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Why Child Care Is So Expensive

• tick_tock_tick 7y ago
  Women's introduction to the workforce was the right thing to happen but it fundamentally hurt labor and the "middle class". You can't double the supply without changing anything in the system and inflationary effects of dual income are ridiculous.
  • dcolkitt 7y ago
    I don't think there's any firm evidence to back this up. In Japan, women entered the workforce much slower than the West. Yet incomes and wages in Japan have grown at slower rates than America and Europe.
    • jandrese 7y ago
      Japan has some pretty severe confounding economic factors however.
  • PaulHoule 7y ago
    See this Liz Warren book: https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907 https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-... Henry Ford realized that the automobile was not going to change the world unless auto workers were so productive that they could easily afford the cars they made. That kind of productivity increase is not possible w/ Childcare. I remember a Z Magazine cartoon more than 20 years ago where two women were pondering the mystery of why a child care worker can't afford child care and the unspoken punch line was that it was the perversity of capitalism but, no, it's not that economically efficient to pay somebody else to watch your kid for you. It makes money for the day care center, it makes money for your employer if you go to work, you pay taxes on the money you earn -- it makes money for a whole lot of people who aren't you. You, not so much. Universal child care is currently reeling from the discovery that recipients of universal child care in Montreal have turned into DQN adolescents. Maybe "the kids will be alright" in the end, but it is not looking like a program that pays for itself like Head Start.
    • raincom 7y ago
      What is DQN?
      • PaulHoule 7y ago
        Japanese slang for "Delinquent"
    • bluedino 7y ago
      In my state, a single childcare worker can watch up to 6 children. If they are infants I belive the number goes down to 4.
      • PaulHoule 7y ago
        That is not a lot to work with. If there wasn't any overhead, the childcare worker with one infant would pay 1/4 of their wages on childcare, which doesn't leave a lot for housing, food, transportation, student loans, etc. They are only infants so long however... Actually there is overhead, the child care center has to pay for a building, administrators, marketing, and possibly taxes. Contrast that to the auto worker, who probably gets a new car relatively often, let's say it works out like a $300 a month, or $3600 a year. I think auto workers are relatively well paid, so the cost of that car is 5% of their wages as opposed to 20% or more.
    • pnutjam 7y ago
      Your acting like this is new, the poor have always been crapped on. It was common for wet nurses babies to die in the 18th and 19th century. A mother can make enough milk for 2 babies, but the wealthy who hired wet nurses didn't want poor babies around their precious rich babies. Heartbreaking: https://daily.jstor.org/lifesaving-horrifying-history-wet-nurses/ https://daily.jstor.org/lifesaving-horrifying-history-wet-nu... edit (typo)
  • Miner49er 7y ago
    Well it's a chicken and an egg thing. Did women entering the workforce hurt labor? Or was labor hurting and that's why women entered the workforce?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • rollerboi 7y ago
    This is actually quite interesting, because the timeline for the massive inflation in the US during 1980s (which was solved by Volcker, RIP) roughly lines up with the upswing in labor participation rate among women: https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/es_110117_01_labor_force_participation_prime_age_women_oecd_countries.jpg?w=768&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C9999px&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/... Of course correlation =/= causation, but perhaps it was one of the contributing factors to the 10+% inflation rates of the late 70s early 80s.
  • cortesoft 7y ago
    This doesn't make economic sense.... 'doubling supply' is what economic growth is.... producing more should be balanced out with people consuming more, which is what a healthy economy does. This is like arguing that the invention of the assembly line caused inflation because you could produce too much. You contradict yourself by saying 'double supply' and 'inflationary effects'... increasing supply of a commodity (in this case labor) should DECREASE inflation, not increase it.
    • ng12 7y ago
      It makes perfect economic sense: it's a simple supply and demand curve. Increasing the number of workers decreases their value. The only confounding factor is whether the increase in workers increases the speed at which the economy grows/ I'd guess it probably does, but not enough to offset the downward pressure on wages.
      • cortesoft 7y ago
        It is pretty well accepted fact in economics that a growing workforce is a good thing for economic growth. > it's a simple supply and demand curve. Increasing the number of workers decreases their value. You are leaving out a crucial factor - the wages that the 'new' workers earn are going to be spent in the economy, growing the economy as a whole. This is increasing the 'demand' side of that supply and demand curve. This is the same flaw that anti-immigrant people use when saying that immigrants 'take our jobs'. They take a job, but they also create jobs by spending the money they earn. That is what an economy is. Every worker creates more value than they take (otherwise no one would hire the worker in the first place!)
        • iguy 7y ago
          The most solid argument in this direction (IMHO) is that quite a lot of the extra spending seems to have gone on positional goods, like housing. It's mostly a bidding war, and once every family has two earners, the winning bid is much higher. And, making that worse: Once you have two careers to plan for, it's much harder to move to a smaller cheaper city to escape. Perhaps both of you can find good jobs in the big city, and in 5 smaller places... but not the same 5! So you have to pick the big center.
  • RandomBacon 7y ago
    I'm sure it's more complex than this, and of course equal opportunities for everyone is good, but yes I think it hurt. More people going to university -> Demand outgrows supply, universities can charge more and spend more money on appealing things. More student debt. More workers -> More supply than demand, companies can pay less. Each worker needs a vehicle. More expenses. Both parents working, need to pay someone else to take care of kids. More expenses. More debt/expenses, less pay.
    • RandomBacon 7y ago
      More people sitting in traffic, more parents that don't get to be with their kids as much, more reliance on public schools to raise kids.
  • kauffj 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
  • UncleMeat 7y ago
    Why don't people say this about population growth? The US population is 2x what it was in 1950. Yet nobody says that this depresses wages causes problems. Would we have a stronger middle class if we Thanosed the population? That doesn't seem right.
    • organsnyder 7y ago
      Population growth leads to more consumers as well as producers. Activating a "dormant" producer segment (as if stay-at-home parenting isn't producing tangible value...) leads to an increase in producers, while the number of consumers stays the same.
