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A BIG chunk of all that drama is due to the US social safety net not including childcare. That's the thing disturbing thing about these stories: employees are

A BIG chunk of all that drama is due to the US social safety net not including childcare. That's the thing disturbing thing about these stories: employees are turned against each other when it's a) the company; and b) your tax dollars, not providing any kind of built-in childcare for society. In France, kids can go to preschool and have pre- and post- school childcare, which has to be paid, but it's only like $500/mo and has subsidies involved and all kinds of subtleties that I don't know about but still aren't expensive. And I'm not saying "move to France," I'm saying that tax dollars in the US should be going toward making the lives of tax payers easier, especially in a nationwide/global situation like a pandemic.

shiftpgdn 6y ago
Yes but isn't that childcare in france gone?
- MrGando 6y ago
  no it's back. It will probably be gone again if things keep spiraling out of control, but child-care is back in France.
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    It is always funny thinking that outside of the US a lot of places are able to cautiously resume normal life while here we’re all either terrified or pretending nothing is wrong.
    - prh8 6y ago
      France and Spain are also currently experiencing big spikes again. We are struggling in the US for sure (especially due to the extremity of most opinions like you mention), but so are other places.
      - MrGando 6y ago
        They are having difficulties for very different reasons.
        makomk 6y ago
        France and Spain seem to be experiencing big spikes precisely because they largely returned to normal. Now, reopening schools and childcare probably isn't the big problem there because they don't seem to be major contributors to spreading the disease - but this also means countries could just not have shut them in the first place.
        MrGando 6y ago
        Just to clarify, I was stating the situations in France and Spain are very different to the one the US is going through. Should have been more clear in my previous comment.
        prh8 6y ago
        I'm not really sure your point, I wasn't saying they are spiking for the same or different reasons. Just that they're having problems too, so they're not exactly "able to resume normal life."
    - wtracy 6y ago
      > pretending nothing is wrong. And there's out problem. The covid situation in the US is a trainwreck because we can't get everyone to follow basic hygiene guidelines and practice social distancing. We could have basically whooped this thing months ago if people weren't violently resisting face masks and similar measures.
      - mensetmanusman 6y ago
        On the bright side, Americans have prevented 90% of the 2+ million predicted deaths that were to have occurred by now had nothing been done. That means most Americans don’t need the government to tell them what to do to make a decent outcome of things.
        TaylorAlexander 6y ago
        Yes we will voluntarily do better than nothing. It’s still infuriating that tens of thousands have died due to mixed messages about appropriate behavior. We’ve beaten the “do nothing” scenario but that is a very low bar.
albertop 6y ago
We already have government schools that are closed by the edict issued by teachers’ union. How having government childcare would help?
- quadrifoliate 6y ago
  > We already have government schools that are closed by the edict issued by teachers’ union. How having government childcare would help? The government gives you money each month for each child you have, and forces your employer to allow you to work part-time. > the edict issued by teachers’ union This is greatly misinformed. Schools in the US are underfunded and have scarce resources to deal with the healthcare nightmare that is COVID. The unions simply are the medium through which some school organizations had to be convinced of this rather obvious problem.
  - albertop 6y ago
    $23k+ per pupil in NYC is underfunded?
    - quadrifoliate 6y ago
      If that number was pre-COVID, then yes. No school system budgeted for healthcare-level precautions. Also, it doesn't seem overly surprising given the cost of living in NYC and how expensive everything else is. If the median price of a home in NYC is $799K [1] (likely the average is even higher), an average spending of $23K per pupil is not too surprising. [1] https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/new-york-real-estate-market/ https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/new-york-real-estate-m...
      - eanzenberg 6y ago
        Who do you suppose pays for it then? At that level public schools shouldn’t exist as private do a better job by all metrics.
        6y ago
shard 6y ago
Childcare, although helpful for those parents who cannot WFH, would seem to present a choice to those who can: either put your children into a riskier environment, or accept that you will be less productive than your colleagues who are willing to take that risk. That's a terrible choice for a parent to make. The safest method would be to permanently assign one child care professional to a family, to limit any transmission, but I doubt there are enough child care professionals to do that.
- was_boring 6y ago
  Most likely depends on what you consider professional. Turns out the qualifications for watching other people’s children are almost enterally age base. Even then there’s wiggle room for a competence factor that is deemed by the guardian and confirmed by the court. For example, there is no lower age a child can be left alone in my state, and no requirements for leaving with someone else — except that the child or person can reasonably recognize danger and avoid it.
- II2II 6y ago
