When I read this article from the Economic Policy Institute, “High Quality Child Care Is Out of Reach for Working Families”, the thought that occurred to me was, if given the choice among these four alternatives
- Subsidize child care providers. Make child care a function of the state just as child education has become a function of the state.
- Provide money for child care to poor households with children.
- Provide money for poor families with children. The requirements would be
- Parents married.
- Parents living in the same household.
- Between the two of them, the parents are working at least 40 hours a week.
- Family income no greater than one standard deviation below median family income.
- Do nothing. It’s the parents’ problem.
which would be the best alternative?
That question is sort of a Rorschach test. IMO there’s no obvious winner. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Something depends on your notion of what constitutes a good society.
Here’s an interesting idea on this subject: When Public Policy Meets Evolutionary Biology
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Another idea would be for jobs that pay better, while directing the culture back towards marriage & one parent staying home to raise the children.
(And in case someone unfamiliar with me and my circumstances chimes in with a “Typical man wanting women barefoot and pregnant at home”, my wife works and I stay home with our child. Admittedly, this is due to me getting crushed by the Bush Recession and the equally devastating Obama Recovery, but at least I’m living by my beliefs.)
High quality child care is expensive. It is far more expensive than what most people pay, and this includes people who think they are getting high quality child care.
The regulations include one-time capital expenses and operating expenses. The capital expenses affect who can start a daycare business. The staff salaries are an operating expense that is somewhat dictated by regulations. The minimum number and qualifications are dictated by regulations, but the quality is determined by the business.
Once the best people are hired, the price will be too high for most people.
Something else to consider is that many of the best childcare workers are not necessarily motivated by money. They are not mindless of money, but they are not willing to accept unhealthy, but legal, conditions for more money.
Childcare was once better done by family or friends, but this was deemed out dated. Childcare done by strangers was deemed superior. As with most dreams, nobody calculates the costs in real world dollars.
There is no excuse for devaluing the lives and lifestyle choices of singles and the childfree. Requiring that a couple be married in order to receive subsidized child care sounds like an atavist program of the Pope. Indeed, parents need to pay for their own life choices, just as the singles and childfree pay for their own fast cars, travel and vacation homes. Now that gays are entitled to share in the miseries of marriage and even breeding, the next civil-rights battleground may well concern freeing singles and the non-breeders from the obligation of supporting married breeders.
I don’t think there is a good solution because we’ve already moved too far toward institutionalized childcare, and it’s never going to be possible to provide enough money for poor women to hire nannies.
Maybe there’s a possibility for innovative solution like government subsidized daycare centers in poor neighborhoods where the mothers pool their time caring for the kids, and neighborhood businesses get some tax break for providing flex time jobs.
The atomization of society is what made this an issue and I don’t see it turning around. Sooner or later the state will implement a “fix” in an effort to enforce fairness – either through throwing money at the problem or, essentially, starting public education at six weeks at which point parenting, in the traditional sense, will be dead.