      • anthonypasq 7y ago
        dual income houses have more money to spend...
      • jdbernard 7y ago
        And I'll point out that your parenthetical is one of the points of the article: that stay-at-home parenting is apparently extremely costly to replace. So it's a double-edged sword: you flood the supply side with new laborers while keeping the demand side static, and you increase the general cost of living because you now have to pay for childcare that you used to get for free.
    • snerbles 7y ago
      > Would we have a stronger middle class if we Thanosed the population? There is historical precedent for it, see 14th-century Italy after the Black Death halved the population. https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_the_Bubonic_Plague_make_the_Italian_Renaissance_possible%3F https://dailyhistory.org/How_did_the_Bubonic_Plague_make_the...
  • trianglem 7y ago
    Women entered the workforce in response to a societal and social ideal and not based on the free market (outside of severe labor shortages during WW2). Of course it has a direct impact on wages and quality of life for everyone.
  • tehjoker 7y ago
    This is why we must fight for socialism. True liberation is impossible under capitalism.
    • dang 7y ago
      Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • tehjoker 7y ago
        Sorry... it is relevant to this case, but you're right that without further explanation it's too generic.
• jandrese 7y ago
  We definitely felt this. My wife ended up quitting her job when we had our first because all of the child care options we investigated were going to require basically her entire after-tax income to support. It only made sense if she was planning to grow her career and just ride out the daycare for 5 years until the kid went to school, but even then it's contingent on not having another kid during that time. At the end of the day being a stay-at-home mom made a lot more sense.
  • cortesoft 7y ago
    If she did have a career she wanted to continue, the calculation is pretty strong on the 'riding it out until school'. You have to count ALL the salary you are going to make for the next 30-40 years of working, because sitting out for 5 years will have an effect on your income your entire career.
    • watwut 7y ago
      One problem is that it affects not just her, but whole family. When she is in full time work, then husband have to say no to later meeting, to switch with her on all those celebrations and competitions and so on. There is more coordination, work and stress for everyone, not just woman in question. When kids are sick and they are often, you have to deal with it somehow - again either risk own employment and status on the job or own projects or demand that husband stays home some of those days. The same goes with part time work. I know multiple women who do less then 8 hours a day not because they want to, but because they would need husband to come home from work sooner otherwise to be able to make it all. Had he had a job where he could (or if he was willing to - at least in two cases it is not job but him making excuses), they would prefer to work full time (due to those positions being more interesting).
    • mirekrusin 7y ago
      Unless she gets the job a the daycare - I hear they have money to pay well?
      • jandrese 7y ago
• Coffeewine 7y ago
  The listed reasons: > First, although child-care workers aren’t expensive on an hourly basis—their median hourly wage is less than that of non-farm-animal caretakers and janitors—labor is the biggest line item for child-care facilities. Unlike, say, car companies, they can’t cut spending by moving labor to poorer countries or by replacing human workers with machines. > The industry is highly regulated, perhaps reasonably so, given the vulnerability of the clientele ... Other costs include insurance to cover damage to the property and worker injuries, as well as legal fees to deal with inevitable parent lawsuits. > Finally, there’s the real estate. The most expensive child-care facilities tend to be situated near high-income neighborhoods or in commercial districts, where the rents are high. And they can’t downsize in a pinch, because most states require them to have ample square footage for each kid.
  • seiferteric 7y ago
    You forgot mandatory ratios. This sets the limit on how low costs can be.
• ChaosDegenerate 7y ago
  The thing with female workforce participation: isn't it just symptom of the society getting poorer. My wife worked her ass off. I was making about 130k / year. She was making about 60k / year. Then we not only moved from the US to Poland (where live is just so much cheaper). But I also started making about 330k / year. All the willingness to work evaporated on her part :-) Instead we have another kid. She stopped talking about work and started talking about having more kids. Of course, that's anectodal, but also common sense, isn't it? My little theory is that while men still made enough money to support good life in the US (50s, 60s) most women just didn't want to work. If you can have a house, nice car, four kids, vacation home, 40 hour week, no credit card debt, no school debt, and all of that on carpenter salary -- why not to enjoy life instead of spending 50-60 hours at the office? The dirty secret is that most women work because they HAVE TO. It's not a choice. It's sold to the society at large as something glamorous because -- what? They're going to tell the truth? Yeah, you need to work your ass off 50-60 hours a week, with credit card debt, student loan debt, two cars loan, etc, etc. just to be able barely make it to have two kids at 35 ? Because before that you need advanced degree or two. Actually both of you do... I mean how is that a better deal? I can see that also from the reaction of my wife friends who stayed in the US working to basically help their husbands as one salary won't cut it. It's not like they wouldn't prefer to stay at home with kids. But, again, it's not like they have a choice.
  • FactolSarin 7y ago
    I don't think that's necessarily woman-specific. I'm a guy, and if I could stay at home all day and spend time with my kids, I would too. Certainly, I would if my wife was making 330k/year :D
    • ChaosDegenerate 7y ago
      Yes, but also it's not like having maternal instinct wouldn't make this decision easier for you. And keep in mind, statistics say than one of the divorce factors is husband making less than wife. From her perspective: this isn't sexy at all.
      • 7y ago
• jperras 7y ago
  It doesn't have to be this way. Québec has had subsidized daycare for almost 25 years, and the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/affordable-daycare-subsidized-child-care-working-mom-quebec/579193/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/affordable-daycare-su... > In Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, a day of child care cost on average $10 in 2016 > Quebec’s program, which introduced low-fee, universal child care in the province in 1996, centered on a few core premises: that if the government helped make child care accessible and affordable, it would allow more women to join the workforce, increase childhood development and social skills, and ultimately raise revenue for the government through increased payroll taxes. In at least two of those objectives, the scheme has been widely successful, says Pierre Fortin, an economist at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and the country’s leading expert in the economics of subsidized child care: It’s increased participation of women in the workforce, and cost efficiency. > Since beginning the program more than two decades ago, Quebec has seen the rate of women age 26 to 44 in the workforce reach 85 percent, the highest in the world. > Early estimates anticipated the program would generate 40 percent of its costs via increased income taxes from working parents. Instead, it generated income taxes to cover more than 100 percent of the cost. “In other words, it costs zero, or the cost is negative,” Fortin said. “The governments are making money out of the program.” The program isn't perfect; there are a variety of issues that have popped up over the years, but since we were literally the first in the world to offer such a comprehensive, sweeping, subsidized plan for the entire provincial population of ~7.1MM in 1996 that was then used as a model in various Scandinavian countries, I'd call it a rousing success.
