My husband and I have to work opposite shifts because child care is unaffordable. He works from 6am to 2:30pm, and I have to meet my husband at his job to drop off our son so that I can be to work by 3:00pm. I miss out on putting my son to bed.It goes on to say they support subsidize that would allow both parents to work at the same time and the kid to spend all day in daycare.
This two-sentence anecdote really got my attention because childcare is something my family struggles with. We have no struggles in paying for it, fortunately, but we struggle with how much childcare we want to use and how to structure it. I leave for work at 7:30am. Early in the afternoon, our babysitter arrives and my wife goes to work. I arrive home before 7pm and relieve the babysitter. I put our baby to bed around 8pm. My wife gets home at various times, usually a little after 8pm.
We are fortunate to be able to afford any amount of daycare we want, but we specifically structured this so we would both get a good amount of time with our baby. I do not claim this is the best way to do it. It’s a system that works for our family at this time.
The e-mail calling for spending tax dollars to help move a kid who spends all day with his parents to a system where he spends most of the day away from them really catches my eye. The e-mail supposes that if this family had just a more money, they would use it to see their kids only briefly in the morning and briefly before bed. There may be many advantages to doing it this way, but we should think it through carefully before we subsidize it.
We also need to look at who is getting the subsidy. If one member of this family earns a solid living wage but their lifestyle requires two incomes and subsidized daycare, in my mind we’re subsidizing the fancy lifestyle as much as the daycare b/c the family could simply give up the lifestyle and pay for daycare themselves.
The funny thing is I support the key initiatives this e-mail is calling for: childcare funding for the poor, increased funding for preschool for the poor, and nutrition programs. In their call for more subsidies for the poor, though, they run into these hard questions about who should take care of our children. I imagine that most societies throughout human history have had a cultural model dictating who is responsible for taking care of the children. The US culture isn’t about dictating anything, so it’s up to the individual to work it out. Individuals need to take note and start working it out for themselves early. Otherwise you end up like the people quoted above who had kids, wanted someone else to take care of them, and didn’t realize they didn’t earn enough money to pay someone to care for their kids.
I agree wholeheartedly with your opinion...spending time with parents should not be overlooked. I often wonder how the different generations growing up with more and more all-day childcare will turn out as they become adults. Maybe better (more socialization with other kids), maybe worse (less interested caretakers than parents would be).
ReplyDeleteThe reason more parents are working and have little time with their kids is that real wages have stagnated in the US over the past 30 years or so. Family units are working more hours to maintain their standard of living.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime corporate profits and executive pay have skyrocketed.
The clear solution would be workers self management and the abolition of the wage system.
Now, I know you're big on financial planning and markets, so I bet you'd like to see American workers stop demanding a bigger portion of the pie in wages an benefits and instead invest in the stock market and somehow all become capitalists....maybe we can get the developing world to work for us and we can just sit back....but that'll take an even bigger military to maintain.