This assumes that mothers in the workforce earning (taxable) income is a benefit in and of itself. It doesn't consider the familial impacts of outsourcing the raising of ones own offspring to another party.
Women entering the workforce eroded the ability to maintain a household on one income because of depressed wages and housing competition. There's no absolute cost to housing, people will pay what they afford and making more money means the housing cost rises, it doesn't make people "richer" just everything else more expensive.
This isn't an argument that women shouldn't be allowed to work or anything ridiculous like that. We ALL should work less.
And just about everything ends up being an unintentional subsidy to the ever growing real estate price.
You want to invest in mothers and do a million other societal benefit things? Do everything you can to damage the ability of people to profit from owning residential real estate.
The rich were so successful in manipulating people with culture wars like "women shouldn't work" that the people who fell for it still don't realize the real war was them losing the economic standing in which it was viable for the typical family to have one working parent.
That is correct. While I too would like to see what it looks like if one parent staying home is subsidized, this still shows that subsidizing child care is a net benefit for everyone, and as such it's a good idea to keep the program going.
It doesn't show that. Subsidies will shift the margin of who can afford to have a stay at home parent, so if being raised by a parent is better than childcare, you expect people on the margin to lose out. This is in contrast to something like a child subsidy that could be used for childcare or to support a parent raising the child.
I have children that both went in a province subsidized kindergarten.
By the way, there are different types of such kindergarten. «Milieu familial» which is literally sending your children to a private house of someone to have them babysit your children during the day. They can have a maximum of 6 children with them.
And there are the CPE or «Centre de la petite enfance». There you have highly qualified personnel, way more resources than a "family environment" can provide. They have many more children. The children can socialize much more.
But, being able to have a place for your child in a CPE is akin to winning the lottery. I wouldn’t be surprised some families have paid bribes to get a place.
No, the takeaway is that Quebec's universal child care provision correlates with life issues, but there's no information about the causes of those correlations - which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality, or some socioeconomic issues specific to Quebec, or for some other reason.
>which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality
This has "true communism has never been tried" vibes. When enacting a policy, you can't guarantee it will come out optimally, so it makes sense to factor in any potential negative effects, even you think you're not going to make them. After all, I doubt the people campaigning for childcare in quebec were expecting the results to be negative.
I've not read the article, and I expect it goes into this kind of thing, but...
Perhaps it's something like: families that earn enough to have one parent stay at home don't use child care. Therefore children in child care are more likely to be from less affluent families than those who are not in child care. So it's not the child care that causes the difference in outcomes, but just general income scale.
>Perhaps it's something like: families that earn enough to have one parent stay at home don't use child care. Therefore children in child care are more likely to be from less affluent families than those who are not in child care. So it's not the child care that causes the difference in outcomes, but just general income scale.
No, the OP speculated a variety of reasons, which includes what you've suggested, but I'm specifically focusing on the "which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality", which is why I quoted that part specifically.
Affordability has little to do with it. The reality is neither parent actually wants to stay at home and watch and raise their own children. So they ship their babies off to full time daycare centers for someone else to do it. Then they both get to go to work instead!
Speaking from my own Western Europe bubble, its the reverse. High-income individuals tend to partner with high-income individuals, both heavily invested in their career, and using more child care to facilitate 2 full time jobs. Parents using less child care tend to be less career focused part timers. Having one parent stay at home is a rare sight that I associate with a low household income.
It is a rather surprising state of affairs that this is something that is not apparent to you. Why do you think I have to say the following; giving your child over to an absolute stranger to spend more waking/disposable time with that you, the parent, is NOT a good thing... neither in daycare or even school.
Yes, it's easy for me to say and the system is very much set up to facilitate extraction of profit from the neo-slave professional class while fostering their procreation to rear the next generation of neo-slave professionals; but we really need to break free of this spell that government (i.e., the ruling class' apparatchiks) do not have your child or even your won best interest in mind.
Ironically, if we do get "investment in mothers" and "universal childcare", it will be for the profit and benefit of the ruling class that will want to make sure your child is indoctrinated in the regime's propaganda as early and deeply as possible and the youngest age possible, especially since the telescreen, aka, TV has fragmented so much and kids are seeing things like genocide being committed and by whom and they aren't hardened adults yet that can look the other way in order to keep their neo-slave "job" that gets them shiny stuff.
> Ironically, if we do get "investment in mothers" and "universal childcare", it will be for the profit and benefit of the ruling class that will want to make sure your child is indoctrinated in the regime's propaganda as early and deeply as possible
This feels over the top/paranoid to me. But I also acknowledge that East Germany’s universal child care was dismantled after German unification for being exactly what you describe.
That's not why East Germany's universal child care was dismantled at all. East Germany's universal child care was dismantled after unification because West Germany didn't want to pay for it, and former East Germany couldn't. It was one of the most popular programs East Germany had, and was a source of quite a bit of consternation when it was taken away.