  • dfc_agency 7y ago
    Another "win" in the column of me buying a condo in Montreal...
  • jawns 7y ago
    I'm curious about the other side of the coin: Parents who would like to stay at home and provide care to their own children, but who feel as if they cannot because of financial constraints. Does this program do anything to help them?
• whb07 7y ago
  next they should make an article titled “Why getting into great physical shape requires a lot of effort”. Is anyone really learning anything from this article? Or is this just a general complaint looking for a boogeyman.
• imbusy111 7y ago
  When women work, their hours are actually evaluated in monetary terms and the cost is added to the cost of childcare instead of ignoring their unpaid working hours. That's just better accounting.
• SkyBelow 7y ago
  So the three reasons given by the article. * Primarily labor driven. You can't automate, you can't reduce hours, you squeeze 9 hours of child care out of an 8 hour workday. * Regulation. This prevents the one way to lower labor cost: increasing child to adult ratio. Laws prevent this. * Real estate costs. Child care can't be moved to cheaper cities and there is even limits on the extent it can be moved within a city before it becomes to costly (in time) for parents to utilize it. Overall... I think the second reason can be wrapped up into the first one. While legally mandated insurance and such do have an impact, the biggest impact is the limit on child to adult ratio which has the largest impact on costs and that is because it limits the efficiency a single worker can have. If the ratio is 4 kids to 1 adult, the cost will never be below 1/4 the adult's salary. If you expect the adult to be paid a living wage, then in terms of others earning a living wage, 25% of their income will have to go to child care, and that is before counting any taxes or other costs.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • namdnay 7y ago
    That’s also before subsidies. You can subsidise so it never exceeds X% of the household income, which is what they do in France
    • SkyBelow 7y ago
      The end result is still the same when you average it out. If your ratio is 4 to 1, the average wage of 1 child care worker has to be split between 4 adults, meaning that if they are being paid equal amounts, 25% of net income has to go to child care. Even if that money actually comes mostly from the top 1%, the average money per person works out to the same. This explains why the cost is so high. With regards to explain why the cost is so high, if that cost is being paid by the parents directly or by the rich via taxes and subsidies is not a factor in that cost, only in how it is paid.
• georgeburdell 7y ago
  As the article notes, the reason is regulation and women entering the workforce. Honestly I don’t see a problem. We as a society have decided that we would rather be 100% safe rather than accept risk for lower cost, so we enforce strict ratios on children to caretaker ratios, license people, make in-home sprinklers mandatory, etc. $16k per child per year in Massachusetts is that cost. For what it’s worth, none of my friends put infants in daycare due to the cost. They either got foreign au pairs or hired someone under the table for cash (very common in immigrant communities)
  • jefftk 7y ago
    > foreign au pairs https://www.steffanslegal.com/blog/first-circuit-holds-that-massachusetts-au-pairs-are-entitled-to-overtime-under-massachusetts-law https://www.steffanslegal.com/blog/first-circuit-holds-that-...
  • sol_remmy2 7y ago
    > For what it’s worth, none of my friends put infants in daycare due to the cost. They either got foreign au pairs or hired someone under the table for cash (very common in immigrant communities) I'm hoping your friends are libertarians who disagree with the current political zeitgeist in Massachusetts. It would be very depressing to hear that your friends are Liberals who publicly support these daycare laws and then privately flaunt them by 1) favoring non-American workers and 2) paying them in cash to avoid taxes
    • kelnos 7y ago
      Unfortunately I think that kind of cognitive dissonance is quite common. People feel the need to make sure "everyone is safe", but then believe their ability to judge how to best do that supersedes the law. Those laws are for "other people", not us.
• vturner 7y ago
  This may be somewhat off-topic, but I'm often surprised that leftist policies like the article advocates are often proposed at a national level? Why is this? Why not propose a state-sponsored child-care system in a leftist state - California, Washington, Massachusetts, etc. I'm not trying to start a war here, simply genuinely interested why people on the left push national social programs versus propose them in very wealthy left-leaning states?
  • Miner49er 7y ago
    This is just a guess, but in America basically all taxes are taken at the federal level. It's easier to move that money around then add on state taxes.
    • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      "Basically all"? I disagree. I think that state taxes total about half of federal taxes.
      • axaxs 7y ago
        That's the outlier, though. Most states tend to hover in the 5% range. A few states have 0 income tax, but typically make up for it with property tax. But nowhere close to the Federal tax rate...
        • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
          Most states hover in the 5% revenue compared to what the federal government collects in that state? I strongly disagree. For example, Utah's tax revenue was $9.9 billion in 2018-2019. Federal was $3.6 trillion. But Utah only has 1% of the US population. So if the rest of the states taxed at the rate Utah does, that would be $990 billion, which is about 1/4 of the Federal take. It's way more than 5%. And Utah is not a high-tax state.
          • axaxs 7y ago
• ecoled_ame 7y ago
  I'm glad the population is mind-bogglingly large so I don't feel obligated to have kids. I can save a lot of money and enjoy peace & quiet while I get better at skateboarding and science and playing video games. Plus, no wife. I never have to do things I don't want to. I never have to please anybody. It rocks.
  • ngngngng 7y ago
    You should feel obligated. I believe your opinion is similar to climate change denial since all the experts on the subject disagree with you.
