The progressive to-do list is missing a very important idea

February 13, 2019 4:11 AM

Day Care for All - "Free public college, health care for all, a living wage: These are all important causes that will improve life for millions. But there's another proposal that belongs on the progressive to-do list: universal affordable high-quality child care. In fact, I would put it ahead of free public college: It would help more people and do more to change society for the better." (via)

Social conservatives have typically opposed government-funded child care. They describe it as an overpriced boondoggle, another huge government bureaucracy, anti-family, a way of imposing liberal values on helpless children. When, at the behest of his adviser Patrick Buchanan and the nascent Christian right, President Richard Nixon vetoed the 1971 Comprehensive Child Development Act, he blasted it for committing “the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing” in opposition to “the family centered approach.” That was the end for a bill that had passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, and it was the last time Congress took the issue seriously.

Nearly a half-century later, times have changed. Working mothers of small children are the norm and hostility to them is, finally, ebbing. Distrust of child care — remember the day care sex-abuse panic of the 1980s? — is ebbing, too. As for the fear of communism that Nixon appealed to — there is just about no communism left. Socialism, or more properly the mixed-economy social-democratic welfare states of Scandinavia, France, Germany and other Western-European nations, is hugely popular, especially among the young who flocked to Bernie Sanders.

Affordable high-quality child care is an idea that should appeal to everyone, including the elusive white working-class voters whom Democratic strategists spend so much time worrying about. It’s good for workers and employers, for communities and families and children. It would create lots of jobs. It would allow lots of people to go to work. It would raise incomes and relieve a lot of stress and unhappiness and give children a good start in life. So why isn’t it on the front burner of the revitalized left?

America's Insanely Expensive Child Care Is a Serious Economic Problem - "Today, the U.S. doesn't simply lag Western Europe on this measure. We're behind most of the developed word. Our country ranks 28th out of 36 in the OECD when it comes to employment among women between the ages of 25 and 54 (which are generally considered a person's prime working years). Forget Scandinavia. We're underperforming economic also-rans like Poland and Latvia, as well as socially conservative Japan, where the culture has traditionally emphasized a mother's role in the home."

Why did American women stop storming the job market? Much of the fault lies with our archaic family policies. Other countries took steps to ensure more mothers could work. They expanded paid family leave—which tends to anchor women in the labor force—and offered more generous child care. Japan’s almost miraculous-seeming progress was aided by shifting social norms and an official crackdown on workforce discrimination. In the U.S., however, our approach to supporting parents stayed frozen in time. We remain the only developed nation that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave, and day care can now cost as much college tuition.

also btw...

• @JHWeissmann: "While I'm on this, I want to talk a bit about the weird sexism of how the Washington political press covers economics and family policy as if they're separate things."
• Charts That Count: how to get more women in the workforce - "FT Alphaville's Brendan Greeley compares female labour participation rates in the US, Canada and Sweden and looks at how policy affects the number of women in work."

posted by kliuless (91 comments total)

Not a day goes by where I don't think about how at one point we were paying close to two thousand dollars a month in DC for our baby to toddler to go to daycare. And it's not even some hoity toity super nice one with the latest and greatest everything to make you feel better about paying 24 thousand dollars a year - it was some national franchise operation that wasn't even accredited.

The part I was most uncomfortable with was that it was staffed by a revolving door of underpaid women, many of whom were also young mothers who had some arrangement to have their own family members to look after their own babies and toddlers so they could go work to watch the babies of people who could afford the daycare cost.

We've since found one that's much more affordable and more enriching but when we told them we were leaving they were fine to see us go because waitlists are over a year long. Meaning in DC as soon as you have the hint that you might be pregnant you get to go on this exercise of paying deposits in various daycares convient to you in hopes that you'll have a spot for your child when you return to work.

The cost of all this is that a second child has to be explicitly planned and budgeted for - we are anchored further to our jobs because it took us years to earn the breadcrumbs of paternity and maternity leave and in pretty sure if we didn't have free PreK in DC a second one wouldn't even be on the realm of possibility for us.
posted by Karaage at 4:36 AM on February 13, 2019 [35 favorites]

Here in a mid-sized Midwestern city, total daycare costs at a totally fine but in no way special center in the suburbs will run us about 75,000 through kindergarten for one kid. Add in after school care and summer, and we will easily kick past 100k in childcare costs. I don’t understand how people can afford to have multiple kids.
posted by rockindata at 4:47 AM on February 13, 2019 [9 favorites]

My babies and I were lucky enough enough back in the 1970s to benefit from some awesome high quality affordable day care in the US. For instance, in the mid-seventies I was able to go to college full time because I had day care for my youngest from age 6 months to age 2 for $40. a month! Fantastic loving staff, great ratio, homemade baby food! This kind of care should be available to all parents, whether they're working, going to school, or just need a break. I would be delighted to know that my tax dollars are supporting it.
posted by mareli at 4:57 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pat Buchanan and the Nixon Estate owe me $80,000 and a goddammed apology.
posted by saladin at 5:04 AM on February 13, 2019 [32 favorites]

In many, if not most states, lead daycare teachers are required to have a college degree in early childhood development. For the best accreditation that needs to be a 4-year degree.

Here in Richmond VA daycare teachers make about $12/hr to start, rising to $14 or so. And that is not a salary, it's hourly with no benefits, and the schools send teachers home early on slow days to cut labor costs.

My wife runs a daycare and staffing is is always her biggest problem. The teachers can make more working at the McDonald's across the street. Parents can't afford the rates she'd need to charge to offer a living wage and benefits. I keep waiting for the entire system to collapse as it seems unsustainable to me.
posted by COD at 5:04 AM on February 13, 2019 [32 favorites]

Just to put it out there- longer and paid maternity/paternity leave as well! I would love an option where you could either opt in for free childcare or use a stipend to care for your child at home during that time.
posted by xarnop at 5:07 AM on February 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

The part I was most uncomfortable with was that it was staffed by a revolving door of underpaid women, many of whom were also young mothers who had some arrangement to have their own family members to look after their own babies and toddlers so they could go work to watch the babies of people who could afford the daycare cost.

