[Someone]

Decent daycare is expensive, period. Think of it: if you want an employee for every ten kids (norms often don’t even allow this for toddlers), parents will have to pay ⅒ of the salary of such an employee.

Add in the cost of a daycare center (typically better equipped than the average children’s home), its administration, etc, and there’s no way daycare can be cheap.

The only way to make it seem cheap to parents is by subsidizing it.

[WeylandYutani]

My mother was a pioneer in the 1980s. She worked full time. In those days the government did fully subsidize day care for everyone.

But eventually as the economic goal of getting women into the workforce was reached they decided it was no longer necessary.