    • ecoled_ame 7y ago
      Sounds like extra work and and an unwanted nuisance to my life of leisure. Plus I love alone time, I could never live with a woman long enough to breed with her. Whenever I walk in public, all I can think is jeez ... there are so many random people. Seems like we need better planning. People just have kids on whim, to satisfy themselves, like a life goal. It doesn't make much sense to me. I think mostly ladies want children.
      • glofish 7y ago
        There is nothing wrong with not wanting kids. Makes sense. That being said I would recommend toning down the rhetoric of how much better you're off for not having kids - it rings fake and forced as if you needed to convince yourself repeatedly and it is needlessly antagonistic. The analogy is that of having a dog. I'd like to have a dog. I think it is fun to have a dog. Alas, dogs are not for me, they feel the kind of work and responsibility that I am not ready for. But I respect and admire people that have dogs! I am not going to say that I am so much better off for not having a dog.
        • balfirevic 7y ago
          > I am not going to say that I am much better off for not having a dog. But why not? It doesn't diminish dogs or other people who have dogs in any way, it just means that for you personally disadvantages outweigh advantages. So not having a dog will, on balance, make you... well, better-off.
• pseudobry 7y ago
  Sometimes I think childcare isn't expensive at all. There are these creatures I've nearly sacrificed my sanity for during their infant years, maybe got diminished mental capacity due to lack of sleep, given blood, sweat, tears, would risk life and limb for them...and here I go giving a total stranger $20/hour to (hopefully) do that in my stead for a short while.
  • giarc 7y ago
    I agree... we pay a dayhome (a licensed childcare in someone's home) $875/month which includes 9 hours of care per day and 3'ish meals per day. That's like $40/day or like $4/hour. Where else are you going to get that value?!
    • JustSomeNobody 7y ago
      The median household income in the US is $59K. Paying $875/month isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. What value.
      • giarc 7y ago
        $875 is in Canadian dollars in a large urban city. I stand by my comment that $4/hour childcare is good value. Please show me somewhere in North America where that is expensive.
      • kelnos 7y ago
        No one is claiming that paying that is easy for everyone, merely that taking care of someone for 9 hours a day, including meals, for $40/day is actually ridiculously cheap. I can't think of many (any?) services I could pay for that would cost a mere $4/hr for labor+materials.
        • JustSomeNobody 7y ago
          Shame the person earning that can’t afford their own childcare.
• kauffj 7y ago
  Child care is likely expensive for at least two reasons: - Child care is a superior good (in the economics sense). As we get richer, we almost certainly spend more of our money on it, as we do in other areas that are substantially driven by signalling (see health care, education). - It is absurdly regulated and there is nothing close to a free market. My family participates in a child care sharing arrangement that results in several families regularly breaking the law. That is because it is illegal to watch more than 4 children (if at least one of them is not yours) without state licensing.
• zeveb 7y ago
  > While it’s admirable for companies to fill the day-care vacuum, the absence of a national solution is an indictment of American policy. California is very different from Vermont which is very different from Mississippi. It doesn't make any more sense for the three to have identical child-care systems than it does for Denmark, Italy and Lithuania. I don't find his argument that only the federal government is large enough to capture the upside particularly compelling, and his straw-man counterarguments are … strawmen. Moreover, it's also important to understand what the second-order results of any state child-care policy are. While parents do mistreat their children, I am reasonably sure that child-care workers mistreat children more often. If so, a child-care policy which substitutes non-parent care for parent care will likely result in increased rates of mistreatment.
  • seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    > While parents do mistreat their children, I am reasonably sure that child-care workers mistreat children more often. Why would you think this? I’m pretty sure there are way more cases of child abuse by parents than child abuse by day care workers. Day care workers don’t deal with children with much privacy, there are other kids and day care workers, whereas parents have none of those constraints. Also, for day care workers, it’s just a job, vs. parents who are more emotionally caught up in taking care of their kids (and could make more mistakes due to emotions).
    • kcolford 7y ago
      Furthermore, there are significant screenings that happen before a child care worker can become one while there's virtually none before someone becomes a parent. It's only after the fact that an abuser is caught.
  • shantly 7y ago
    > Moreover, it's also important to understand what the second-order results of any state child-care policy are. While parents do mistreat their children, I am reasonably sure that child-care workers mistreat children more often. If so, a child-care policy which substitutes non-parent care for parent care will likely result in increased rates of mistreatment. I am friends with lots of K-12 teachers and have known people who work with kids and families in various other capacities. I would absolutely not care to bet any amount of money that child care workers abuse or mistreat kids at higher rates than parents do.
• legitster 7y ago
  It really comes down to the ratio. Our state has a 4-1 ratio for infants (which is entirely reasonable). You are basically paying for 1/4 of a person's time. If you want to put them into a daycare where the worker is adequately paid, that's $6000 a year alone, let alone overhead costs for facilities/admin. No matter who pays for it, raising children is time consuming. And time is becoming more valuable.
  • jefftk 7y ago
    For reference, MA ratios (some of the most restrictive in the country) are: 1-14m: 7:2 15-32m: 9:2 33m-7y: 10:1 -- https://child-familyservices.org/wp-content/uploads/ma-regulations.pdf
    • distances 7y ago
      Just as comparison, in Finland the max ratios are quite close: <3y: 4:1, max 12 children per group (3 educators) >3y: 8:1, max 24 children per group (3 educators again) Two thirds of educators need to have a bachelor's degree in early childhood education.
  • snarf21 7y ago
    Exactly right. People also forget that while the parent works 8 hours a day, the kid is dropped off before and after commute time which means the kid may be in daycare for 9 or 10 hours. So if you get infant care at $175/week for four infants divided by 50 hours, you get $14/hour and that is gross revenue to the business. If you happen to lose an infant to a parental move, now you are losing money for that class. You can do better on the 10+ kids because the ratios are much better. As you said, we are valuing time more and more. I can't imagine what childcare would costs with a $15/hour minimum wage. A lot of mothers would probably be forced to give up their job.
    • toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Isn’t that market forces valuing a mother (or one parent, regardless of gender) at home raising their kid(s) more valuable than at the job they’d be giving up? I'm not sure I see a problem with the economy tilting towards parents being parents versus outsourcing their childcare (within reason, when one parent can comfortably support their family).
• ouid 7y ago
  >"In Massachusetts, which requires one caregiver for every three infants, the average annual cost is more than $16,000. In Mississippi, which allows a one-to-five ratio, the cost is less than $5,000." Even if the workers were making 100% of the costs of childcare, This means that the Mississippi employee is being paid half as much as the Massachusetts employee. Mississippi's economy is clearly not comparable to Massachusetts's economy. Why is the Atlantic treating this comparison as valid?
  • ben7799 7y ago
    On top of that the MA regulations are different in other ways. Any day care center in MA that is $16k+ you will find that 90%+ of the staff have at least a Bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education. Probably not the case in a place where the average cost is less than $5000.
• maerF0x0 7y ago
  Goodhart: When the metric becomes the goal, it ceases to be a good measure... (paraphrase) Seems like we've been moving all domestic productivity into the realm of Taxable GDP. Some say it's a conspiracy, for me it's just an observation. Home cooked meals has become meal prep kits, home delivery. ChildCare has been outsourced (out of the home or a small community of cooperating parents). Household cleaning to cleaning services etc.
  • kelnos 7y ago
    Unfortunately I think you just have to frame thing in terms of economic measures in order to get certain policymakers to take you seriously. While some will recognize that having well-adjusted, well-educated, well-taken-care-of young children is something the government should help fund, others will take the attitude that the parents are solely responsible for that, and we shouldn't be "wasting" money on doing something the parents should be doing already. You'll also get arguments against "interfering" in parenting. But many policymakers will react positively if you relate new policies in terms of the economic growth they promise. It's difficult to do, in this case, though, but I get why they're trying.
  • strbean 7y ago
    On the other hand, there are huge advantages to specialization. Professional cooks are less likely to cause food-borne illness, and can generally cook tastier, more varied meals. Same goes for any other domestic work. Someone who cleans professionally can clean a house faster and better than someone who works in an office 8 hours a day. In fact, I'd bet a professional cleaner typically is faster and does a better job than a stay-at-home spouse who divides their time between every conceivable domestic task.
    • intrepidhero 7y ago
      What if I don't want to follow the specialization trend to it's logical conclusion? I think there is a cost to personal well being that's not being considered here.
• tathougies 7y ago
  The easiest solution to 'child care' -- allow children to come to the office. Most people have cushy office jobs. Kids 0 - 5 do not take up much space. Parents can take staggered lunch breaks to watch the children. Children would be in a common area that'd be appropriately gated off. In dual-income families, either mom or dad can take the child to their office. Benefits: (1) Both parents can work and be with their child (2) Children see adults working, not just playing. This is good as children want to be like adults (3) Non-parents get to spend time with babies and children, which is wonderful! (4) For nursing working mothers, having the baby there would make nursing much easier than pumping. Babies could even be given little bassinets to sleep and wiggle around in near mom and dad, if they want that. (5) The child/children can share in mom and dad's lunch. (6) Cute babies in offices!!! How great is that!? Speaking from personal experience, when my colleagues have been forced due to circumstance to bring their young children in to the office, the experience has always been positive. However, my colleagues seem worried that one of us may be offended and apologize incessantly. We should stop this and just make it a policy that children are allowed in-office. I mean, a lot of companies I've worked at have allowed dogs, which can't be potty trained, don't wear diapers, and sometimes bite people. Why are children treated worse than dogs? EDIT: responses to this thread are the #1 reason why we will never have affordable childcare. Americans, as a group, highly highly dislike children, even if they won't admit it out of fear of sounding like a misanthrope.
  • jedberg 7y ago
    This is essentially what the big tech companies do with their onsite daycare. They have adults who get hired just to watch the kids, and you can pop in and out as your schedule permits. It's hard to get work done when there are kids in the work area, so I can see why most companies don't encourage this. Especially since some people don't like kids. Another even better solution is a remote workforce. Then only you have to deal with the distractions of your kid, except during meetings. As long as you can find something to do with the kid, or people are ok with kids on the conference call, it works out. My employees are used to seeing my kid pop into the frame during video calls, and it's not really a problem.
    • 7y ago
• kube-system 7y ago
  My mother always said raising kids was a full time job. The difference today is that we measure it.
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    And the difference is that other the economy's full time jobs pay a lot less than they used to, relative to costs like housing, education, and healthcare, which have all vastly outstripped wage growth.
    • kube-system 7y ago
      I understand your point, but I'm not sure those are accurate measuring sticks, as people's expectations of housing, education, and healthcare have changed drastically since the boomers' generation. Regardless, it's easy to be an economic powerhouse when most of Asia had yet to undergo industrial revolution, and the rest of the developed world was rebuilding from war. I don't think it's surprising that wages are stagnant -- our economic output has competition now.
• aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
  With the lack of quality care (per the article), what trajectory are they on with the mandated increases to minimum wage and limitied access to immigrant labor? It sounds like they're going to need to offer to make children wards of the state from birth to college graduation, just so both parents can work 60 hour weeks to save for retirement and pay the increased tax burden, while maintaining inflated insurance, housing and utility rates.. I personally don't see many wins there if you're still going by the 20th century playbook. Monetary cannabalism appears to be in full swing.
• cpascal 7y ago
  Anecdotally, the margins can be fairly large. I am aware of one daycare in the NYC metropolitan area with around 100 students that PROFITS nearly $9000/yr/student. Their teacher pay scale also tops out at $15/hr, but each teacher represents around a $8000/month revenue stream. The daycare’s rent is about $40,000 a month.
• simscitizen 7y ago
  Surprised that there wasn't any mention of Baumol's cost disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease.
