The Childcare Dilemma

On a Zoom with some friends around the country this week, the conversation turned to childcare. We all work at community colleges, and we all see the same dilemma.

1. There is a desperate need for childcare if we want folks to get back to work.
2. Good childcare at scale requires training.
3. Most daycare facilities pay their workers terribly.

Points 1 and 2 would seem to argue for pouring resources into growing early childhood education programs. Point 3 would seem to argue for shutting them down.

That makes no sense.

The childcare dilemma isn’t new in America. When TB was little, we used to spend $250 a week in 2002 money (about $380 per week, or about $20,000 per year in after-tax dollars, in 2021 money) for his daycare. That was more than in-state tuition at Rutgers, and there’s no financial aid for daycare. When TG was born, we did the math and realized that we’d have to effectively sign over TW’s entire paycheck for daycare. We didn’t see the point, so she quit her job and stayed home for years. We counted ourselves lucky that we had the option.

Worse, childcare expenses typically hit in the early years of careers, when incomes are lower. I spent more on daycare in 2002 than I earned as a TA in 1996.

Even with a graduate degree and a good professional job, it was tight. It was so tight that we threw in the towel with the second child.

The usual political battle lines around childcare involve different visions of motherhood. (Fathers are usually assumed to be irrelevant. We are not.) In our politicized world, an argument for subsidizing daycare is taken as devaluing stay-at-home moms. Instead, we choose to make family life harder for everybody.

There’s a better way.

Imagine if the tax code offered much larger child allowances. Those who want to work outside the home could put the allowance towards daycare, ideally raising the wages of daycare workers to something more livable. Those who prefer to stay home could put the allowance to other uses, effectively turning it into pay for the work -- and it is work -- of taking care of young children. Each family could make the choice that it wants to make. Attaching the money to the child makes the gender and gender roles of parents irrelevant at a policy level; decisions like those could be made in each family, where they belong.

If daycares had the resources to pay their workers better, it would be much easier for them to recruit and keep good employees. (The turnover rate at TB’s daycare was noticeable.) And as a college, we could run programs in early childhood education without the ethical concern about training people for low-paying jobs that we have now. Those who choose to stay home would be validated by what amounts to a paycheck; those who choose to go to work would be able to afford good daycare; those who choose to work in daycares could make enough to stick around a while and get really good at it.

Treating childcare as a referendum on gender roles has failed miserably. Taking care of kids is work, and it should be recognized as work wherever it happens. Teachers with better training and parents with less stress will lead to happier kids. Parents who know their kids are safe can be really present at work. This is, at its core, a solvable dilemma.

Raising children is one of the foundational jobs of any culture. We’ve actually reached the point at which there’s a serious ethical argument about encouraging people to take care of children. That’s a sign that something has gone very wrong. We can fix this.