There's a lot to be said about the insane costs; the nearly six figure bill for five years of bog standard daycare is a huge reason why my wife and I decided to stop at one. The thing that really blows my mind, though, is how much it costs and how it still feels like no one is getting paid enough. Our daycare (also DC) is owned by an individual (her two daughters and son also work there), and I don't even think the owner is doing better than a comfortable middle class life off it. The teachers definitely aren't. We're paying 15% of our two income upper middle class salaries for daycare and it feels like it's actually not really enough.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 5:13 AM on February 13, 2019 [16 favorites]

And to put it more clearly- if the state is willing to pay for state funded childcare because caring for children in a childcare setting is real paid work, I would like us to acknowledge that caring for children in the home is also real work worth funding and it's a perfectly valid real contribution to do so. I work in childcare with babies and when you pack 8 or 10 babies in a room with 2 teachers, you can not provide the quality of care as when you have one or two per adult. We need to change the ratios badly. And many of the moms who put their kids in day care at three months aren't doing so because they are excited about being career moms but because they are forced to due our ridiculously short maternity leaves and equally false assumption that every mother is aching to get back into the workforce and be a CEO within months of giving birth. Knowing how hard it was a fight to figure out how to be with my son in his first few years, I hope that we will remember to fight for financial security and options for moms who like caring for their children at home as well as those who want in the workforce more. Empowerment doesn't mean deciding for women when then they need to be back in the work force, either in the form of pressuring women to stay at home due to financial/social constraints, OR pushing them into the workforce within 3 months OR LESS of birth! It means creating more meaningful options so that we can choose what works for us and our families.
posted by xarnop at 5:28 AM on February 13, 2019 [22 favorites]

As someone who doesn't have kids, but works with those that do, it just seems insane. It costs tremendous amounts, and no one doing the actual work seems to make any money. This just looks to be an area where the market breaks down.
posted by zabuni at 5:33 AM on February 13, 2019 [6 favorites]

I'm in Canada, but will pay about $26K for daycare this year. My son is 21 months old and has enough money in the bank to go to university tomorrow, I have a great job, but daycare is absolutely breaking me financially.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:36 AM on February 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

My brother and his wife have two kids. Brother and wife are attorneys, working in a regional burg, not a Big City. They make decent money and are, obviously, well-educated. And yet they absolutely celebrated when Baby #2 got out of the infants group at daycare and moved to the toddler group. That milestone represented a savings of (at the time) $100 a week. Child #2 is currently fifteen, so these figures are probably out of date.
posted by which_chick at 5:38 AM on February 13, 2019

People are paying more for daycare than I make? Wow. That's all kinds of screwed up all around.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:44 AM on February 13, 2019 [18 favorites]

My wife's salary as a teacher would barely cover daycare expenses, so she quit her job when our daughter was born.

In terms of our daughter's development, it's not a bad thing to have my wife stay at home. My wife is making sure our daughter learns two languages, and she is thriving. It's something we would have considered doing anyway, since we can live on my salary.

But it's not good that we didn't really have a choice, given low teacher salaries and high daycare costs.

Other countries are able to make this work -- the U.S. should be able to as well.
posted by vitout at 5:56 AM on February 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

My kid has a July birthday and probably would have benefited from not starting Kindergarten the August after he turned 5, but choosing that would have meant another $10k in daycare. So, off to school he went, though we still pay $300/month for extended day services so I can drop him off at school at 8:00 and pick him up at 5:30.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:57 AM on February 13, 2019 [5 favorites]

Rarely has there been a thread here where pretty much every comment is correct.

Other countries are able to make this work -- the U.S. should be able to as well.
See also health care, gun control, public transportation... American exceptionalism is real, it’s just that it is not a good thing.
posted by TedW at 6:02 AM on February 13, 2019 [27 favorites]

There's a lot to be said about the insane costs; the nearly six figure bill for five years of bog standard daycare is a huge reason why my wife and I decided to stop at one.

I'm the other half of this and this decision made me really sad (REALLY sad) but with daycare costs it was definitely the right decision for our family. Another big concern was the eventual need to coordinate schedules for two school-age kids; the school day ends relatively early and with professional development days and school breaks and stuff there's a lot of time when we're at work and schools are closed and apparently a lot of the school aftercare programs (which cost money) near us don't have space for all the kids who need them so you might have to find alternative arrangements (which also cost money).

So much of the way we structure childhood in this country basically relies on unpaid caretaker labor (largely that of women) and with so many families where all the grown-ups work it's really hard! If camps ends two weeks before school starts, what do you do if all the adults have jobs? Daycare for toddlers and stuff is insanely expensive (and I also recognize, as Bulgaroktonos points out, that my ability to work exists because of the enormously underpaid women of color who take care of my child, and this is a big problem) but even as kids get older there's a huge disconnect between the amount of time they are in school and the amount of time most adults are available to care for them (and I have a predictably-scheduled office job, I know this is extremely much harder for people who do shift work or whose schedules change frequently). These are childcare issues but they're also labor issues; my office expects me to be here much more often and for longer hours than schools are open, and it's hard on basically every family that doesn't have either an adult with a lot of flexibility for childcare or enough money to hire someone who can fill that role. What we as a society are doing now is extremely hard on everyone (families, kids, the people providing childcare, even employers I guess although I don't care so much about that) and frankly it really doesn't work.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:05 AM on February 13, 2019 [25 favorites]

My wife is a (civillian) employee of one of the branches of the Armed Services. She gets access to the same on-base resources as the officers, NCO's and enlisted. One of those was the base daycare, from infant to pre-K, for basically peanuts each week. It was a LONG way from the most subsidized and used on-base perk, but we have were able to save money year over year rather than cut things leaner and leaner. We know how fortunate we are, and are grateful for it, and wish this same good fortune upon everyone.

Affordable Daycare for All would set American consumers on the path to a secure future of being able to afford new products and services, thereby expanding both the middle, upper-middle, and 1% class of wealth as well. The .001%, with a very few exceptions, hates the notion. Because they're literally insane with power and greed.

Tax wealth as well as income. Free families. Build a strong nation.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:10 AM on February 13, 2019 [17 favorites]

I do not have, want, or like children and am in general very insulated from this problem, and I would really, really love to see free, government-endorsed day care if only so that my coworkers would never ever bring a sick child into the office with them again. My immune system is compromised and being around sick kids is a special level of hell and paranoia for me.

Tax the crap out of rich people, set up national day care, pay people who provide it a good wage, and give everyone a lot of sick time. Everyone wins.
posted by bile and syntax at 6:20 AM on February 13, 2019 [25 favorites]

I don't have kids, but would be just as happy to have my taxes fund this as I am to vote "yes" every time there is a school funding proposal on the ballot. It's what a civilized society should be providing.

My wife's salary as a teacher would barely cover daycare expenses, so she quit her job when our daughter was born.

