These discussions make me so very happy to live in Canada, particularly Quebec. It’s a wholistic system that just works - no pitting different types of families against each other; no patchwork of subsidies requiring endless paperwork. I sincerely believe it works only because ALL of these elements are in place:
1. 12 months of leave (for either parent) paid (at 55-75%) by a government program that every worker pays into.
2. Option of an additional 12 months unpaid leave, during which you can work part time or not at all, but the employer has to hold your position.
3. A robust network of subsidized daycares that cost ~ $10/day. For families who can’t find one or choose otherwise, they can receive a subsidy to help pay for private daycare, a babysitter/nanny, a family member etc.
(The daycare subsidy can also be used for after-school care and summer camp!)
Honestly, it makes so much sense to pay parents to care for their kids for the first months of life. We’re doing essential work for the country, why shouldn’t we be paid? And no one I know thinks group care at this age is the ideal arrangement (by 1-2 years old, it’s much different). But it shouldn’t mean either parent needs to make the lifelong decision of abandoning their career altogether.
Tl;dr: Maternity/Parental leave is the obvious answer that the US seems bent on ignoring. The rest of the world is thoroughly puzzled.
I want to add that the ideas for irregular/drop-in care, while innovative, don’t sound great to me. Integration into a new daycare is hard on everyone- most daycares will purposely stagger new arrivals, knowing it can take several weeks for a new child to feel truly comfortable. Constantly switching environments, based on whoever is available, sounds so stressful!
The need for infrequent care, or for parents with irregular work hours, is a legitimate problem, even with a robust system like we have here. I wouldn’t say we’ve solved it by any means. Some things that do help: some private daycares will allow “spot sharing,” where two families can arrange to take, say, 2 days and 3 days of the week respectively (but this depends on having a regular schedule, and also finding another family to work with). And, at $10/day, some families are comfortable paying for a full time spot even if they won’t use it every day. But it’s not perfect, and informal networks of family remain important.
What I find interesting and of note about the Nordics is how small the families are. If there are massive benefits, it seems the implication is that it's a blip on the woman's lifespan - so only a few short years of investment. Whereas that's not really the reality of the choices of childbearing/prioritizing home for many others.
Oh man I really, really want you to go on Elizabeth & Matt Bruenig's podcast to revive talks on their 'Family Fun Pack' and related pro-family-care policy. Blowing out candles and making a big wish.
Something I don't often see addressed is the way the math and logistics of subsidies work with subsequent children (vs. the first). With a subsequent baby, additional help is very welcome to lighten the childcare load for the *older* child/ren. I know folks that have done full-time WFH with a pre-mobile baby, but that gets less and less feasible with a toddler AND a new baby.
The other thing people don't always seem to realize is the retirement savings aspect. I have been out of the paid workforce for seven years (three babies) and counting, and that's a fairly significant amount of time to be (not) paying into a retirement plan, especially earlier in life.
The policy discussion needs to be a full, legislative discussion, not a half-baked aside designed to show one party's idea about who gets support. In other words, the families who get daycare subsidies because they're trying to work should continue to get them because that's what the program was designed for. Most states have waiting lists even for those funds. Those funds should not be redirected. The discussion about at home subsidies for parents should be its own legislative debate. And also, will it contain the perverse incentive that the benefit phases out the more the breadwinner makes? Will it discourage moms from wanting to make their own money? This is what they do with the child care tax credit now. It phases out to the minimum at income of around 43,000 a year agi. I am not opposed to consideration of some benefit for stay-at-home parents for some period of time. But it's just a different kind of program and policy from one designed to keep people in the workforce. Also, too, it's my understanding and most countries that offer something like a paid leave, it applies to everyone, not just people below the median household income. Here, increasingly, a lot of people are not paying any taxes and getting a lot of subsidies, while the upper middle class, usually with two incomes, don't get a lot of tangible benefits for their money.
> This is what they do with the child care tax credit now. It phases out to the minimum at income of around 43,000 a year agi.
Are you thinking of the EITC (a wage subsidy for low-income workers)? The CTC doesn't phase out till 200k for single parents and 400k for married parents, which I think is high enough to avoid perverse incentives.
A few troubles: The more strings are attached the more a family must confirm to universal state expectations rather than have the flexibility to take the shape family life in their particular demands it. One size fits all frays around the edges, and IMO the edges are the place you especially want to be helping people with a program like this.
Second, as my wife put it, she doesn't want to be paid for her work raising our children. It's not done for professional or economic reasons. She feels her life's work is cheapened by being paid for. Something of its dignity and integrity is lost when there's a governmental homemaker salary.