• yters 7y ago
  If child care is so expensive, wouldn't the income loss of one parent staying at home be irrelevant? Plus, the parent could find some simple side gigs that fit into at home childcare, or even do paid childcare themselves. I think the real problem is people don't like taking care of kids, and would rather have a stranger do the job. Understandable since kids are noisy, disobedient, stinky little things, but we were all that at some point (probably still are) and someone took care of us. Then there are all the single parent families, but why are there so many single parent families? Again, I think it is because people aren't willing to put up with each other's imperfections. Yes, sometimes there is real abuse going on that means staying together is actual a danger to life. But, is that the majority of cases? I am doubtful. So, the real reason child care is so expensive is because we aren't willing to suck up and stick out with the imperfections of other human beings without a paycheck.
  • mc3 7y ago
    > Parent could find some simple side gigs Highly unlikely! Maybe for a 4 year old there could be some time during the day. Let's say 1 hour. The type of gig where you can do an hour of work and be paid for it ... won't pay much. Let's say $20. It is hardly worth it. Now compare that to being at work. > I think the real problem is people don't like taking care of kids, and would rather have a stranger do the job. I don't think so. Taking care of your own kids is much more rewarding than going to work. If work is better it's because the job is great, not because the kids are annoying. Staying at home looking after kids is a lot easier. If you work you have a limited window to get them ready for care, it's a rush, then you have to commute to work, rush back to childcare after work, and then take them home and get them ready super quick for bed. It is not ideal, and not really a choice based on laziness. > Understandable since kids are noisy, disobedient, stinky little things. Ok..... That's one way to characterize them I guess. Seems a bit harsh. > So, the real reason child care is so expensive is because we aren't willing to suck up and stick out with the imperfections of other human beings without a paycheck. The real reason is it takes a lot of labour to look after the kids, administer the centre, cook, and also real estate and maintenance of property etc. And people pay for it because they need to work to afford to raise kids.
    • 7y ago
• umvi 7y ago
  Unpopular opinion - but I think farming out the majority of the raising of children to daycares is a bad idea in the long term. Obviously some times you don't have a choice, but I think stay-at-home moms (or dads) are extremely valuable for the development of the child and potentially worth more than any monetary gains to be had from dual-income. Yeah, you might not be able to afford a nice house or car as quickly, but you get absolute control over how much love, attention, and correction your developing kids receive.
  • Digory 7y ago
    The person who gets "Uber, but for Parenting, not cars" right will make a fortune. The solutions in the article are "Medicaid, but for Parents, not doctors." What we need is "a culture with jobs that will pay enough to support two adults and their children, so that care of children, family, and the community is an expected part of every adult relationship."
    • paulcole 7y ago
      I think this is the killer untapped market for Uber. Just book a really long Uber ride and let your kid spend 8 hours in the car while you’re working. Driver can still pick up other passengers and your kid can interact with them for enrichment. Doesn’t have to be a complete waste of time. When the kid is old enough, give them a raspberry pi and let them learn to code or something while they’re riding around. Driver can stop at Whole Foods for Soylent or whatever else the kid may want to eat/drink.
      • pnutjam 7y ago
        I hope this is satire.
    • bonoboTP 7y ago
      It would probably end up in way too many lawsuits from all towards all directions and across.
  • savingGrace 7y ago
• ben7799 7y ago
  I live in Massachusetts.. mentioned in the article as averaging $16k. I have a child who stopped going to private day care a year and a half ago. For us it was more like $20-24k/yr for child care. There were centers near one of my workplaces that were more like $35-40k/yr/child. Anything near the trendy high tech office spaces in Boston/Cambridge is going to be in that > $30k/yr/child range. I think there are nice profits being made because: - The teachers/caretakers make 50% at best of what public school teachers make - They just in time schedule the living daylights out of everything - You can easily figure out the gross income of the "school" because the tuition figures are public and you can see the # of rooms in the school and calculate from regulation how many kids are there. They were always 95% full in my experience - The expensive/fancy ones tend to be owned by big chains & franchises, those are not operations that exist without someone getting rich. One of the biggest day care chains in the country is owned by Bain Capital.. they've made a lot of money on it. They don't get into stuff that isn't profitable. My experience was even at the upper end of the market the product is pretty darn bad compared to public school systems in our area. The public school staff is amazing and incredibly professional compared to the private day care staff. Not even close. And the ratios for elementary school are better than pre-school/pre-K at expensive day cares in our area. And even if you took all our local & state taxes and gave 100% to the school it does not match what day care costs. And obviously the state & town do not give 100% of the money to the school system.
  • yanslookup 7y ago
    For another data point, my wife and I live in Cambridge, MA we just hired a nanny for our 6 month old son at a rate of 23/hr for 30 hours per week (~35k/yr)... This was competitive with nearby day care center rates.
    • ben7799 7y ago
      Yes I was referring to Kendall Sq. day cares when thinking of $36-40k/yr. I worked there when my child was born.
      • DrAwdeOccarim 7y ago
• meerita 7y ago
  What is increasing the childcare so much? Other countries with less resources than 1st world countries have inmense amount of childs and I don't understand why everything became so expensive.
  • josephpmay 7y ago
    In most countries, people generally live with or near their extended families, and grandparents/aunts/cousins watch over the children if the mother works. This is much less common in America.
• buboard 7y ago
  Why then don't one of the parents choose to stay at home or work at home (excluding single parents of course)? Either childcare is not a big expense , or there's some kind of societal taboo against raising your own kids at home? Is this part of the bigger bubble that makes raising kids so effortful and costly in time, that people just end up not having them?
  • captainredbeard 7y ago
    Social pressure against stay-at-home moms is a large force that often goes unrecognized.
  • pwthornton 7y ago
    This logic could be applied to k-12 education, which would be rather expensive if not government-subsidized. Pre-school in particular benefits both the children who receive it and the parents who are able to work. A lack of affordable childcare disproportionally falls on women as well, which is something worth tackling. The other issue not even mentioned here is that childcare and pre-school are expensive but they don't pay well. A larger role from the government would pay these people more and provide more stability for pre-school teachers and children alike.