Quite a few of my coworkers have single-earner households precisely because of this. Childcare costs are so steep here that they calculated it to be better to take one person (usually the wife) out of the workforce instead. It's a crazy system all around; unless you have nearby relatives who are happy to watch your kids for free, you are kind of hosed regardless of which option you select.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:24 AM on February 13, 2019 [10 favorites]

I also don't have kids but most of my friends here in Toronto do, and the lengths people have to go to in order to find daycare in this city continually astounds me. Of course, Ontario's idiot Premier is going to fix the problem.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:31 AM on February 13, 2019

My wife's salary as a teacher would barely cover daycare expenses, so she quit her job when our daughter was born.

And it's not a new problem. We made the same decision after our second was born in 1996. I calculated she was going to net about $100 a week on a 40 hour a week job, so we decided she would stay home and I picked up an evening gig delivering pizza nights/weekends to supplement the family budget. My wife was a daycare teacher back then, so that was after her employee discount. She was making about $11-12 an hour teaching daycare in 1996, which is what she pays the teachers she hires today. When we got married she was able to have an apartment, car, etc. on a daycare wage that was 3X minimum. It was a living wage then.

Those wages haven't increased at all since the mid-90s, so teachers today barely make the minimum wage.
posted by COD at 6:32 AM on February 13, 2019 [5 favorites]

"Social conservatives ... describe it as ... anti-family"

Have you ever seen a mother cry when dropping off her three-week-old infant to a day care center because her job does not offer maternity leave? I have, and let me tell you about anti-family.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:33 AM on February 13, 2019 [75 favorites]

Another DC daycare horror story: Two of my friends here recently had their first/only kid (my only friends in the DC area who have even a single child, and that's not a coincidence), but before the mother's maternity leave ended, her company laid her off. They are still sending their daughter to daycare every day, and paying about 75% of the rent on my townhouse for the privilege, even though one of the parents is at home all day because otherwise they would lose their spot and have no childcare options for when she does get a new job.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:36 AM on February 13, 2019 [5 favorites]

Daycare costs in DC are truly astounding. For $2500, you get the privilege of sticking your infant with a caregiver getting minimum wage and a 1:4 adult-baby ratio ... and most likely in a *windowless basement* where your infant will be exposed to daylight for about 45 minutes a day. I never even attempted to get into daycare until my kid was two ... we did a nanny share, since it wasn't that much more expensive than daycare, allowed my kid to get sunlight, and provided a decent living wage to the nanny (around 55k/year on the books.)
posted by schwinggg! at 6:48 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Have you ever seen a mother cry when dropping off her three-week-old infant to a day care center because her job does not offer maternity leave? I have, and let me tell you about anti-family.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:33 AM on February 13 [4 favorites +] [!]

I still feel nauseated when I think about leaving my baby that first year, and I got to stay home for four months. Honestly, it's a big reason why I stopped at one. I couldn't face going through that heartache again. Of course, I know that some moms are ready to go back to work at 3-4 months, but I think a large majority would prefer the option to stay home closer to a year.
posted by schwinggg! at 6:50 AM on February 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

Meanwhile, south of the border, our own insane elderly populist has gone ahead and halved state funding to daycares [spanish] after failing to pay the January wages of federal employees in 9,000 centres. It’s now been announced [spanish] that the remaining funds will either be rerouted to the program’s beneficiaries through a voucher system, or (the government’s preference) given directly to grandparents to care for their grandchildren. Because everyone has a couple of healthy grandparents waiting around nearby to help out with the kids!

It’s kind of amazing that somebody enthusiatically cutting government spending and diverting funds to socially regressive initiatives across the board is still perceived as leftwing, but I suppose if you claim to be something often enough, people will believe you.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 6:51 AM on February 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'm genuinely curious how other countries provide this. I assume it is simply massively subsidized? Because I've never been able to make the math work for a good set of assumptions (Let's say for a 1 year old):

1: Child-Adult staffing ratio of 4:1.
2: Adult makes a livable wage with basic benefits (say cost to employer of $25/hour)
3: Staffing provided from 8-5 (9 hours daily)
4: Additional costs for space, utilities, administration, resources kept to 40% of staffing cost

That works out to about $80 a day for the service, which is about $1,650 per month per child. Exactly the sorts of costs we are identifying as unsustainable. That is with perfectly aligned staffing ratios, your costs go up if you end up with a room that has 6 or 7 children and one adult. Plus, I question whether the costs in item 4 are really able to be kept that low. In the current system what gives is the wages for the provider, because the ratios are regulated and the additional costs are generally non-negotiable based on local real estate market, etc.

What are the approaches countries who provide universal child care take to staffing ratios, children with special needs, facilities costs and provider pay?
posted by meinvt at 6:52 AM on February 13, 2019 [6 favorites]

My spouse is disabled. And, even though lifetime our earnings will be stagnated as a family, and there are tons of logistical issues with having a parent with a disability childcare is NOT one of those issues and I'm forever grateful for that.

Of course with the disability we do need some additional supports and do pay for some childcare anyway on an as needed basis because we need it. She had good days and bad days and they aren't always predictable . It's hard. But, the fact that she at home and gets her SSDI no matter what when lots of patents quit work is honestly this wierd gift I don't know how to process.

Something is going to have to change with childcare in this country.
posted by AlexiaSky at 6:55 AM on February 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

My wife and I paid out $24,650 in day care last year, which was more than we paid in mortgage for our 4 bedroom home. After we calculated what we each bring home post tax, and all the costs getting like transportation etc.., plus the added stress. We realized one of us probably should have stayed home with the children.
posted by remo at 7:01 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Here in a mid-sized Midwestern city, total daycare costs at a totally fine but in no way special center in the suburbs will run us about 75,000 through kindergarten for one kid. Add in after school care and summer, and we will easily kick past 100k in childcare costs. I don’t understand how people can afford to have multiple kids.

rockindata, I think we are in the same city, and this is a big part of why we only have one.
posted by eirias at 7:05 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Oh my lord, Greg Nog, exactly. Childcare costs are about half of the reason I don't have kids. Literally. And we're so-called x-ennials, lucky enough to have launched before the economic crash.

It's not generation v. generation, it's not parents v. nonparents, it is a part of not treating humans like grist for the mill.

And if the question about funding was sincere, I suggest taxing the rich. But that's my answer for everything. Try yoga, put a bird on it, tax the rich.
posted by cage and aquarium at 7:05 AM on February 13, 2019 [9 favorites]

I do not have, want, or like children and am in general very insulated from this problem, and I would really, really love to see free, government-endorsed day care if only so that my coworkers would never ever bring a sick child into the office with them again.

