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by imtringued
1722 days ago
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You should ask the opposite. If you have kids and are low class why are you buying child care? Shouldn't it be cheaper to take care of the child yourself instead of paying income tax to let someone else, who also pays income tax and may be gets paid more than you, do it? I mean the point of childcare is that the carer gets to specialize and the workers who do not have to do childcare get to specialize. If there are people who end up worse off after specialization then something is seriously broken. |
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Our society to single mothers with poor career prospects: get a job, you mooch! We don’t care that it won’t pay enough for decent childcare and your other basic living expenses.
Our society to married mothers with poor-to-mediocre job prospects and husbands earning non-professional wages: stay home with your kids. Think about going back to school part time to finish that degree that might or might not pay back your loans. Oooh, have you heard about this great new company that helps young moms like you build their own businesses selling awesome cosmetics/supplements/leggings? You can do it from home!
Our society to married mothers with well-earning husbands and careers they love and would like to continue part time while their kids are small: since you can’t really be serious about your work if you don’t have to do it full time, you can forget your real career and go be a glorified administrative assistant for awhile, and possibly till you retire.
Or, there’s what Germany and similar do. I pay about 400 EUR/mo for 7:00-16:00 daycare, and my employer has to allow me to work a job with similar qualifications as the one I was hired for with a 15-30 hr/wk schedule (my choice) until my kid is 3. At that point, they are obligated to allow me to work part time permanently, or for me to switch back to my original contracted hours. My employer chooses to allow us to work part time longer and still switch back to full time later.
Did I pay an absolute fortune in higher income tax the decade before I had a kid, and could have paid for my own maternity leave and unsubsidized daycare with the money I could have saved? Quite likely.
Do I feel like it’s still worth it? Absolutely. A year of maternity leave and several years of serious part time work is so common and accepted here in large part because it’s affordable to people who make less and pay less in taxes (or who would save less even at higher income).
Seeing the daycare vs work outside the home decision as only a function of immediate daycare costs vs. current earnings is extremely short-sighted. A college friend of mine freely admitted that they barely broke even on daycare for two in Boston the year after she had her second, but that in preserving her future earning power, it made long-term financial sense (and personal sense - she loves her work).