Childcare, an impossible paradox

[Farm Boy]

How is that even possible? Does she not file taxes honestly, thus showing that she's being paid below minimum wage?

I have the feeling she files her taxes. We don't pay in cash, so we're leaving paper trails for her to account for. She's watching more than one kid at any given time, generally. It's not like she's actually getting less than minimum wage. Her mother helps out, she's a volunteer EMT(in a village where that's the primary ambulance line), and sometimes she needs to cancel days. Hence the families being close. It's all very oldschool in some ways, but I don't think being oldschool is actually being illegal.

 

[Yeekim]

In Estonia, every child has right to a place in kindergarten from 1.5 years till school (age 7). These usually open at 7AM and close at 6PM and are considered to be educational facilities and prepare kids for school.
Monthly fee is around 60€ and covers 3 meals.

After birth, either the mother or the father may go on parental leave for up to 3 years. Employment contracts are suspended for the term of the parental leave, meaning that the position is retained.

While using parental leave (i.e. not working), a parent is entitled to parental benefit that is equal to what he/she made while working in a previous year, but no more than ~2230€ and no less than ~300€ (both thresholds are indexed and change yearly). Benefit is paid for up to 435 days from birth.

 

[peter grimes]

I made this thread in a fit of frustration, but I'm so glad I did! I have known that other countries have more humane structures for assisting parents in raising children, but I had no idea of the variety!

I'm ashamed that the US is so far behind the rest of the developed world in this. Yet another symptom of the fundamental problems strangling us.

Every non-US example of how early childhood care is structured servers as another piece of evidence against the corporate conservative position that businesses and government can't possibly afford this. It's all about priorities, and sadly corporate profits r the ones our current policies favor at the expense of actual people.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

The funny thing is the USA still has pretty decent birth rates nevertheless, if I am not mistaken. My crazy theory: Home owners are more likely to want more children.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The funny thing is the USA still has pretty decent birth rates nevertheless, if I am not mistaken. My crazy theory: Home owners are more likely to want more children.

More like: we let in enough immigrants who, despite now being in the first-world, still make babies like it's the third-world. This is a fundamentally good thing as it'll help us avoid what's going on in Japan with their shrinking population, for example. Not that a shrinking population itself is necessarily a bad thing, but when it's couple with a very rapidly-aging population and a sagging economy, it poses real problems

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I was somehow convinced also the whites didn't do so bad compared to other developed countries, as in I thought they were still above 2 childes per woman. I stand corrected.

 

[peter grimes]

my god what's going on with the First Nations?

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Going the way of the dodo

 

[Farm Boy]

my god what's going on with the First Nations?

Why don't you have two kids?

 

[Bamspeedy]

My sister was paying over $1000 a month for her one child at daycare and I thought that was crazy, but they lived in an urban area on the coast. If me and my wife had to pay that much it would be about half of my wife's income. With two kids it would be all of her pay, and with a third one on the way....well she would be getting paid NOT to work. But we live in a lower cost of living area, so licensed daycare costs are typically about $700 a month for fulltime, which is still too high, so luckily our work schedules allow us to not need full time daycare.

I work every weekend and every Monday, she works every other weekend (and other days during the week, where I watch the kids) and has classes on Mondays. No licensed daycare operates on the weekend* tempting my wife to open a daycare that is open on the weekends. So we have to hire a regular babysitter for every other weekend. Then Mondays were a problem, at one time we were able to hire a high school kid for every other weekend, she's wasn't available on Mondays. Licensed daycare places typically don't take children for only one day (unless you pay the 'part time' weekly fee which is about three days worth). But we finally found one that charged $3.50/hour per child, but after we used them for a year they closed down. We will use another one that charges $4/hour per child, which is higher than the weekend babysitter we pay $2.50/hour for ($5 for two kids, next year will be $7.50). A third option was a daycare that charged $50 a day per child for drop offs, which is intended for people who don't regularily use daycare (emergencies, appointments, etc.) but we would always have to check to make sure they had space available, so there isn't a guarantee we would have daycare available on any given week.

*apparently according to the laws around here daycare centers can operate on the weekend, but if they do, they can't operate during the week. It's one or the other, and there is far more demand for Monday-Friday than there is for weekends, so that is why they all only work during the week.

2nd shift, 3rd shift and weekend workers rarely use any licensed daycare.

 

[timtofly]

I made this thread in a fit of frustration, but I'm so glad I did! I have known that other countries have more humane structures for assisting parents in raising children, but I had no idea of the variety!

I'm ashamed that the US is so far behind the rest of the developed world in this. Yet another symptom of the fundamental problems strangling us.

Every non-US example of how early childhood care is structured servers as another piece of evidence against the corporate conservative position that businesses and government can't possibly afford this. It's all about priorities, and sadly corporate profits r the ones our current policies favor at the expense of actual people.