I was in Germany in those days and I sure remember the CDU and other more-right wingers using this argument, and convincingly. I’m sure there’s some long and worthy essay on the topic in the archives of die Zeit. Of course it was long ago now.
All of human history, children grew up spending lots of time under the supervision of older siblings, cousins, and other elders in the “village”.
Mothers (and fathers) had to be out getting water, foraging, hunting, doing laundry, farming, blah blah.
Obviously there is a middle ground between parents leaving kids for 10 hours straight and only seeing them 2 hours per day, but spending all day with parents and no one else is also another extreme (I would have gone nuts watching over them all day).
All these government actions don’t have an answer to the loss of the “village” that are inherent to economic mobility, having fewer children per family, and neighborhoods optimized for cars.
I am a father. I am an extremely involved parent and spend a ton of time with my son.
I also would go absolutely insane if we didn't have any childcare for him. It is better for my ability to function as a good parent that I can hand him off to somebody else for a period of time. It is not the case that every couple has a member who is built to be a stay-at-home-parent.
This study was limited to the program in Quebec, but this discovery is alarming
> and also that cohorts with increased child care access subsequently had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life.
There are a lot of early childhood studies that can find differences for early school years that later disappear as kids get older. It’s different when the correlations continue to older ages and even start correlating with health outcomes.
There could be some major selection bias effects, but that’s just as true for the positive fiscal outcomes noted in the submitted study.
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[ 0.14 ms ] story [ 12.0 ms ] threadThis isn't an argument that women shouldn't be allowed to work or anything ridiculous like that. We ALL should work less.
And just about everything ends up being an unintentional subsidy to the ever growing real estate price.
You want to invest in mothers and do a million other societal benefit things? Do everything you can to damage the ability of people to profit from owning residential real estate.
I think it's more about whether the investment pays back and defrays the costs.
I live in Québec.
I have children that both went in a province subsidized kindergarten.
By the way, there are different types of such kindergarten. «Milieu familial» which is literally sending your children to a private house of someone to have them babysit your children during the day. They can have a maximum of 6 children with them.
And there are the CPE or «Centre de la petite enfance». There you have highly qualified personnel, way more resources than a "family environment" can provide. They have many more children. The children can socialize much more.
But, being able to have a place for your child in a CPE is akin to winning the lottery. I wouldn’t be surprised some families have paid bribes to get a place.
This has "true communism has never been tried" vibes. When enacting a policy, you can't guarantee it will come out optimally, so it makes sense to factor in any potential negative effects, even you think you're not going to make them. After all, I doubt the people campaigning for childcare in quebec were expecting the results to be negative.
Perhaps it's something like: families that earn enough to have one parent stay at home don't use child care. Therefore children in child care are more likely to be from less affluent families than those who are not in child care. So it's not the child care that causes the difference in outcomes, but just general income scale.
No, the OP speculated a variety of reasons, which includes what you've suggested, but I'm specifically focusing on the "which could be in the details of how care is provided and its quality", which is why I quoted that part specifically.
They do. Because the stay at home parent goes crazy from loneliness, boredom and deadly routine.
It's kind of sad.
Yes, it's easy for me to say and the system is very much set up to facilitate extraction of profit from the neo-slave professional class while fostering their procreation to rear the next generation of neo-slave professionals; but we really need to break free of this spell that government (i.e., the ruling class' apparatchiks) do not have your child or even your won best interest in mind.
Ironically, if we do get "investment in mothers" and "universal childcare", it will be for the profit and benefit of the ruling class that will want to make sure your child is indoctrinated in the regime's propaganda as early and deeply as possible and the youngest age possible, especially since the telescreen, aka, TV has fragmented so much and kids are seeing things like genocide being committed and by whom and they aren't hardened adults yet that can look the other way in order to keep their neo-slave "job" that gets them shiny stuff.
This feels over the top/paranoid to me. But I also acknowledge that East Germany’s universal child care was dismantled after German unification for being exactly what you describe.
Mothers (and fathers) had to be out getting water, foraging, hunting, doing laundry, farming, blah blah.
Obviously there is a middle ground between parents leaving kids for 10 hours straight and only seeing them 2 hours per day, but spending all day with parents and no one else is also another extreme (I would have gone nuts watching over them all day).
All these government actions don’t have an answer to the loss of the “village” that are inherent to economic mobility, having fewer children per family, and neighborhoods optimized for cars.
1-4 years old were pervised by 10 years old. Not sure how that counts.
I also would go absolutely insane if we didn't have any childcare for him. It is better for my ability to function as a good parent that I can hand him off to somebody else for a period of time. It is not the case that every couple has a member who is built to be a stay-at-home-parent.
> and also that cohorts with increased child care access subsequently had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life.
There are a lot of early childhood studies that can find differences for early school years that later disappear as kids get older. It’s different when the correlations continue to older ages and even start correlating with health outcomes.
There could be some major selection bias effects, but that’s just as true for the positive fiscal outcomes noted in the submitted study.
From a societal and human perspective, unclear that it’s worth it.