Third, related to the first, if there were a hard limit of six months to a program like this then it would take the shape of a birth benefit more than a childcare benefit. Far from helping families have a spouse at home to economize the household, provide a living home base for children, and revitalize neighborhoods, it would create isolated women in the big empty communities which already exist. Here, there there are no children, there is no support. Women (typically) may be paid to watch their own children, but then where would they go? Would they sit alone and go stir crazy? There are no older women with the benefit who can help younger mothers learn the ropes. There are no friends to help cook meals or watch the older kids. All of those services would remain for paid professionals. I don't know how many times a meal train involved somebody giving us a Doordash gift card. Of course it does. Nobody's at home to cook during the day.
It's much easier to be a SAHP in a lively community with a significant number of SAHPs. A friend of mine had a very lonely time as a SAHM in a neighborhood where she only met nannies and au pairs at the playground.
Paying a parent to care for an infant is close to going back to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) prior to the Clinton dismantling of that -- except for this new idea that one parent could still be in the home, yet working. Another exception is that AFDC children were checked on once a month to be sure parenting was done reasonably well. That would obviously be a sticking point for any new proposal -- based on the administrative cost, plus the question of how evaluating child safety and reasonably good parenting could be evaluated. (The current DFCS monthly monitoring swings between brief casual checks, and intense scrutiny, depending on the state's budget priorities, politics, and the outrage when a child is injured or killed during an open DFCS case.)
I'm also struck by the idea that this new proposal is because parents usually prefer to care for an infant at home, because it's good for the family. The old AFDC program was based on the idea that caring for an infant or child was good for society. I think that's still a better way to put it.
Keep in mind that a similar situation comes into play when an older person ends up in a nursing home because close family members all have to work. If the older person is eligible for Medicaid, the nursing home cost is more expensive to the government than covering the cost of care at home by a relative, friend, or paid caregiver. I don't believe the well being of older people matters less than the well being of infants.
What of parents who do a poor job of raising their children? They aren't doing the rest of us any favors. The current US program was created to encourage low income mothers to work, not to support them staying home.
These discussions make me so very happy to live in Canada, particularly Quebec. It’s a wholistic system that just works - no pitting different types of families against each other; no patchwork of subsidies requiring endless paperwork. I sincerely believe it works only because ALL of these elements are in place:
1. 12 months of leave (for either parent) paid (at 55-75%) by a government program that every worker pays into.
2. Option of an additional 12 months unpaid leave, during which you can work part time or not at all, but the employer has to hold your position.
3. A robust network of subsidized daycares that cost ~ $10/day. For families who can’t find one or choose otherwise, they can receive a subsidy to help pay for private daycare, a babysitter/nanny, a family member etc.
(The daycare subsidy can also be used for after-school care and summer camp!)
Honestly, it makes so much sense to pay parents to care for their kids for the first months of life. We’re doing essential work for the country, why shouldn’t we be paid? And no one I know thinks group care at this age is the ideal arrangement (by 1-2 years old, it’s much different). But it shouldn’t mean either parent needs to make the lifelong decision of abandoning their career altogether.
Tl;dr: Maternity/Parental leave is the obvious answer that the US seems bent on ignoring. The rest of the world is thoroughly puzzled.
I'm very thankful for Canada's parental leave options. But there are issues with the subsidized daycare model—there is some research here exploring that, looking particularly at Quebec as a model: https://www.cardus.ca/research/family/reports/neither-universal-nor-equitable/
I want to add that the ideas for irregular/drop-in care, while innovative, don’t sound great to me. Integration into a new daycare is hard on everyone- most daycares will purposely stagger new arrivals, knowing it can take several weeks for a new child to feel truly comfortable. Constantly switching environments, based on whoever is available, sounds so stressful!
The need for infrequent care, or for parents with irregular work hours, is a legitimate problem, even with a robust system like we have here. I wouldn’t say we’ve solved it by any means. Some things that do help: some private daycares will allow “spot sharing,” where two families can arrange to take, say, 2 days and 3 days of the week respectively (but this depends on having a regular schedule, and also finding another family to work with). And, at $10/day, some families are comfortable paying for a full time spot even if they won’t use it every day. But it’s not perfect, and informal networks of family remain important.
What I find interesting and of note about the Nordics is how small the families are. If there are massive benefits, it seems the implication is that it's a blip on the woman's lifespan - so only a few short years of investment. Whereas that's not really the reality of the choices of childbearing/prioritizing home for many others.
I think the benefit would do more in America where religiosity is higher.
Oh man I really, really want you to go on Elizabeth & Matt Bruenig's podcast to revive talks on their 'Family Fun Pack' and related pro-family-care policy. Blowing out candles and making a big wish.
I'm a big fan of Matt's work on this topic.
