[camgunz]

Yeah I think we did the math and our day care costs ~11 euros an hour, which is pretty low if it was 1 person's income, but there are like 6-8 kids in the group every day, so it's something like 75/hr, which is maybe adequate: 4 groups pulls 600k/yr, you burn 360k on staff (6 nannies across 4 groups at 50k each plus an admin), rent/supplies/tech is 100k/yr let's just say, so your margin is 25%. Even if we're way off here, that's a lot of margin.

All that said, I don't really get why day care is privatized while school is public. I mean I do: it's vestigial from when we didn't allow women to work; what I mean is that if we want more women to work full time--and I know that we do because every month it seems there's yet another thinkpiece about why women in the Netherlands won't work more hours and policies floated to address it--it seems like the main things to do are give more partner leave and nationalize day care.

My partner had this great idea where both parents should get a year off with pay (maybe 70%, whatever), which is a good idea in general for couples but also would dramatically lower the load on day cares.

Either way, childcare is a huge societal enterprise; we're not gonna get out of paying through the nose for it. Basically, you can either have a low fertility rate, a very male workforce, or raised taxes for childcare; there's not really another option.