  The amount of risk depends upon where a person lives. I am in a part of the world that acted aggressively early and got the spread under control. The only real concern is that someone from outside of the region will import covid since we are still dependent upon trade and some people don't like playing by the rules, while people within the region are getting a bit complacent should that happen. Even assigning one child care professional per household with children is impractical. That would amount to one care giver per one or two income earners in those families, while still introducing vectors for the virus to spread. It is a disproportionate amount of the workforce and would be incredibly expensive. Good child care professionals aren't working for minimum wage.
- OCASM 6y ago
  Mothers and extended families used to cover that role.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jquery 6y ago
Childcare was nearly shut down during a large fraction of this pandemic (with some supply for children of essential workers). Childcare is still not back at full capacity.
AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
The biggest chunk is due to the US's (and much of the rest of the world's) lock-down policies. I am not a parent, but I am disgusted that so many in society would wish to knowingly ruin childrens' lives all over the world just to continue living through this obscene assault upon humanity. Even if we were to buy the absurd notion that we will save substantial numbers of lives by forcing kids to go to school remotely, what the hell kind of cost is that? To immeasurably harm a kid's upbringing - where they need the guarantees of a stable and loving environment the most? It is completely ludicrous, superstitious, and specious to shut down our public school systems over a respiratory illness that statistically kids do not commonly catch nor transmit. We have endured far worse than this while we simply sat and did nothing. And those times, we didn't end up with a battered economy and massive increases in famine in the developing world, like we are now. Few countries in the modern world would be prepared to sustain the kind of long-term damage this lock-down policy is going to wreak upon us all. Especially not ones as large and sprawling as the US, with corporate interests and military campaigns ongoing all throughout the globe. There's no sense in discussing policy when clearly there's no policy on earth that could stand against the tyrannical stupidity of all the world's governments turning against their citizens.
- mlang23 6y ago
  I totally agree. Thanks for putting your perspective out there. It is indeed an assault on kids. Where I come from, school is mandatory. I think there is an obligation of the government to ensure that school can continue, with the same level of quality as perviously.
- encom 6y ago
  I would give this comment 'Hacker-news Gold' if I could. Yesterday I heard on the radio the local chief of police saying they would be present and ready to write fines to people who didn't follow the new restrictions on public night life. Like they were actually eager to do so! The same is true for people not wearing face-diapers on public transport. I'm not saying ignore corona entirely, but on the other hand I'm shocked at how carelessly people act when their rights are violated and their governments oppress them.
eanzenberg 6y ago
First, $500/month for each child in France is not that cheap or great, especially as you’re sacrificing earning potential. Second, we have anecdotal data and you suggest we revamp a trillion dollar industry and incentive structure? Seems like we’re doing ok here, considering more people want to come in from France than emigrate there.
kortilla 6y ago
>A BIG chunk of all that drama is due to the US social safety net not including childcare. Of course it does. That’s 90% of what grade school is and that’s why sending kids back to school is such a high priority for so many people.
- Cd00d 6y ago
  Sorta. In a family with 2 working parents, I've always been shocked that "all day" pre-k and schooling means "until 2p". After care is quite expensive and in our experience has a hard stop at 6p. It's hard enough with office-drone professionals, but when I think back to my service industry days and how those schedules were created - at the whim of a petty manager with no week-to-week consistency and only a couple days notice ont he next week - I just don't understand how those parents get to feel that school is childcare. I means they can only work 8-2, assuming little commute.
  - was_boring 6y ago
    In my experience the shifts that line up with childcare are given to those with children who express the need. A job that respects childcare is more likely to retain those employees that need it, and that can be used as leverage.
jupp0r 6y ago
1. the $500 of child care in France is more expensive than $1500 child care in California if you factor in lower salaries. 2. with the attitude of reopening schools in France and elsewhere in Europe in spite of the pandemic I’m actually happy that schools and day care are closed (at least on the west coast). I don’t want the government to mandate school attendance right now (not sure about France, but in Germany attendance is required by law), thank you. That being said, I completely agree with you that tax dollars are well spent on early education and it’s grossly neglected in the US.
rauhl 6y ago
The problem with that is two-fold: first, the median childcare worker is less concerned with the child’s long-term success than is the median parent (that’s not a slight against childcare workers!); second, that the presence of state childcare makes it less competitive for parents to spend time taking care of their children themselves rather than to work and earn money, which means more and more folks are likely to utilise state childcare, which is less ideal due to the first reason.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Is there any evidence that childcare is detrimental to a kid’s future? Your argument could easily be used to argue against anything in our service based society. From schooling to dentists.
  - krrrh 6y ago