Something I don't often see addressed is the way the math and logistics of subsidies work with subsequent children (vs. the first). With a subsequent baby, additional help is very welcome to lighten the childcare load for the *older* child/ren. I know folks that have done full-time WFH with a pre-mobile baby, but that gets less and less feasible with a toddler AND a new baby.
The other thing people don't always seem to realize is the retirement savings aspect. I have been out of the paid workforce for seven years (three babies) and counting, and that's a fairly significant amount of time to be (not) paying into a retirement plan, especially earlier in life.
Yes, Ivana Greco has been great in emphasizing SAHPs can still make use of childcare (e.g. a 3yo in preschool while mom is home wiht a newborn).
A lot of policy here imagines you will have 2 kids max, so the at-home time before school will be fairly limited, not an long-term arragement.
The policy discussion needs to be a full, legislative discussion, not a half-baked aside designed to show one party's idea about who gets support. In other words, the families who get daycare subsidies because they're trying to work should continue to get them because that's what the program was designed for. Most states have waiting lists even for those funds. Those funds should not be redirected. The discussion about at home subsidies for parents should be its own legislative debate. And also, will it contain the perverse incentive that the benefit phases out the more the breadwinner makes? Will it discourage moms from wanting to make their own money? This is what they do with the child care tax credit now. It phases out to the minimum at income of around 43,000 a year agi. I am not opposed to consideration of some benefit for stay-at-home parents for some period of time. But it's just a different kind of program and policy from one designed to keep people in the workforce. Also, too, it's my understanding and most countries that offer something like a paid leave, it applies to everyone, not just people below the median household income. Here, increasingly, a lot of people are not paying any taxes and getting a lot of subsidies, while the upper middle class, usually with two incomes, don't get a lot of tangible benefits for their money.
> This is what they do with the child care tax credit now. It phases out to the minimum at income of around 43,000 a year agi.
Are you thinking of the EITC (a wage subsidy for low-income workers)? The CTC doesn't phase out till 200k for single parents and 400k for married parents, which I think is high enough to avoid perverse incentives.
A few troubles: The more strings are attached the more a family must confirm to universal state expectations rather than have the flexibility to take the shape family life in their particular demands it. One size fits all frays around the edges, and IMO the edges are the place you especially want to be helping people with a program like this.
Second, as my wife put it, she doesn't want to be paid for her work raising our children. It's not done for professional or economic reasons. She feels her life's work is cheapened by being paid for. Something of its dignity and integrity is lost when there's a governmental homemaker salary.
Third, related to the first, if there were a hard limit of six months to a program like this then it would take the shape of a birth benefit more than a childcare benefit. Far from helping families have a spouse at home to economize the household, provide a living home base for children, and revitalize neighborhoods, it would create isolated women in the big empty communities which already exist. Here, there there are no children, there is no support. Women (typically) may be paid to watch their own children, but then where would they go? Would they sit alone and go stir crazy? There are no older women with the benefit who can help younger mothers learn the ropes. There are no friends to help cook meals or watch the older kids. All of those services would remain for paid professionals. I don't know how many times a meal train involved somebody giving us a Doordash gift card. Of course it does. Nobody's at home to cook during the day.
It's much easier to be a SAHP in a lively community with a significant number of SAHPs. A friend of mine had a very lonely time as a SAHM in a neighborhood where she only met nannies and au pairs at the playground.
Paying a parent to care for an infant is close to going back to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) prior to the Clinton dismantling of that -- except for this new idea that one parent could still be in the home, yet working. Another exception is that AFDC children were checked on once a month to be sure parenting was done reasonably well. That would obviously be a sticking point for any new proposal -- based on the administrative cost, plus the question of how evaluating child safety and reasonably good parenting could be evaluated. (The current DFCS monthly monitoring swings between brief casual checks, and intense scrutiny, depending on the state's budget priorities, politics, and the outrage when a child is injured or killed during an open DFCS case.)
I'm also struck by the idea that this new proposal is because parents usually prefer to care for an infant at home, because it's good for the family. The old AFDC program was based on the idea that caring for an infant or child was good for society. I think that's still a better way to put it.
Keep in mind that a similar situation comes into play when an older person ends up in a nursing home because close family members all have to work. If the older person is eligible for Medicaid, the nursing home cost is more expensive to the government than covering the cost of care at home by a relative, friend, or paid caregiver. I don't believe the well being of older people matters less than the well being of infants.
What of parents who do a poor job of raising their children? They aren't doing the rest of us any favors. The current US program was created to encourage low income mothers to work, not to support them staying home.
Parents don't pass a parenting test now to receive the CTC.
I favor only a program that encourages women to work rather than going on or continuing on taxpayer paid welfare.