[mhuffman]

The cost of daycare, in particular, is outrageous! And it has been that way for a while! I remember my ex wanted to get a job after our first child. We did the math and I would have had to pay and extra $200 a month for her to get a job!

[anon291]

How can daycare be anything but expensive? You are paying one subset of (mostly) women to take care of the children of another, while state laws mandate that the number of kids each daycare lady can watch is about the same as the number of kids she would have. There cannot possibly be enough women who are not mothers available to be daycare providers unless (1) lots of women are not becoming mothers, which contributes to low birth rates, (2) some subset of women have alternate arrangements for their own child's care (currently what's likely going on), or (3) daycare remains permanently expensive because there's simply more demand than supply.

Thus, the total number of females willing to be daycare providers is going to be less than the total number of women with children. Thus, demand will always outstrip supply. Thus, the cost of daycare will rise to be the median wage of the highest-income cohort for which the supply meets demand.

For example, if there are ten working women and two are day care carers who can look after four babies each, including their own, then they can look after six non-related babies all together. Assuming each woman has one baby, then of the eight non-carers, only six will have their babies cared for. The other two have to make alternate arrangements. Due to how the market works, the two who have to make other arrangements are going to be the lowest income. The cost of daycare will rise to be the median wage of the six working women, because the substitute for daycare (the women staying home) costs the same. Thus, perpetually, for the bottom twenty percent in this example, daycare will forever be out of reach. There is no getting around this.

Note, I'm not saying anything about whether women should work or stay at home. I'm just pointing out that the whole system boils down to a Ponzi scheme of care, and withdrawals are constantly being demanded.

[jltsiren]

As some countries provide near-universal daycare, the numbers can be made to make sense.

In Finland, the requirement is 1 carer for 4 children under 3, 1/7 for full-time care above 3, and 1/13 for part-time care above 3. Assuming 1 year of parental leave, 2 years at 1/4, 3 years at 1/7, and 1 year at 1/13, the average child requires 1 person-year of daycare. Assuming 40-year careers, an optimistic fertility rate 2.1, only women working in daycare, and some overhead, we would need 6-7% of women working in daycare.

[anon291]

Finland has a fertility rate of 1.4 children / woman. That's a below-replacement rate, and thus I don't think Finland can be used as an example of a sustainable daycare system

[jltsiren]

The point was that even with a sustainable fertility rate of 2.1, the daycare system would only need to employ a few percent of the total workforce.

[ovulator]

A decade ago I paid $10,000 a year for one kid, and I was super lucky to even find anyone at all. That was the price for just some lady running a daycare out of her basement in the country. I don't want to know what it is now, in a city.

[1auralynn]

That extra amount likely would have been more than cancelled out after your kid went to school, due to higher future wages (raises over time, plus your ex not having a huge gap in her work history).