    Yes. > The Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program > Past research documents the persistence of positive impacts of early life interventions on noncognitive skills. We test the symmetry of this finding by studying the persistence of a sizeable negative shock to noncognitive outcomes arising with the introduction of universal child care in Quebec. We find that the negative effects on noncognitive outcomes persisted to school ages, and also that cohorts with increased child care access had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life. Our results reinforce previous evidence of the central role of the early childhood environment for long-run success. https://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/kmilligan/research/BGM-childcare2.htm https://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/kmilligan/research/BGM-childcare... https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170603 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170603 Edit: Here’s a decent explainer for anyone who doesn’t want to read the whole paper. https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/how-to-understand-the-controversial-study-of-quebec-daycare/ https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/how-to-unde...
    - gwd 6y ago
      Interesting stuff. One question: > After a few years, there’s no distinguishing between a child whose performance was improved (or worsened) by daycare and one who did not go to daycare. Is this potentially because most schools are aimed at "middle of the road" kids, kids who come in with more experience / skills / knowledge spend a couple of years just reviewing and waiting for the other kids to catch up? Not arguing against the findings, just trying to explore alternate hypotheses.
kelnos 6y ago
I don't think that's entirely relevant when most existing childcare in the US has just been completely unavailable due to COVID-19. It's not lack of funds or state support; childcare had been shut down along with everything else. But I agree that it's messed up that this is causing parents and non-parents to turn against each other; non-parents should be siding with parents to get their companies to provide better conditions. (I don't think I'll go as far to suggest this outcome is intentional by employers, though, despite the fact that turning your employees against each other is a classic employer-vs-labor tactic to keep benefits and wages low.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
user5994461 6y ago
>>> it's only like $500/mo In France the large majority of workers make 1000 - 2000 euro a month after taxes. Half of it going to rent like in every city. That means people may have a couple hundreds euros left at the end of the month in disposable income after rent, food, gas, taxes, etc... That is to say 500/month for childcare is insanely expensive and unaffordable!
- tyfon 6y ago
  Here in Norway we have another system where the payments for child care is graded so those with low income pay zero and those with highish (> €60000/year) pay full (€200-300/month) and in between you pay around €100/month. 500 bucks/month seem quite expensive.
  - lippel82 6y ago
    Well, I find it hard to believe that €200 - €300 should be "full". That can most certainly not cover the full cost for child care, so there's probably still a significant subsidy by the state even for high earners.
    - chha 6y ago
      It's not the full cost of having a kid in childcare. Norway have set a cap on what the parents have to pay, and most (if not all) kindergartens have discounts if you have multiple kids in the same place. The actual cost is much higher but is covered by the government, with some adjustments to account for local variations in things such as real-estate costs and similar.
      - sanderjd 6y ago
        This also means that people are still paying a higher price for it, but that price is just mixed in with the rest of their taxes. To be clear, I'm in favor of governments taxing for the purpose of providing services of benefit to society. But having the government cover costs does not make those costs go away, it just shifts how people pay for them.
mikece 6y ago
Why should it be someone else's responsibility to care for your child during working hours? I have nine children, my wife both stays home with them AND home-schools them (COVID didn't affect our schooling situation), and I'm able to work from home without it being an issue to affect productivity. This is possible because I didn't start having children until I was married and I married someone not only based on shared beliefs but that we both wanted a large family who would be educated at home. It's not magic, luck, or privilege: it's called planning ahead.
rglullis 6y ago
If it is a global pandemic, what is the benefit of having state-sponsored childcare if the schools ought to be closed? Unless child-care workers are immune to the virus, they have to stay at home like everyone else, likely taking care of their own kids as well...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>A BIG chunk of all that drama is due to the US social safety net not including childcare. The current problem has nothing to do with anyone's ability to pay for childcare and everything to do with the constraints the pandemic has placed on out ability for kids to leave the house to go to one central location for the bulk of the workday. Even if every parent in the country had a section-8 style voucher for childcare all you could do with it right now would be wipe your butt because childcare would be shut down for the same reasons schools are. Ironically the people who are actually least affected by this whole thing are the blue collar folks who's childcare consisted of paying an older kid down the street cash under the table because it doesn't take that much extra money to make that kid attend Zoom classes from your couch while watching your kid and that kids parents probably also like the idea.
OCASM 6y ago
Division of labor works. Moving away from it is the real cause of the drama. Stay at home parents are becoming a dying breed (staying at home because of covid notwithstanding).

