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The financials of childcare don't really make sense to me. YMMV depending on your situation, but childcare costs are basically equivalent to my wife's teacher s

The financials of childcare don't really make sense to me. YMMV depending on your situation, but childcare costs are basically equivalent to my wife's teacher salary. And because of our tax bracket, it'd actually be CHEAPER for her to quit her job and take care of 2 kids full time, vs getting paid teach like 20 kids. There's tradeoffs in terms of career progression, but it seems broken that there's a decent financial argument for leaving the workforce.

codazoda 11mo ago
My kids were young 25 years ago but the same was true for us then.
cogman10 11mo ago
Behold the glory of private equity. Childcare is expensive because it's an industry captured by PE and in usual fashion they've increased costs while decreasing quality. The caretaker watching your kid and the 20 other kids certainly isn't making the $20/hr they are charging to watch your kid. Even though they are doing all the work. Even their managers aren't typically making much money. It's the owner of the facilities that's vacuuming up the profits. And because the only other competition is the weirdo lady storing kids in the cellar, it's a lucrative business. My wife did childcare. It's a major racket. Filled with over worked and underpaid employees and grift at every level. But hey, the owner was able to talk about how hard it was for them and how they actually got a really good deal on their porche (not joking) which is why nobody got raises. It's a low skill job with a lot of young people that like the idea of playing with kids/babies around.
abustamam 11mo ago
That either means that childcare is too expensive or teachers don't get paid enough (probably both tbh) I feel like a lot of folks don't actually do this math, and don't realize that they're essentially just working to pay someone else to watch their kid.
- AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
  > That either means that childcare is too expensive or teachers don't get paid enough (probably both tbh) It's not necessarily either one. If you do it yourself, you reuse the existing home instead of needing a separate building with its own rent, maintenance and security, the children and the adult watching them wake up in the same place instead of both having to commute to the childcare building, you have no administrative costs in terms of hiring, HR, accounting, background checks, etc. By the time you add up all the additional costs, you can easily end up underwater against doing it yourself even if each adult in the central facility is watching more kids -- and that itself is a cost because then each kid gets less attention.
  - somenameforme 11mo ago
    Yip. Oddly enough, this has a lot of economic parallels with cooking at home vs eating out. For a silly example, you can make an Egg McMuffin for a tiny fraction of what you'd pay at McDonalds for one. Yet McDonalds (franchise, not corporate) operate on single digit profit margins. Why? Because when you buy that Egg McMuffin you're not just paying for it. You're paying for an entire building of workers, the rent on that building, their licensing fees, their advertising costs, their electric costs, and much more. When you make it at home you're paying for nothing but the ingredients. So it creates a paradoxical scenario - you're getting charged way more for stuff than if you made it yourself, but yet somehow you're not getting ripped off.
  - coryrc 11mo ago
    Poorer people use home-based daycares, which has the same cost advantages.
    - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
      It doesn't. You still need someone to commute to where the daycare is because they don't live there, transaction costs related to payment processing, and that's often illegal if you do it for money because of zoning ordinances etc. Those facilities also often don't qualify for subsidies like this because it allows all the people doing it themselves to claim the subsidy. Either you take care of your own kids as before but sign up as a daycare that only your own kids attend to get the subsidy yourself, or you find someone else who takes care of their own kids and then each sign up to watch the other's kids when you each actually watch your own. And you rightfully should be able to get the subsidy if you're doing it yourself, except that then it gets a lot more attractive to actually stay at home, which the government doesn't like because it makes the program more expensive and corporations hate because it reduces supply in the labor market.
nineplay 11mo ago
The financials of leaving the workforce rarely make sense to me. > There's tradeoffs in terms of career progression There's X years of lost income, lost retirement savings, lost raises and bonuses ( depending on career ), lost promotions, lost acquisition of new skills which will keep the stay-home parent up to date with the modern workforce once they leave. Teaching and nursing are still women dominated and famously supportive of women going back to work or starting work after staying home with the kids. For every other career path, good luck. How many people here would hire someone who'd be out of the workforce for 5, 10, 15 years without a second thought?
xp84 11mo ago
Seriously. There’s a reason all our kids’ preschool teachers never return from maternity leave. The pay isn’t enough to pay someone else to watch your baby while you work. And this school is already an expensive one and is a nonprofit so the money isn’t going to some Mr. Moneybags investor. The economics of childcare are broken.
- esalman 11mo ago
  All of them? A bunch of my son's daycare teachers had their own kids, even infants, attending the same daycare.