    • buboard 7y ago
      > This logic could be applied to k-12 education, which would be rather expensive if not government-subsidized. No, because most parents aren't good at teach their kids basic knowledge. > Pre-school in particular benefits both the children? Disagree, it's a virus-fest and a herdish, artificial beginning in life. People who are lucky enough to grow their kids in rural/family/small town settings have it much better. > A lack of affordable childcare disproportionally falls on women agreed, but that can easily be worked on
  • mrlala 7y ago
    >Why then don't one of the parents choose to stay at home or work at home Well if both parents are fairly career driven, it's pretty hard to stay at home for 6+ years until full day school starts, and that is only for 1 kid.. could be 8/9 years with 2 kids close in age. Since it's usually the woman, she is basically giving up any solid career having that kind of work gap. And you say 'work at home' but you can't have a fulltime working at home job with very young kids. You could manage it to some degree at age 4/5+ but before then you would hardly have any time to actually focus on a job at home.
• nine_zeros 7y ago
  How about going to Asian style societies where the caregivers are grandparents or older people? Most people close to retirement (or already retired) don't need as much money since medicare already takes care of them.
  • mrlala 7y ago
    That would be great be apparently current older generations have been brainwashed into thinking that your entire goal for your life is to save for a lavish retirement where you will finally get to enjoy yourself every day after you retire and should have no responsibilities. Which basically equates to- don't enjoy any day until you retire because you are so busy focused on retirement. My parents are like that.. my mom even moved to live close to one of my siblings and the grandchildren.. but complains every single time she has to watch them because it takes up her valuable retired time... ok.
    • nine_zeros 7y ago
      >My parents are like that.. my mom even moved to live close to one of my siblings and the grandchildren.. but complains every single time she has to watch them because it takes up her valuable retired time... ok. That can't be serious complaining since most financially wholesome retirees are bored out of their minds. Besides the few vacations they take a year, what else is there to do all day?
    • factsaresacred 7y ago
      The deal works both ways in most Asian societies. Grandparents take care of the grandchildren, children take care of the grandparents. But in the West many children shuffle their folks off to a home. Kind of tragic all around.
      • novok 7y ago
        The deal gets a lot harder when you move to new york or another country for a better job.
      • kelnos 7y ago
• abbadadda 7y ago
  A lot of really good discussion in this article. I just wanted to add a couple of things: It is a true blessing if a mother or father can stay at home to raise their children. However, over time being a stay at home parent is incredibly isolating. Men are suseptible to depression, but women especially so post-partum. Also, many parents do eventually want to work either part time or full time. The longer one stays out of the work force the bigger the gap on the resume and the harder it is to find work as children grow up. I agree the lowest paying jobs should not be subsidized, but I think the benefits of taxpayer subsidized childcare would be overwhelmingly positive. The quality of childcare makes a big difference in the equation, but parents, especially mothers, should be encouraged to re-enter the workforce if they so choose. Every policy creates incentives and I have no qualms with the ones created by subsidized childcare.
  • Dove 7y ago
    I am convinced the isolated stay at home parent model is not normal human behavior, but a pathology of our particular society which represents an unreasonable expectation derived from an excessive commitment to individualism and independence. It is not psychologically reasonable to expect one person to care for children all day every day. It is not historically or broadly culturally normal. It is not healthy for either the parent or the children to isolate them together like this. It is normal for children to be cared for by many adults throughout the day, from birth - be they older relatives or simply members of the community. It is abnormal for one person to have to deal with all of their energy and issues. It is normal for children to wander and play and experience a wide and varied world. It is abnormal for them to be kept in a small, unchanging indoor space. It is normal for new parents, especially new mothers, to be intensely supported by their community. It is abnormal for them to be left alone unsupported. It is normal for homemakers to accomplish their daily tasks communally and to be active in their communities. It is abnormal for them to endure years of social isolation, primarily spending time with their children. I am not sure what a healthy pattern for family support and child rearing looks like in this society, but I think public support for young child care, better connections with older relatives and neighbors for light child care, and light or part time but potentially meaningful work and social connections for parents is a lot closer to normalcy than the current locked together in isolation suffering silently pretending to be happy wondering why you're the only one struggling model we have now. The current model is insane and it is a testament to our toughness as human beings that we all try so hard to make it work and survive as well as we do.
• strenholme 7y ago
  Here in California, once a kid is four or five years old (ready to go to elementary school), we provide subsidized care at public schools in the form of ESS (Extended Student Services). It costs under $5000 a year to have the kid cared for from 6:30am to 6pm (usually, parents drop off their kids later and pick them up earlier). The staff are very professional and kind people. Yes, there are issues with more parents who want their kids to be in it than slots available, and there are about four or five weeks a year when it’s not available, but it does provide excellent child care for kids.
• pnathan 7y ago
  The solution is simple: extend the public school system to the newborn. It's widespread, the background check system is in place, the logistics are in place. The only question is funding and the legislation mandating it.
• arbuge 7y ago
  "One side effect of “the end of babies”—or, less dramatically, the steady decline in fertility rates around the world—is that today’s parents spend more time and money on the few kids they do have." Might that be a cause of declining fertility rates rather than a side-effect of it? To me it seems pretty logical that some parents in a position to use birth-control to limit the size of their families would decide to do so, given the costs of child care.
• hackin247 7y ago
  It helps to have grandparents who can look after the grand children while both parents go to work.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• briandear 7y ago
  > Most of the achievement gap between black and white American students is in place by kindergarten. Meanwhile, dozens of studies of preschool programs since the 1960s have shown that early-childhood education can slash the black-white kindergarten achievement gap in half. The common orthodoxy is that the achievement gap is caused by and solvable through the schools, but the reality is much different. Interestingly, the achievement gap between black kids from two-parent households is almost non-existent, however since 70% of black kids are in single-parent homes, the effects of those homes is borne out in the statistics — but the cause is misattributed. “Black” students are treated as a homogeneous group, but really the gap is between “black students from single (or no) parent homes” and white students (of which the majority are from two-parent households.) The destruction of the black family is what is really behind this so-called achievement gap. The origin of that destruction is a discussion for another time, but the Moynihan Report foretold this back in 1965. The Coleman Report from the same period, also described the achievement gap as being primarily originated from the family, rather than schools. [1] This article is long, but it relevant: https://www.city-journal.org/html/black-family-40-years-lies-12872.html https://www.city-journal.org/html/black-family-40-years-lies... [1] https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2016/07/13/50-years-ago-the-coleman-report-revealed-the-black-white-achievement-gap-in-america-heres-what-weve-learned-since/ https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2016/07/13/50-years-ago-t...