Just FYI, you're not allowed to take your kid to daycare when they're sick. And if they're in daycare they're sick a lot. So I'm glad parents would have your vote, but allowing parents to take paid, stigma-free, backlog-free family care days would solve this better than daycare would.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:12 AM on February 13, 2019 [21 favorites]

In a bizarre way, this may be much easier to achieve than single-payer healthcare, since the economic players that stand to lose are small-time entrepreneurs, presumably (don't actually have data to back this up) skewing female and non-white, and thus don't have lobbyists to swarm over a straight-up nationalization proposal. The facilities requirements are not as burdensome as a hospital either, so the government could simply set up their own instead of having to seize existing capital.

Headstart, a very successful and popular program, basically already did this with slightly older children (3 to 5 I believe) but only for part of the year, and with means testing. A good start would be removing the means testing from this program so anyone is eligible, not just families under the federal poverty line, and extending it year-round.
posted by LiteOpera at 7:12 AM on February 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

I think that one way other countries make this work is by making it easier for parents of young children to work part time. In practice, this usually means mothers, which has its own set of problems. But it means that mothers get to stay in the workforce, keeping their skills current, without having to pay for full-time daycare for young children or any daycare for school-aged children. And because the overall cost is less, it's more feasible for the state to heavily subsidize childcare. Also, they have better maternity leave, so infants typically aren't in daycare.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:14 AM on February 13, 2019 [7 favorites]

because the ratios are regulated

One way daycares can make money is to cheat on ratios. The state department regulating daycares is usually underfunded, so one annual surprise inspection visit a year is all that will happen unless there is an accident or somebody calls in a complaint.
posted by COD at 7:16 AM on February 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

I found myself suddenly moving to Maryland when my daughter was 4.5 years old. If we'd stayed in Illinois she would have waited another year to start kindergarten, but MD still had a Dec. 31 kindergarten cutoff date and her birthday is Dec. 30. It's a decision where I really didn't have many other choices but I still feel bad about it to this day. She wasn't ready, and she struggled for a long time academically and is really only starting to realize her academic potential now, at age 21. Bumping my salary up from around $24,000 in cobbled together adjunct positions to a whopping $36,000 for a FT position meant I no longer qualified for childcare subsidies, and fully half of my $2500 in take home each month went to pay rent, so there was simply no way I could have afforded another $1000 in daycare per month for another year. I honestly don't know what I would have done if she had been younger, or if god forbid both of my kids had been daycare age at that that time. $36k then is the equivalent of $50k today, and that doesn't sound like it should be a poverty wage but if you're a single parent with younger kids in a high COL area, it's almost easier to be farther down on the economic ladder so you qualify for more programs.
posted by drlith at 7:20 AM on February 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

That works out to about $80 a day for the service, which is about $1,650 per month per child.

That would be AMAZING! Please put me on the wait list for your centre.

But 4:1 is too high -- i.e. 3:1 is required for infants and that's "in the room at any given moment" which means you actually need more adults than this because if one goes to the diaper changing room with a baby, there still needs to be 3:1 with the other infants, also lunch breaks and coffee breaks etc.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:21 AM on February 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

One way daycares can make money is to cheat on ratios.

I believe you that this happens in some places, but I'm very surprised. They are uber-scrupulous (at least from what I've seen) at my son's daycare. Like someone from another room will call and say "how are your ratios, do you have a teacher who can come in to our room because I need to change a poopy diaper?" I swear they spend half the day counting.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:27 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

When our son was born, we did the math and also calculated in anticipated lost work for both of us due to doctor visits, etc., because he was born with some medical issues. It was better for me at the time to quit my job (it was far from a career) and stay home with him. We knew it was going to be a loss of working time for me and we just hoped that I would be able to jump back into the job stream when we were ready.

This allowed us to have another child and THANK GOD I *was* able to find work, 16 years later than we initially thought; those medical issues morphed into developmental issues as well. Am I in a position that rates as high as those my continuously-working peers are at? Nope. I have some regrets about that but our situation was what it was and we made the best decisions we could at the time.

I am wistful at what could have been if the US had affordable quality child care AND national policies in place that allowed parents guilt-free absences to care for their children (and I'm not just talking about the endless doctor visits and therapies that we had to do; just regular "Jane has a cold so I need to work from home for a couple days" stuff).

And don't even get me started on minimum wage workers and the hell they have to go through.

It's enough at this point that if either of our kids has kids of their own someday, I might just stop working and be Grannycare for them. Unless things change. Which...I'm not optimistic.
posted by cooker girl at 7:29 AM on February 13, 2019 [8 favorites]

I should have added: one thing that allowed me to get back to work was that I volunteered heavily throughout my kids' childhood years, and took on positions of leadership. I imagine that if I hadn't done that, my prospects would have been fewer. I made connections and I kept up on my skills.
posted by cooker girl at 7:31 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

"I still feel nauseated when I think about leaving my baby that first year, and I got to stay home for four months."

I'm still quite sad when I drop my two-year-old off.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:32 AM on February 13, 2019

@ If only I had a penguin - you are at a good daycare. Never leave :) My wife has turned down multiple job offers over the years because it's obvious that ownership of the daycare plays fast and loose with the rules. She frequently complains about losing kids to a competing daycare when she knows the only way the prices are feasible is if they are cheating on ratios. Around here it feels more like cutting corners is the rule, not the exception.
posted by COD at 7:33 AM on February 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

This year my boyfriend is finally throwing in the towel as a preschool teacher after 4.5 years. It bothers me that I probably inadvertently contributed to his decision with my constant, frenzied panic about the cost of living, but it makes me really sad, because he's a wonderful teacher and a man teaching three-year-olds to name their feelings, that it's okay to be angry but we don't treat each other like that, you can go to the quiet spot if you need some alone time, etc etc. Next year his kiddos will go to schools that most likely will have all female teachers, and start to learn that feelings and caring are women's work. Given our experience, I can't help but see that as a direct consequence of the low wages on offer.

Looking through this thread, I see example after example of how this system crushes women and keeps them in their place (and I only call that out specifically because the part where it crushes workers is even more obvious). That's what they mean by "anti-family" - women's freedom and opportunity are anti-family, in a certain kind of mind.
posted by sunset in snow country at 7:40 AM on February 13, 2019 [41 favorites]

The cost of daycare is honestly the biggest reason that I don't see kids in my near future (and I'm 31, so while there's still time, the child-having window is not stretching endlessly before me).

It's not the only reason (overall my maternal urge is not that strong, it seems) but it's a huge one. I just don't understand how people make it work if they don't have fabulously well-paying careers or retired family members around who are happy to provide childcare.