codazoda 11mo ago

My kids were young 25 years ago but the same was true for us then.

cogman10 11mo ago

Behold the glory of private equity. Childcare is expensive because it's an industry captured by PE and in usual fashion they've increased costs while decreasing quality. The caretaker watching your kid and the 20 other kids certainly isn't making the $20/hr they are charging to watch your kid. Even though they are doing all the work. Even their managers aren't typically making much money. It's the owner of the facilities that's vacuuming up the profits. And because the only other competition is the weirdo lady storing kids in the cellar, it's a lucrative business. My wife did childcare. It's a major racket. Filled with over worked and underpaid employees and grift at every level. But hey, the owner was able to talk about how hard it was for them and how they actually got a really good deal on their porche (not joking) which is why nobody got raises. It's a low skill job with a lot of young people that like the idea of playing with kids/babies around.

abustamam 11mo ago

That either means that childcare is too expensive or teachers don't get paid enough (probably both tbh) I feel like a lot of folks don't actually do this math, and don't realize that they're essentially just working to pay someone else to watch their kid.

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
> That either means that childcare is too expensive or teachers don't get paid enough (probably both tbh) It's not necessarily either one. If you do it yourself, you reuse the existing home instead of needing a separate building with its own rent, maintenance and security, the children and the adult watching them wake up in the same place instead of both having to commute to the childcare building, you have no administrative costs in terms of hiring, HR, accounting, background checks, etc. By the time you add up all the additional costs, you can easily end up underwater against doing it yourself even if each adult in the central facility is watching more kids -- and that itself is a cost because then each kid gets less attention.
- somenameforme 11mo ago
  Yip. Oddly enough, this has a lot of economic parallels with cooking at home vs eating out. For a silly example, you can make an Egg McMuffin for a tiny fraction of what you'd pay at McDonalds for one. Yet McDonalds (franchise, not corporate) operate on single digit profit margins. Why? Because when you buy that Egg McMuffin you're not just paying for it. You're paying for an entire building of workers, the rent on that building, their licensing fees, their advertising costs, their electric costs, and much more. When you make it at home you're paying for nothing but the ingredients. So it creates a paradoxical scenario - you're getting charged way more for stuff than if you made it yourself, but yet somehow you're not getting ripped off.
- coryrc 11mo ago
  Poorer people use home-based daycares, which has the same cost advantages.
  - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
    It doesn't. You still need someone to commute to where the daycare is because they don't live there, transaction costs related to payment processing, and that's often illegal if you do it for money because of zoning ordinances etc. Those facilities also often don't qualify for subsidies like this because it allows all the people doing it themselves to claim the subsidy. Either you take care of your own kids as before but sign up as a daycare that only your own kids attend to get the subsidy yourself, or you find someone else who takes care of their own kids and then each sign up to watch the other's kids when you each actually watch your own. And you rightfully should be able to get the subsidy if you're doing it yourself, except that then it gets a lot more attractive to actually stay at home, which the government doesn't like because it makes the program more expensive and corporations hate because it reduces supply in the labor market.

nineplay 11mo ago

The financials of leaving the workforce rarely make sense to me. > There's tradeoffs in terms of career progression There's X years of lost income, lost retirement savings, lost raises and bonuses ( depending on career ), lost promotions, lost acquisition of new skills which will keep the stay-home parent up to date with the modern workforce once they leave. Teaching and nursing are still women dominated and famously supportive of women going back to work or starting work after staying home with the kids. For every other career path, good luck. How many people here would hire someone who'd be out of the workforce for 5, 10, 15 years without a second thought?

xp84 11mo ago

Seriously. There’s a reason all our kids’ preschool teachers never return from maternity leave. The pay isn’t enough to pay someone else to watch your baby while you work. And this school is already an expensive one and is a nonprofit so the money isn’t going to some Mr. Moneybags investor. The economics of childcare are broken.

esalman 11mo ago
All of them? A bunch of my son's daycare teachers had their own kids, even infants, attending the same daycare.