  • strenholme 7y ago
    I encourage healthy debate about controversial issues like this. When I opened up my New York Times today, I found this article, which questions how important two-parent households are for childhood success, especially among Afro-American youth: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/two-parent-family.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/two-parent-family... Some quotes: “living in a two-parent family does not increase the chances of finishing high school as much for black students as for their white peers” “Greater involvement in extended family networks may protect against some of the negative effects associated with parental absence from the home” The conclusion of this New York Times opinion piece is that structural racism has more impact on the success of young Afro-American kids than single parent households.
• lordgrenville 7y ago
  Emily Oster mentioned on a podcast [1] that although she enjoys spending time with her kids much more than she enjoys working, the marginal value of kid time declines while the marginal value of work remains steady. In my experience a lot of parents feel this way. We may agree that the intrinsic value of family is much higher than that of work or the economy, but spending too much time with one's kids can feel like a drain at a certain point, even for very loving parents. At that point, the parent probably isn't doing anything great for the kids. It's good to have another outlet. [1] https://newbooksnetwork.com/emily-oster-cribsheet-a-data-driven-guide-to-better-more-relaxed-parenting-from-birth-to-preschool-penguin-2019/ https://newbooksnetwork.com/emily-oster-cribsheet-a-data-dri...
  • WomanCanCode 7y ago
    Spending time with kids can be very draining and exhausting. Not all the time that you are spending with them is quality time. Also, since parents don't need a degree or a whole lot of experience, this is an indication that childcare is only a minimum wage job unfortunately. Also, kids really like to spend time with their own peers and doing group activities.They don't care if you are not with them all the time
• 2ion 7y ago
  And the root cause: "I'd let my wife stay home but the returns on my labour have diminished so much in the past 50 years that she has to work too."
• buzzy_hacker 7y ago
  I don't understand the argument this article is making. It goes from establishing that the cost of child care has increased much faster than other goods/services, to advocating that the government pay for it. Where's the connection? Simply moving the costs from new parents to the US tax-base won't do anything to address the underlying causes of the high costs. It seems to me that we need solutions to address the high cost in any case, and the question of whether the government should be more involved is an orthogonal concern. Unless the argument is that there's not an effective way to control the costs, so the government should help pay for it to not overly burden new parents. But, I didn't see that point explicitly made in the article.
• virmundi 7y ago
  Why not look at the macro issues here? The environment is overtaxed. The future is doomed anyway. Why not return to the Roman system where the father has the right to kill the child up until a certain age? Incentives this with a cash payment for every child put down coupled with a requirement to be sterilized for five years. Say a one time payment of $10k per child and a tax deduction of $2k per year of the five years sterile. You can solve global warming, cost of child take, and student debt.
• quantumfoam 7y ago
  Because they don’t want you to reproduce you dumb fuck.
  • dang 7y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Could you please not create accounts to do that with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• readhn 7y ago
  according to this https://www.care.com/c/stories/15167/what-is-home-daycare-and-how-much-will-it-cost/ https://www.care.com/c/stories/15167/what-is-home-daycare-an... in MA the cost of family daycare is still $6 per hour. This is below min wage and is dirt cheap!!! Imagine if we paid daycare $25-50/hr ? then the daycare would be truly unaffordable ... how about $103,000/year daycare cost ($50/hr) ???
• readhn 7y ago
  Quality care SHOULD cost a lot of money because hard educational labor (child care) should be well compensated! Great quality teachers (early childhood) SHOULD be able to earn $75-100K + Which means that really daycare should be at least somewhere around $50-75K/year.
• homerhomer 7y ago
  Our daycare used the State's regulated rate. I live in zip 97201 and it's $1,415 a day for infant care. This is the basic licensed daycare rate. I found that childcare would use this a base and go up there there. https://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ASSISTANCE/CHILD-CARE/Pages/Rates.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/DHS/ASSISTANCE/CHILD-CARE/Pages/Rates...
• hestefisk 7y ago
  In Sydney average cost of daycare per childcare is very high — about USD 90. Denmark is half the cost. Often what drives up the cost is heavy regulation of ‘quality standards’.
• WomanCanCode 7y ago
  Child care is expensive but I rather pay for someone to watch and look after my child at a daycare center then doing it 24 X7. Taking care of the house and children is just mindless, time consuming and exhausting, It doesn't give me the satisfaction that I get when working with something that requires a degree and talent.
• noetic_techy 7y ago
  It seems to me this is another case of government interference causing vast increases in cost, especially the caretaker to child ratio: 1:3 = $15,000 1:5 = $5,000. And what does the author advocate? More government meddling! Higher standards! Good intention policies with bad economic outcomes / unintended consequences needs to stop. Yes we know if every child had 1:1 care from someone with a Ivy league child psych degree we would all be better off. Unfortunately that's not the society we can afford even in the affluent west. Save it for the elite who have the cash to burn. Don't force lower income folk into your preferred world view. You cripple them economically and then cry for more intervention because you crippled them. Sure, its one thing to enforce safety standards, its another thing entirely to enforce that every 3 children has a surrogate "parent" of the highest standard. Imagine if they imposed this ratio on grade school education. And no I'm not saying 1:100 is fine. Obviously not. But I knew people who watched 1:10 kids growing up in their own home, a mix of low income and middle class. While not ideal they all lived normal lives and everything turned out just fine for those children in the end.
• purplezooey 7y ago
  The article gives only nominal growth rates and does not mention if adjusted for inflation.