shiftpgdn 6y ago

Yes but isn't that childcare in france gone?

MrGando 6y ago
no it's back. It will probably be gone again if things keep spiraling out of control, but child-care is back in France.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  It is always funny thinking that outside of the US a lot of places are able to cautiously resume normal life while here we’re all either terrified or pretending nothing is wrong.
  - prh8 6y ago
    France and Spain are also currently experiencing big spikes again. We are struggling in the US for sure (especially due to the extremity of most opinions like you mention), but so are other places.
    - MrGando 6y ago
      They are having difficulties for very different reasons.
      - makomk 6y ago
        France and Spain seem to be experiencing big spikes precisely because they largely returned to normal. Now, reopening schools and childcare probably isn't the big problem there because they don't seem to be major contributors to spreading the disease - but this also means countries could just not have shut them in the first place.
        MrGando 6y ago
        Just to clarify, I was stating the situations in France and Spain are very different to the one the US is going through. Should have been more clear in my previous comment.
      - prh8 6y ago
        I'm not really sure your point, I wasn't saying they are spiking for the same or different reasons. Just that they're having problems too, so they're not exactly "able to resume normal life."
  - wtracy 6y ago
    > pretending nothing is wrong. And there's out problem. The covid situation in the US is a trainwreck because we can't get everyone to follow basic hygiene guidelines and practice social distancing. We could have basically whooped this thing months ago if people weren't violently resisting face masks and similar measures.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      On the bright side, Americans have prevented 90% of the 2+ million predicted deaths that were to have occurred by now had nothing been done. That means most Americans don’t need the government to tell them what to do to make a decent outcome of things.
      - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
        Yes we will voluntarily do better than nothing. It’s still infuriating that tens of thousands have died due to mixed messages about appropriate behavior. We’ve beaten the “do nothing” scenario but that is a very low bar.

albertop 6y ago

We already have government schools that are closed by the edict issued by teachers’ union. How having government childcare would help?

quadrifoliate 6y ago
> We already have government schools that are closed by the edict issued by teachers’ union. How having government childcare would help? The government gives you money each month for each child you have, and forces your employer to allow you to work part-time. > the edict issued by teachers’ union This is greatly misinformed. Schools in the US are underfunded and have scarce resources to deal with the healthcare nightmare that is COVID. The unions simply are the medium through which some school organizations had to be convinced of this rather obvious problem.
- albertop 6y ago
  $23k+ per pupil in NYC is underfunded?
  - quadrifoliate 6y ago
    If that number was pre-COVID, then yes. No school system budgeted for healthcare-level precautions. Also, it doesn't seem overly surprising given the cost of living in NYC and how expensive everything else is. If the median price of a home in NYC is $799K [1] (likely the average is even higher), an average spending of $23K per pupil is not too surprising. [1] https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/new-york-real-estate-market/ https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/new-york-real-estate-m...
    - eanzenberg 6y ago
      Who do you suppose pays for it then? At that level public schools shouldn’t exist as private do a better job by all metrics.
      - 6y ago

shard 6y ago

Childcare, although helpful for those parents who cannot WFH, would seem to present a choice to those who can: either put your children into a riskier environment, or accept that you will be less productive than your colleagues who are willing to take that risk. That's a terrible choice for a parent to make. The safest method would be to permanently assign one child care professional to a family, to limit any transmission, but I doubt there are enough child care professionals to do that.

was_boring 6y ago
Most likely depends on what you consider professional. Turns out the qualifications for watching other people’s children are almost enterally age base. Even then there’s wiggle room for a competence factor that is deemed by the guardian and confirmed by the court. For example, there is no lower age a child can be left alone in my state, and no requirements for leaving with someone else — except that the child or person can reasonably recognize danger and avoid it.
II2II 6y ago
The amount of risk depends upon where a person lives. I am in a part of the world that acted aggressively early and got the spread under control. The only real concern is that someone from outside of the region will import covid since we are still dependent upon trade and some people don't like playing by the rules, while people within the region are getting a bit complacent should that happen. Even assigning one child care professional per household with children is impractical. That would amount to one care giver per one or two income earners in those families, while still introducing vectors for the virus to spread. It is a disproportionate amount of the workforce and would be incredibly expensive. Good child care professionals aren't working for minimum wage.
OCASM 6y ago
Mothers and extended families used to cover that role.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jquery 6y ago

Childcare was nearly shut down during a large fraction of this pandemic (with some supply for children of essential workers). Childcare is still not back at full capacity.