Anti-family, indeed.
posted by geegollygosh at 7:45 AM on February 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

I think that one way other countries make this work is by making it easier for parents of young children to work part time

Basically this is how we're going to make daycare sustainable. We're going to start our now 2 month old in daycare a couple of mornings a week in a couple of months to let me slowly transition back into work (professor with the semester and summer off teaching, so I'm lucky to have an extremely flexible schedule). My husband is looking into both dropping down to 32 hours a week and teleworking one day a week, so we can try to get away with only 3 full days a week in the fall once I'm back teaching. 5 full days of day care would be the same cost as our mortgage.

Both tenure timeline and day care costs means that we're looking at at least a 4 year gap between kids (which would just push me into the "geriatric pregnancy" category, which, fun). At least our state has full day kindergarten now.
posted by damayanti at 7:46 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Universal daycare would benefit all women. I mean, I know this isn't supposed to happen? but we absolutely know that it does: women are routinely passed over for jobs, promotions, and higher salaries because bosses assume that at some point they're going to marry, have children, have to put arranging for child care first, and miss a bunch of work when daycare falls through.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:49 AM on February 13, 2019 [10 favorites]

Unless things change. Which...I'm not optimistic.

Crazy how it seems like the US is looking at falling birthrates and instead of being like "let's enact legislation to make it easier for families with children and also provide a legal way for people to immigrate here" the country was like "let's make it harder for caretakers to have jobs and also enact more legislation controlling people's bodies and reproductive rights". It's almost as if racism and misogyny are fucking us all over.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 7:51 AM on February 13, 2019 [26 favorites]

I think that one way other countries make this work is by making it easier for parents of young children to work part time

Same here. My wife and I each worked about 30 hours a week, on alternating schedules (my wife is an emergency veterinary nurse, so it was easy for her to find weekend & night hours) while my daughter was an infant. We both went back full time only when she was in school, and even then we worked mostly alternate schedules to avoid needing before-school and after-school care. Our daughter is about to turn 18 and finally my wife was able to change her schedule last month so that we could celebrate our first full, regularly-scheduled, non-sick or vacation, weekend together in many many years.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:53 AM on February 13, 2019 [5 favorites]

I'm genuinely curious how other countries provide this.

No major secret. Quebec makes this work with lots of taxes. Provincial income tax rates vary between 15% - 25.75%. There is also a provincial sales tax of 9.975%. We have a provincial parental insurance plan and all workers and employers pay into this fund as well, with the maximum combined total working out to about $1000/year split roughly 40/60% between employee and employer.

It is worth every goddam penny. Not everyone gets into the subsidized daycare spots ($8-$21.95/day depending on family income with the $21.95 for those who earn more than $160,000 year). However, the subsidized spots keeps even unsubsidized daycare spots at the lowest rate in Canada. Once tax breaks are taken into account the average is around $200/month. Quebec's fertility rate has been increasing as has labour force participation for women, particularly young women with children.
posted by Cuke at 7:57 AM on February 13, 2019 [27 favorites]

We pay $46,000 per year for daycare and babysitting, with one kid in preschool and another in public elementary school.

Recently we pulled the elementary kid from the low-quality afterschool care because of a bullying problem that they didn't handle well. Now we are looking for an afterschool babysitter or nanny because we couldn't find any other option for that time, but it's a hard part-time job and the candidates we like keep taking other jobs. So for more than a month we have been taking our kid to work after school, which we have the flexibility to do but is not ideal.

I have feelings about this topic.

Also:

Working mothers of small children are the norm and hostility to them is, finally, ebbing.

That hostility sure could ebb a lot more, could that be arranged?
posted by medusa at 8:13 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

I am very glad that the New York Times opinion piece came out because this is something that I have noticed also, but I wasn't sure if I was imagining it. Getting affordable college and affordable child care for all are both really important, in my opinion. The op-ed asks why the latter doesn't seem to be as great of a priority for progressives. At least for the progressives I know, I suspect that a lot of the reason is because they have student debt, but no kids.
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 8:39 AM on February 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

vitout: My wife's salary as a teacher would barely cover daycare expenses, so she quit her job when our daughter was born.

Same for my family (in New England), and my oldest brother's family (in the Midwest): we did the math and when the second one came along, our wives got to the end of the maternity leave and then never went back to work. We were delighted that the kids would be raised at home, though that's no ding on the great local day car that we FINNNALLY found in our town (after like ten false starts).

My SiL now works part-time, as does my wife, but only because our respective youngest kids are in grade school. And even with school covering much of the day, they're not on the bus until like 8:30 and back again too soon to work a full shift.

BTW, we each have four kids, my sister has three, and our other brother has two. We all put our families as probably our top priority, and made career sacrifices on all sides in order to have our kids, and worked our family networks as hard as we could, all the way along. And it was still a slog, and still is today with the oldest kids staring their college adventures. *shudder*

It's pretty messed up, indeed.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:57 AM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Last semester in my intro to women's studies class I showed a documentary called Status Quo, about three major feminist issues (violence against women; reproductive rights; child care) and the related activism and changes in Canadian policy over the last 50 years. (The section on child care starts around 58 minutes in.)

It turns out we did have a fully subsidized national child care system from 1942 to 1946, during World War Two. Women had to work in factories to replace the men who had gone to war--it was promoted as their patriotic duty--and their children needed care. So the Canadian government quickly put together a smoothly running, state-of-the-art national system of fully subsidized daycare, the expense shared 50/50 by the federal and provincial governments.

It was dismantled after the war ended, and has never been implemented again. But when you hear arguments against such a system--that it's impossible to implement logistically, it's too expensive, etc--remember this example and know that when governments want something enough, they can make it happen quickly, efficiently, and effectively. Arguments against national subsidized daycare are bullshit. It CAN be done, and this historical example proves it. However, because it's seen as a "women's issue" it is dismissed as unimportant and not a priority.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:04 AM on February 13, 2019 [54 favorites]

Previously Universal Childcare
posted by The Whelk at 9:09 AM on February 13, 2019

At least for the progressives I know, I suspect that a lot of the reason is because they have student debt, but no kids.