Let me remind you that it is technically NOT the government's fault. There are businesses that cater to a lot if not most of the needs of the people who work for them. It is the whole corporate/government/insurance nightmare to blame. The "end user" / employee has little recourse in the free market system going on between the government/corporations/insurance triangle. Even if one hates or loves his current employer it is hard to wrangle the free market by switching en-masse with other people to counteract the said free market system.

If the above is confusing, let's just say that benefits may be wrangled upon when one looks for a job, but does not transfer well if one wants to hop from job to job to find the best of both worlds, and especially not on a large scale where people are as free as the supply and demand of other commodities.

If the economy of purchased goods goes to products globally that may help third world countries, but it sometimes stifles what is bought and sold here. If a company is facing hard times, and the upper management has done all it could, or just refuses to do so within the law, then benefits are the first to get cut back. That in turn effects the going rate of insurance which in turn effects the cost of insurance, which again puts pressure on the companies buying such insurance.

While the government may be able to regulate how a person is treated and even how things progress on a global out of country scale, it is very hard to regulate supply and demand.

Why don't you have two kids?

I don't think that it evens out until the 4th child.

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't think that it evens out until the 4th child.

Well, it doesn't matter at all how many kids Peter has, he's not the relevant party in overall fertility. I'm just operating under the fuddy duddy assumption of the heteromanogamous family unit. Smack me around if it's inappropriate.

 

[timtofly]

Neither was I trying to be insensitive. The one time a year 6000+ dollar incentive still has to be handled responsibly.

 

[Farm Boy]

Oh, I know you weren't. I was just deciding I might have been, depending on how the comment was taken upon reading.

 

[peter grimes]

Let me remind you that it is technically NOT the government's fault. There are businesses that cater to a lot if not most of the needs of the people who work for them. It is the whole corporate/government/insurance nightmare to blame.

I wasn't blaming government - I was blaming the fact that employers are legally allowed to petition the government to pass legislation that shunts things that should be societal shared costs onto to individual citizens. The result? Lower costs for some businesses, higher revenues for others, and nearly every citizen experiences higher out-of-pocket expenses which are redirected from the greater societal investment and into personal pockets.

Government is the victim here - it's manipulated by the morass of campaign financing and legislative lobbying.

 

[Zelig]

I have the feeling she files her taxes. We don't pay in cash, so we're leaving paper trails for her to account for. She's watching more than one kid at any given time, generally. It's not like she's actually getting less than minimum wage. Her mother helps out, she's a volunteer EMT(in a village where that's the primary ambulance line), and sometimes she needs to cancel days. Hence the families being close. It's all very oldschool in some ways, but I don't think being oldschool is actually being illegal.

Ah, I understood only her kids plus yours - multiple kids makes sense.

my god what's going on with the First Nations?

Dunno, that's not at all the case in Canada, aboriginals here have about double the average fertility rate.

I made this thread in a fit of frustration, but I'm so glad I did! I have known that other countries have more humane structures for assisting parents in raising children, but I had no idea of the variety!

I'm ashamed that the US is so far behind the rest of the developed world in this. Yet another symptom of the fundamental problems strangling us.

Every non-US example of how early childhood care is structured servers as another piece of evidence against the corporate conservative position that businesses and government can't possibly afford this. It's all about priorities, and sadly corporate profits r the ones our current policies favor at the expense of actual people.

I dunno, subsidies for childcare are essentially taxing childless people (or if you want to structure kickbacks to childless people, you could just tax wealthy people extra) to pay for other people's children.

If the overall fertility rate is good, I don't know that subsidies to increase it are necessarily a good idea.

 

[Farm Boy]

Conversely, the way our retirement plans and social safety nets are structured here, I could claim the childless individuals are planning their later years around mooching off my financial investments in the future of the country.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

You do not even have to think of social safety nets. Our entire societies and everyone involved in them depends on people having children. Moreover, the future depends on us establishing an environment for children to prosper, that includes parents being able to financially thrive while having children.

 

[peter grimes]

I dunno Zelig, that's the whole idea behind a society: I help you pay for student loans (which I don't use), you help FarmBoy pay the interest on agricultural equipment loans (which you and I don't use), and he helps me pay for subway repairs (which neither of you use). So that's not a very persuasive argument against community support for early childhood care.

 

[Zelig]

Those things all have positive effects on society - but when it comes to babies we have too many people already and should be very careful about incentivizing more people. I'm kind of ambivalent about it, since for the most part the countries that have the means and will to subsidize babies don't make much of a dent to the global population, but (for example) if India instituted a policy to maximize population growth it would be awful.

As a somewhat tangential problem, people don't base their decisions to have the optimal number of children on sound mathematical models, and so obviously need more math education.