AndrewUnmuted 6y ago

The biggest chunk is due to the US's (and much of the rest of the world's) lock-down policies. I am not a parent, but I am disgusted that so many in society would wish to knowingly ruin childrens' lives all over the world just to continue living through this obscene assault upon humanity. Even if we were to buy the absurd notion that we will save substantial numbers of lives by forcing kids to go to school remotely, what the hell kind of cost is that? To immeasurably harm a kid's upbringing - where they need the guarantees of a stable and loving environment the most? It is completely ludicrous, superstitious, and specious to shut down our public school systems over a respiratory illness that statistically kids do not commonly catch nor transmit. We have endured far worse than this while we simply sat and did nothing. And those times, we didn't end up with a battered economy and massive increases in famine in the developing world, like we are now. Few countries in the modern world would be prepared to sustain the kind of long-term damage this lock-down policy is going to wreak upon us all. Especially not ones as large and sprawling as the US, with corporate interests and military campaigns ongoing all throughout the globe. There's no sense in discussing policy when clearly there's no policy on earth that could stand against the tyrannical stupidity of all the world's governments turning against their citizens.

mlang23 6y ago
I totally agree. Thanks for putting your perspective out there. It is indeed an assault on kids. Where I come from, school is mandatory. I think there is an obligation of the government to ensure that school can continue, with the same level of quality as perviously.
encom 6y ago
I would give this comment 'Hacker-news Gold' if I could. Yesterday I heard on the radio the local chief of police saying they would be present and ready to write fines to people who didn't follow the new restrictions on public night life. Like they were actually eager to do so! The same is true for people not wearing face-diapers on public transport. I'm not saying ignore corona entirely, but on the other hand I'm shocked at how carelessly people act when their rights are violated and their governments oppress them.

eanzenberg 6y ago

First, $500/month for each child in France is not that cheap or great, especially as you’re sacrificing earning potential. Second, we have anecdotal data and you suggest we revamp a trillion dollar industry and incentive structure? Seems like we’re doing ok here, considering more people want to come in from France than emigrate there.

kortilla 6y ago

>A BIG chunk of all that drama is due to the US social safety net not including childcare. Of course it does. That’s 90% of what grade school is and that’s why sending kids back to school is such a high priority for so many people.

Cd00d 6y ago
Sorta. In a family with 2 working parents, I've always been shocked that "all day" pre-k and schooling means "until 2p". After care is quite expensive and in our experience has a hard stop at 6p. It's hard enough with office-drone professionals, but when I think back to my service industry days and how those schedules were created - at the whim of a petty manager with no week-to-week consistency and only a couple days notice ont he next week - I just don't understand how those parents get to feel that school is childcare. I means they can only work 8-2, assuming little commute.
- was_boring 6y ago
  In my experience the shifts that line up with childcare are given to those with children who express the need. A job that respects childcare is more likely to retain those employees that need it, and that can be used as leverage.

jupp0r 6y ago

1. the $500 of child care in France is more expensive than $1500 child care in California if you factor in lower salaries. 2. with the attitude of reopening schools in France and elsewhere in Europe in spite of the pandemic I’m actually happy that schools and day care are closed (at least on the west coast). I don’t want the government to mandate school attendance right now (not sure about France, but in Germany attendance is required by law), thank you. That being said, I completely agree with you that tax dollars are well spent on early education and it’s grossly neglected in the US.

rauhl 6y ago

The problem with that is two-fold: first, the median childcare worker is less concerned with the child’s long-term success than is the median parent (that’s not a slight against childcare workers!); second, that the presence of state childcare makes it less competitive for parents to spend time taking care of their children themselves rather than to work and earn money, which means more and more folks are likely to utilise state childcare, which is less ideal due to the first reason.