That raises some interesting chicken and egg issues, though. This is pretty much the number one economic issue for most people I know. I live in the non-urban Midwest, and cost of living here is generally pretty reasonable, but childcare is prohibitively expensive. Also, my employer doesn't offer paid maternity or paternity leave, and the unpaid leave policy is dismal. This is a huge issue for most of my co-workers, both men and women. I think that people in my peer group might be more likely to identify as progressives if childcare and other family policy issues seemed to be part of the progressive agenda.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:46 AM on February 13, 2019 [8 favorites]

Crazy how it seems like the US is looking at falling birthrates and instead of being like "let's enact legislation to make it easier for families with children and also provide a legal way for people to immigrate here" the country was like "let's make it harder for caretakers to have jobs and also enact more legislation controlling people's bodies and reproductive rights". It's almost as if racism and misogyny are fucking us all over.

It's playing for short term gain instead long term prosperity, in a culture built around blaming someone else.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:01 AM on February 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm still quite sad when I drop my two-year-old off.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:32 AM on February 13 [+] [!]

Aww. yeah. 2-3 year olds are the best. If I had to do it all over again, I'd work from 6months-18 months, then stay home from 18 months - 3.5 years. At 3.5 years they turn into little monsters who need school.
posted by schwinggg! at 10:09 AM on February 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

I'm genuinely curious how other countries provide this. I assume it is simply massively subsidized? Because I've never been able to make the math work for a good set of assumptions (Let's say for a 1 year old):
[snip]
That works out to about $80 a day for the service, which is about $1,650 per month per child. Exactly the sorts of costs we are identifying as unsustainable.

My baby sister is a child minder and she cheats. Not illegal cheating - but her venue is the family home which my dad paid off the mortgage for years ago and our elderly parents are sometimes unpaid assistants.

At a more general level the British average cost is just over £4/hour/child for a registered childminder and just under £5/hour/child for day nursery (by comparison minimum wage is £7.83 an hour). We also subsidise it in England; 3 and 4 year olds can have 15 free hours a week of childcare for 38 weeks/year, or twice that if all parents are working at least 16 hours and neither earns £100k. Finally people on Universal Credit (our low income benefit system for people earning £16,000/year or less) can get 85% of their childcare costs back to a maximum of £646/month for one kid or £1108 for 2 or more.

Also we don't have out of pocket medical costs, and do have paid maternity leave (90% pay for six weeks, £140/week for the next 33 weeks, and another possible 13 weeks unpaid but legally required to be allowed.
posted by Francis at 10:11 AM on February 13, 2019

“How can daycare be both a drain on the resources of clients, but also not pay a living wage? For a childcare operation to be considered high quality, one of the biggest factors is child-to-staff ratios, the lower the better, especially for the smallest children who require feeding, diaper changing, and lots of other hands-on work. That makes it especially difficult to increase the productivity of the child-care model.”

The Atlantic: Why Daycare Workers Are So Poor, Even Though Daycare Costs So Much
posted by magstheaxe at 10:27 AM on February 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

Lots of women "save money" by leaving work because of the cost of daycare. (Does the daycare cost meet or exceed her salary? Perhaps. Why isn't it calculated that half the daycare cost comes out of her husband's salary? Who knows.) But these women are not earning "seniority" in their jobs, or gaining paid work experience. They are not getting employer-matched retirement funds. And, of course, they are not paying into Social Security benefits. But if their husbands get hit by a truck, we no longer have the explicit social idea that widows need care from the community. And if they get divorced, there is no longer the expectation of alimony.
posted by Hypatia at 10:59 AM on February 13, 2019 [38 favorites]

Not kidding, one of the reasons I don't want to have children is considering how much money you'd have to pay ME to care for 3-4 children every day, knowing how much less than that most daycare workers are making, and....not being willing to do that to another human.
posted by nakedmolerats at 11:07 AM on February 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

If anyone else is curious (I was!), here is one index of costs for adult day care by state. The services required & provided are different than those for children, to be sure, but it's a service that's also crucial for families and caregivers in our society.
posted by mosst at 11:56 AM on February 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

Happily childfree. And yet...please tax me and contribute that to a decent, accessible, universal childcare system. The handwringing over "millennials aren't having kids" and the complete lack of any infrastructure or safety net that would support people having kids is...well, it's not surprising, it's just shitty. The powers that be aren't the people who are having to make these impossible decisions about who will quit their job to stay home with the kids or how families can possibly pay the equivalent of college tuition for their toddler to be minded.
posted by fiercecupcake at 1:20 PM on February 13, 2019 [7 favorites]

Having done temp IT work for a big, profitable national childcare corporation, I am reluctant to support giving anything like that any more money. The people who touched actual children were almost universally paid minimum wage and treated like garbage. I mean, I'd hold my nose and vote for this anyways, but, ugh.

The corporation advised the center managers on how to avoid scheduling any employees for enough hours to require the company to offer them health insurance or other benefits. The center managers themselves and other salaried employees got mediocre benefits - and routinely worked very long hours, because salary means no overtime.

Nearly all of corporate headquarters employees were women with multiple children, because working for the company only made economic sense for most people if you could shove more than one kid into discounted care there. Which, again, was provided by people who were working worse hours for less than fast-food employees.

As far as I can tell, the only people benefiting from how that company allocated its resources were shareholders and executives. Everyone else was being ripped off.
posted by bagel at 1:46 PM on February 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

I have my mom's copy of Karen DeCrow's 1971 book "The Young Woman's Guide to Liberation," that says all through it, we will never be equal until there is quality affordable child care. Imagine that.

Anecdotally, since I started at this agency on 2005, we've had 4 different women go out on maternity leave, then quit their jobs because they didn't see why they should work solely to pay child care.
posted by corvikate at 1:53 PM on February 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

bagel, would you say working for this company was Kind of Crappy? or Bought and Held (for stakeholders)? Asking for a friend.

We pay a lot for our facility, but the people seem to really care for the kids, and we were told that the employees got benefits (which is how I rationalized the high cost). We saw a competitor and the situation was very different (a sick? employee in the infant room, cramped and dark quarters, etc). Our area is trying to get more day care facilities to open, but there is a lot of NIMBYism with the parking requirements and playground facilities. There are are also a ton of regulations, which pushes up the overhead cost. I am in favor of regulations, but I'm not sure other people know all of the stuff that goes into running a large daycare operation.

On the other hand, at this point we're waiting for Little Purr to go to kindergarten before thinking about adding on, since I'd rather not pay for two college tuitions at once.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 2:01 PM on February 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Lots of women "save money" by leaving work because of the cost of daycare. (Does the daycare cost meet or exceed her salary? Perhaps. Why isn't it calculated that half the daycare cost comes out of her husband's salary? Who knows.)

Yes, I wonder this as well. If there are two of you parenting together, logically if you are both working then childcare costs should also be divided by two.

