7 ms·

Funny. An assistant at my Dad's work figured she was paying almost her salary in babysitting costs and other expenses for things she could do herself if she had

• dennisgorelik 16y ago
  So high taxes make people more likely to maintain traditional family (husband works and wife runs the household).
  • dLuna 16y ago
    High taxes have a tendency to mean cheaper child care. In general countries with high taxes have subsidised child care. I believe that high taxes would rather put a stop to the one-earner household since marginal effects on two incomes at X is usually a lot less than the tax on one income of 2X.
    • roboneal 16y ago
      "High taxes have a tendency to mean cheaper child care." Is subsidized child care, really cheaper - if you are paying higher taxes to receive the subsidies? Kind of an odd logic.
      • gaius 16y ago
        Yes it is cheaper if it's other people's taxes. That's why no-one campaigns for tax cuts so they can afford childcare.
        • cwp 16y ago
          To make it more explicit, subsidized child care is cheaper for parents, because everybody pays taxes, but only parents receive the subsidies.
          • jacquesm 16y ago
            A society without children is called dead the next generation. Not that I'm pro-subsidies (never used any) but I can see why there would be some collective advantage about the previous generation having had children (that's why you're here...) and we extend that to the next. This also benefits those without children because they end up getting a pension from other people's working children. (your pension typically isn't money that you put in the bank, contrary to what most people seem to think).
  • aswanson 16y ago
    Or hold back on having children, or lowering the number of children that they have.
    • jacquesm 16y ago
      Possibly lowering that number all the way down to 0.
• jacquesm 16y ago
  Yes, that also happens quite a lot, the cost of having someone look after your children is substantial. I've heard school be referred to as the cheapest child minders that could be found.
  • dhimes 16y ago
    We chose daycare because of the long-term implications. Some careers are harder to rebuild, so we took the hit for a few years in order to be in a better place (career wise if not financially) later.
• tptacek 16y ago
  That's true until your children hit school age, at which point child care becomes radically less expensive.
  • jacquesm 16y ago
    Now why would that get modded down, it is a well known joke that school is 'cheap daycare' amongst people that have both parents working full time. Once the children hit school age they are in school for the same amount of time that they would have been in daycare otherwise, and schooling costs much less than daycare. Which is weird, because daycare effectively is a school (one adult supervising a bunch of youngsters) without any obligation or license to teach.
    • tptacek 16y ago
      Huh? I'm not even joking. I don't look at school as day care, but whether you think that or you don't, you're not paying for someone to watch the kids while they're there. This isn't politics. It's a simple fact. You stick out 5 years or so with very expensive child care (maybe 4, for many families, where someone stays at home for the first year), and then two-income families make sense again.
      • jacquesm 16y ago
        I think I made the link with the joke because you used the words 'child care', but still that did not deserve a downmod.
        • tptacek 16y ago
          Oh. You still need to pay for after-school child care; that's what I was referring to. School here gets out at 3:00PM; we get home from work around 6:00PM.
          • presidentender 16y ago
            That's why there are sports teams and chess club.
• mortenjorck 16y ago
  Someone at my office had a kid not long ago, and after he and his wife weighed daycare options versus her returning from maternity leave, they realized it was pretty much a wash.
  • dagw 16y ago
    It's certainly not a wash once you factor in the opportunity cost of sitting at home and letting your skills and contact network fall to the wayside. It's a lot easier to find a job (or get your old job back) if you start working as soon as your child is old enough for daycare than if you wait 6 years for your child to start school. In addition your salary after having worked those years will probably be quite a bit higher than your starting salary after having stayed at home for those years.
    • zaidf 16y ago
      Agreed, it's a whole different lifestyle. My own family's culture is such that the kids are expected to grow up and support the parents. So when you grow up, the parents don't need a job. My friends in the US find this super odd but that is pretty standard in many Indian cultures. Also, as you are growing up, the parents typically make a bigger investment than an average parent. I never have to "repay" my Dad any loan. Nor does he need to repay me. Does it all balance out in the end? It may or may not; it's pretty irrelevant. My mom gave up practicing medicine after her first kid. She never really had to worry about not being able to return because she didn't plan to.
    • charltones 16y ago
      The money is not the only factor that can make it a wash. The practicalities of where suitable day care is located and the hours they operate mean that for many people returning to work just isn't an option, even if you can afford it. My wife worked freelance in TV before having our daughter. The unsociable hours alone meant that it was going to be unlikely she could return to work, despite being desperate to work again. Add the fact that no local childcare is able to offer 5 days a week without a year or more's notice. Then add the fact that her salary would pay only about 50% of the childcare costs. Add the fact that my own work + commute means I'd never be able to drop off or pick up my daughter in time. It doesn't add up. Maybe we need to move country :)