mentioned in the article as averaging $16k. 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 pr…

For another data point, my wife and I live in Cambridge, MA we just hired a nanny for our 6 month old son at a rate of 23/hr for 30 hours per week (~35k/yr)... This was competitive with nearby day care center rates.

> 23/hr for 30 hours per week (~35k/yr)

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

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#444

Post by silveroriole »

jdbernard wrote: post #288
silveroriole wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a house and multiple cars but you can’t go to Disneyland as often as you’d like? Such hardship... barely living...

This is such a dismissive comment and misses the main point. The main point is that these are presumably upper-middle class families. You would expect that with their higher-than-average incomes they would have greater amounts of discretionary income that they would be spending and that their expenses would be spread out across more of the economy, supporting many other businesses and services. Instead the high salar…

I don’t care about that. My point is that when I hear about someone who can only afford living, I think they mean they have to choose whether they can afford heating this month, or whether they can afford proper meals, or new school clothes for their kids. Not whether they can afford to go to fucking Disneyland multiple times a year. This commenter is feeling very sorry for themselves over a standard of living that, to a non-American, DOES sound affluent and what a high earner might have.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#445

Post by steve1977 »

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…

If the program pays for itself via increased income taxes, it's still as expensive. It's just the money flow that is different. As it involves the state, it might be even a bit more expensive due to overhead cost (it might also not, if it's not profit oriented).

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#446

Post by WomanCanCode »

Child care is expensive but I rather pay for someone to watch and look after my child at a daycare center then doing it 24 X7. Taking care of the house and children is just mindless, time consuming and exhausting, It doesn't give me the satisfaction that I get when working with something that requires a degree and talent.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#447

Post by WomanCanCode »

lordgrenville wrote: post #304

Emily Oster mentioned on a podcast [1] that although she enjoys spending time with her kids much more than she enjoys working, the marginal value of kid time declines while the marginal value of work remains steady. In my experience a lot of parents feel this way. We may agree that the intrinsic value of family is much higher than that of work or the economy, but spending too much time with one's kids can feel like a…

Spending time with kids can be very draining and exhausting. Not all the time that you are spending with them is quality time. Also, since parents don't need a degree or a whole lot of experience, this is an indication that childcare is only a minimum wage job unfortunately. Also, kids really like to spend time with their own peers and doing group activities.They don't care if you are not with them all the time

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#448

Post by n0rbwah »

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…

> The child consequently develops antisocial behavior disorders and shoots up a classroom full of children

School-shootings are such a big problem in Quebec and Scandinavian countries where childcare is subsidized. They must be caused by the evils of subsidized childcare.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#449

Post by jawns »

kelnos wrote: post #290
jawns wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Childcare is mind numbing work > 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.…

(Full disclosure: non-parent here.) I think attitudes toward parenting are completely impossible to rationalize, so your puzzlement isn't at all surprising. Consider that many (most?) people who have kids don't do so out of a 100% independent choice, with 100% foreknowledge as to what it will entail and be like. People have kids because their parents pressure them to give them grandchildren. People have kids because…

I think you've made a very good call-out. Not everyone enters parenthood with the same degree of willingness, and not everyone who was initially excited to be a parent continues that way indefinitely.

But I think there's a danger of indifferentism here:

> What gives you a sense of purpose could easily be someone else's tedious drudgery. That shouldn't diminish your happiness, or demonize their boredom; it just means that you and some other people are different.

I don't deny that there are different strokes for different folks, and I understand that not everybody is going to make the same choices as a parent as I do.

But from the point of view of the welfare of the child, I think it's pretty clear that having a loving, stable, attached relationship with an engaged parent is going to be better for that child's overall well-being and future success than a relationship with a parent who loves them but can really only stand being around them in small doses.

I'm painting an extreme there, and I'm not suggesting that a person who drops their kid off at daycare and breathes a sight of relief must be a bad parent or a disengaged parent.

But I do think that rather than treating engaged parents and disengaged parents as just normal human variations of likes, dislikes, desires, etc. we should recognize that it is better for the child to help the disengaged parent become more engaged. And fortunately, there are a wide variety of ways we can do that!

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#450

Post by vharuck »

tharne wrote: post #339
com2kid wrote: post #222

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. 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 wealth…

>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.

After hearing stories from my wife, who works at a daycare, I believe the crappy pay for childcare professionals is holding down the skill level. If a childcare worker can learn the basics of childhoold developmental psychology, education, and some medical techniques, then what's stopping them from just getting a more profitable college degree? Some people with bachelor's degrees come in, but they don't stay long.

Only after working in childcare for 16 years did she land at an employer who required all workers to pass a decent certification course at a community college. If daycares paid better, they might retain skilled workers.

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