I am not judging people for what they have chosen to do - it's obviously important to find out what's right for your family in your circumstances and this looks different for different people. I'm pregnant now and looking at the costs I feel this dilemma. I very much want to go back to work after mat leave. I also know that if/when I do go back we will be paying a fortune for childcare, and I'm not exactly earning megabucks. I also don't love my job so much. But I'll also be paying half the mortgage, half the bills, etc etc. It's easy for women to underestimate how much they contribute financially to their household.
posted by the cat's pyjamas at 2:05 PM on February 13, 2019 [8 favorites]

I'm genuinely curious how other countries provide this. I assume it is simply massively subsidized?

America provides free public schooling for any kid aged 6-18 - how do we pay for that?
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:52 PM on February 13, 2019 [13 favorites]

My daughter and son-in-law went through the common hell of finding daycare for their baby. They were tearing their hair out just trying to find one with an open slot. They finally managed to get in at a place that was relatively handy for both of their work commutes. It was a new acquisition by a well-known chain of daycares (rhymes with Cinder Wear)

Almost as soon as the baby started going there, she became very unruly and unhappy. Then, one day, my son-in-law arrived early to pick-up his daughter only to find her laying face-down on the floor crying her eyes out, and no one paying a bit of attention. Needless to say, that was the last day they took her there. They now have her at a small church-run daycare and their daughter has blossomed.

To be fair (if one can be) to the first place, it was criminally and purposefully understaffed, with only one woman watching over a room full of babies. She simply couldn’t take proper care of all of them on her own. She was apparently in the middle of dealing with a diaper blow-out on another baby and simply couldn’t get to our granddaughter immediately. I don’t blame her, really. I blame captitalism.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:11 PM on February 13, 2019 [5 favorites]

Maybe someone above already linked to this article about federally-subsidized daycare during World War II.
posted by mareli at 3:20 PM on February 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

It's not correct that progressives entirely ignore child care. Here in Seattle, we have committed a good chunk of funding towards affordable preschool. (Note that this program only benefits kids 3+ years old, and AFAIK there isn't the same level of investment in younger kids and their families, so definitely lots of room for improvement.)
posted by splitpeasoup at 4:12 PM on February 13, 2019

I don’t have anything to add other than I am indeed excited to be a “career mom”. My husband enjoys being a career dad too!
posted by Ralston McTodd at 4:18 PM on February 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

Mareli, I didn't know that the US had a similar program to Canada during the war, but it totally makes sense. Very interesting. Just further proof that when they want to, they make it happen.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:58 PM on February 13, 2019

I feel like this has been a feminist agenda item, along with living wages and Affordable Health Care, for about fifty years. My mom says that she was able to send me to the child care at her workplace, which was a large Hospital. Does that happen anymore anywhere in the United States?
posted by eustatic at 9:24 PM on February 13, 2019

Quebec makes this work with lots of taxes.

The Global Legacy of Quebec's Subsidized Child Daycare - "With more than two decades behind it, the Quebec program that spawned an affordable child care model has some lessons for the rest of the world."

But in Quebec, the increase in working mothers has achieved one important outcome: revenue to pay for its government child care program. In a common refrain heard about subsidized child care programs the world over, critics of Quebec’s program often claim the costs of the program don’t justify the expenses, and that the government could allocate the resources needed for these programs elsewhere. In Quebec, those concerns are unfounded, according to Fortin’s research.

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.”

posted by kliuless at 9:56 PM on February 13, 2019 [10 favorites]

It's playing for short term gain instead long term prosperity, in a culture built around blaming someone else.

You'd think the economic growth provided by working mothers who are able to stay working would be seen as a benefit by economic conservatives. But that assumes they aren't cultural conservatives and think a woman's place extends to the workplace.
posted by Anonymous at 4:46 AM on February 14, 2019

Also another reason I'm excited about women candidates is that they are statistically more likely to support family-support programs. This kind of thing was explicitly a major concern of Clinton's.
posted by Anonymous at 4:50 AM on February 14, 2019

Why isn't it calculated that half the daycare cost comes out of her husband's salary? Who knows.

I suspect we all know the real reason (hint: it rhymes with matriarchy but isn't).

The practical reason, which you could charitably assign to better-adjusted households, is that there's no realistic option for both parents to work half-time in the US. There are effectively no livable-wage jobs which allow you to work part time, and especially not ones that offer health insurance, vacation days, or even predictable hours. So realistically the choices are "we both work and pay for daycare" or "one of us works while the other does childcare." If the market price of childcare is more than the salary of the lowest-earning parent, then it makes "sense" in the short term for them to quit their job. This of course ignores the long-term cost of being out of the workforce. It is also true that the lowest-earning parent is probably female (again because of the p word), so they're the one who "gets" to stay home.
posted by LiteOpera at 4:52 AM on February 14, 2019 [16 favorites]

I suspect we all know the real reason (hint: it rhymes with matriarchy but isn't).

Why even in this thread alone there are several men talking about how it doesn't make sense for their wives to work because the wife's salary barely covers the cost of childcare. I don't judge their family's decisions, but I do judge their apparent reasoning and their wording choices.
posted by MiraK at 5:32 PM on February 14, 2019 [8 favorites]

The People's Policy Project: Family Fun Pack

Relative to its European peers, the United States spends virtually nothing on benefits for families with children.1 This dearth of family benefits leads to two cruel outcomes: it denies many people the ability to have the families that they want and inflicts financial ruin on many of those who go through with parenthood despite the lack of social support.

The prevalence of financial problems among families with children causes many would-be parents to have fewer children than they would prefer and causes some to forego parenthood altogether. A recent survey found that one-fourth of people between the ages of 20 and 45 had fewer or expected to have fewer children than they wanted.2 The most common reasons were economic: 64 percent said child care is too expensive; 44 percent said they can’t afford more children; and 43 percent said they waited too long because of financial instability.....

In Section One of this paper, I lay out a general theory that explains why having and raising children is so difficult in a laissez-faire capitalist system. In Section Two, I introduce the Family Fun Pack, a suite of family benefits that solves the problems identified in the first section. These benefits include free child care, free pre-k, free healthcare for children, and a child allowance, among other things.

Progressive candidates looking for a fresh platform would be wise to consider adopting the Family Fun Pack agenda. It is a coherent set of programs that conveys a simple message. These programs, which are common throughout the world, are extremely effective at reducing the burden of parenthood and especially effective at reducing child poverty.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:29 PM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm another Mefite who left my career behind because of childcare costs. I found a place we could afford, that had a great reputation -- but, surprise! They couldn't work with a kid with special needs. Nor could the next. Et cetera.