dannyw 6y ago
Is there any evidence that childcare is detrimental to a kid’s future? Your argument could easily be used to argue against anything in our service based society. From schooling to dentists.
- krrrh 6y ago
  Yes. > The Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program > Past research documents the persistence of positive impacts of early life interventions on noncognitive skills. We test the symmetry of this finding by studying the persistence of a sizeable negative shock to noncognitive outcomes arising with the introduction of universal child care in Quebec. We find that the negative effects on noncognitive outcomes persisted to school ages, and also that cohorts with increased child care access had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life. Our results reinforce previous evidence of the central role of the early childhood environment for long-run success. https://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/kmilligan/research/BGM-childcare2.htm https://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/kmilligan/research/BGM-childcare... https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170603 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170603 Edit: Here’s a decent explainer for anyone who doesn’t want to read the whole paper. https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/how-to-understand-the-controversial-study-of-quebec-daycare/ https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/how-to-unde...
  - gwd 6y ago
    Interesting stuff. One question: > After a few years, there’s no distinguishing between a child whose performance was improved (or worsened) by daycare and one who did not go to daycare. Is this potentially because most schools are aimed at "middle of the road" kids, kids who come in with more experience / skills / knowledge spend a couple of years just reviewing and waiting for the other kids to catch up? Not arguing against the findings, just trying to explore alternate hypotheses.

kelnos 6y ago

I don't think that's entirely relevant when most existing childcare in the US has just been completely unavailable due to COVID-19. It's not lack of funds or state support; childcare had been shut down along with everything else. But I agree that it's messed up that this is causing parents and non-parents to turn against each other; non-parents should be siding with parents to get their companies to provide better conditions. (I don't think I'll go as far to suggest this outcome is intentional by employers, though, despite the fact that turning your employees against each other is a classic employer-vs-labor tactic to keep benefits and wages low.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

user5994461 6y ago

>>> it's only like $500/mo In France the large majority of workers make 1000 - 2000 euro a month after taxes. Half of it going to rent like in every city. That means people may have a couple hundreds euros left at the end of the month in disposable income after rent, food, gas, taxes, etc... That is to say 500/month for childcare is insanely expensive and unaffordable!

tyfon 6y ago
Here in Norway we have another system where the payments for child care is graded so those with low income pay zero and those with highish (> €60000/year) pay full (€200-300/month) and in between you pay around €100/month. 500 bucks/month seem quite expensive.
- lippel82 6y ago
  Well, I find it hard to believe that €200 - €300 should be "full". That can most certainly not cover the full cost for child care, so there's probably still a significant subsidy by the state even for high earners.
  - chha 6y ago
    It's not the full cost of having a kid in childcare. Norway have set a cap on what the parents have to pay, and most (if not all) kindergartens have discounts if you have multiple kids in the same place. The actual cost is much higher but is covered by the government, with some adjustments to account for local variations in things such as real-estate costs and similar.
    - sanderjd 6y ago
      This also means that people are still paying a higher price for it, but that price is just mixed in with the rest of their taxes. To be clear, I'm in favor of governments taxing for the purpose of providing services of benefit to society. But having the government cover costs does not make those costs go away, it just shifts how people pay for them.

mikece 6y ago

Why should it be someone else's responsibility to care for your child during working hours? I have nine children, my wife both stays home with them AND home-schools them (COVID didn't affect our schooling situation), and I'm able to work from home without it being an issue to affect productivity. This is possible because I didn't start having children until I was married and I married someone not only based on shared beliefs but that we both wanted a large family who would be educated at home. It's not magic, luck, or privilege: it's called planning ahead.

rglullis 6y ago

If it is a global pandemic, what is the benefit of having state-sponsored childcare if the schools ought to be closed? Unless child-care workers are immune to the virus, they have to stay at home like everyone else, likely taking care of their own kids as well...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>A BIG chunk of all that drama is due to the US social safety net not including childcare. The current problem has nothing to do with anyone's ability to pay for childcare and everything to do with the constraints the pandemic has placed on out ability for kids to leave the house to go to one central location for the bulk of the workday. Even if every parent in the country had a section-8 style voucher for childcare all you could do with it right now would be wipe your butt because childcare would be shut down for the same reasons schools are. Ironically the people who are actually least affected by this whole thing are the blue collar folks who's childcare consisted of paying an older kid down the street cash under the table because it doesn't take that much extra money to make that kid attend Zoom classes from your couch while watching your kid and that kids parents probably also like the idea.

OCASM 6y ago

Division of labor works. Moving away from it is the real cause of the drama. Stay at home parents are becoming a dying breed (staying at home because of covid notwithstanding).