When you're planning your Childcare for All platform, please consider the needs of small children with disabilities, too. Canada isn't a great model for this, but I don't know who is.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:36 PM on February 15, 2019 [5 favorites]

MiraK, I think you're being uncharitable with what people making these choices know or think.

My wife and I are lucky that we're both high enough earners that this isn't a choice, but when my wife got pregnant she made less than the cost of daycare (she found a better job during pregnancy, thank God). We also both have full-time jobs, where working part-time for less pay isn't really an option. That means that, unless we can pay for childcare, one of us has to quit to watch our kid. Living on her salary would be a lot harder than living on mine, so I'd keep working, in all likelihood.

I understand the role patriarchy and capitalism play in that scenario, especially in the fact that I'm the higher earners, but those are the facts of our life. When I say "if she hadn't found a better job, she probably would have stayed home," I'm aware that that's not a free choice independent of patriarchy and capitalism. I'm also just describing how the math works in my life, so why assume that we don't know what's going on?
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 4:50 PM on February 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

Women make less money, so it "makes sense" for them to leave paid work for childcare... and then bosses turn around and use "she's just going to leave to take care of children" as a reason to keep women out of higher-paying jobs. Talk about your vicious circles.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:57 PM on February 15, 2019 [4 favorites]

when my wife got pregnant she made less than the cost of daycare ... That means that, unless we can pay for childcare, one of us has to quit to watch our kid. Living on her salary would be a lot harder than living on mine, so I'd keep working, in all likelihood.

No, this whole chain of reasoning doesn't make sense if you believe that childcare is both parents' responsibility, not just mom's.

Your wife may make less than the cost of daycare, sure. But why does that matter? Her share of the responsibility of paying for daycare is only 50% at most, and that's if you think 50-50 is a fair way to split costs when she makes so much less than you do (FYI, legally, it would not be). The other 50% - or to be fair, much more, i.e. in proportion to your respective earnings - should be considered to come from your paycheck.

If she earned less than HER fair share of the daycare costs, then and only then does it logically follow that it makes financial sense for her to quit working.

When you ask instead "does SHE, all on her own, make enough to cover the cost of daycare?" and that SHE should quit her job if not, what's happening is that both of you made the decision to have kids but only she is paying for it AND YOU ARE PROFITING FINANCIALLY FROM HER SACRIFICE. Pure oppressive patriarchy.

Look at it this way.

Both of you equally made the choice to have children. And both of you equally make the choice that she stays home to care for the baby.

From these choices come gains and losses. In the ideal world, the gains and losses are equally shared by both of you. But in practice....

- The gain of having a baby and being a parent are shared equally by both of you (you are equally a father whether or not she works outside the home).

- The gain of securing top quality care for your child is equally shared by both of you.

- The time, energy, and financial gains of having a FREE full-time always-available babysitter and housekeeper and private secretary etc etc (typical tasks of a stay at home spouse) accrue only to you.

- The corresponding loss of performing most of the unpaid work in the family is hers alone. She doesn't get a free babysitter and housekeeper like you do - instead, she's performing that work without compensation.

- The loss of career, political capital, social capital, and opportunity costs over time are transferred entirely to her.

- The loss of earnings is POTENTIALLY entirely hers if you are financially abusive but may be equally shared if you have healthier attitudes towards money and/or if you get divorced and she gets to collect half of marital assets plus alimony plus child support. Notice how, since you have all the financial power, the RISK that you have or will develop an unhealthy attitude falls entirely on her shoulders.

- Oh and let's not forget, the loss of body shape and tone, control over one's own body, permanent consequences to health, and the risk associated with pregnancy and breastfeeding are entirely hers, too, if she gives birth. I want to do all the i's and cross all the t's here, so let's note that in a just world you would owe her as much as you'd pay a surrogate for this, even if she didn't accrue any of the other costs.

It's a case of socialized costs and private profit for you, and socialized profit but private costs for her. It behooves everyone who has this arrangement to at least acknowledge it and ideally, work towards mitigating it via private and public actions.
posted by MiraK at 7:36 PM on February 15, 2019 [12 favorites]

Good luck getting it passed with the filibuster intact. Bernie and a couple other troublemakers should have joined with Trump in calling for the end of the filibuster against McConnell during the brief shutdown in January 2018. Maybe they could have killed it that way, but no way the Democrats are gonna have the balls to do it themselves.
posted by bookman117 at 12:41 AM on February 16, 2019

Mod note: One comment deleted. If you're truly feeling in crisis, please reach out to a friend or a hotline; the mods are also available 24/7 at the contact form. Otherwise, folks let's back well off from this being framed as about the personal choices of individual people in the thread, in a "you personally have done wrong" way; that doesn't lead anywhere good for obvious reasons. The point isn't about individuals in the thread anyway, so let's explicitly keep the focus on the big-picture stuff about how these things play out in the aggregate.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:17 PM on February 16, 2019 [3 favorites]

having been involved in multiple discussions of women choosing to quit their jobs because of daycare costs, the calculus for their job "not being worth it" has the following flaws:

1. as mentioned, their job is always assessed against 100% of daycare cost instead of 50%
2. future seniority or reduced employability because of an employment gap, are not taken into account
3. retirement savings like 401ks or pensions are elided over

The cost of a woman not working is more than her salary vs 100% of daycare costs.

Also, there is the aspect of financial independence from men. This is convenient for men to gloss over. But no woman should ever forget it.
posted by Cozybee at 12:07 PM on February 17, 2019 [6 favorites]

Mod note: A couple of comments deleted by request.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:23 AM on February 18, 2019

Elizabeth Warren To Unveil Sweeping Plan For Universal Child Care - "The proposal could put the issue on top of the 2020 campaign agenda." (sigh)
posted by kliuless at 10:34 PM on February 18, 2019

-Elizabeth Warren Gets That Child Care Is Key to the Economy
-Notes on Elizabeth Warren's Child Care Proposal
-parenting should be fun!
posted by kliuless at 5:27 PM on February 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder, pushes for nationwide family leave law - "The venture capitalist was vocal about taking off the full 16 paid weeks available to him when Alexis Olympia, his daughter with Serena Williams, was born."

How Much Leisure Time Do the Happiest People Have? - "Too little, and people tend to get stressed. Too much, and people tend to feel idle."

The Spiritual Case for Socialism - "This is because the market economy dictates answers to the most important question—what is our time worth?"[1]

Framing Crashed - "There is no natural harmony between developed capitalism and legal, political and social order."[2,3]
posted by kliuless at 11:26 PM on February 23, 2019