We all know that child care can be extraordinarily expensive. Americans spend, on average, nearly 8% of their income on child care management, whether it’s a daycare or after school program, whether it’s only for a few hours a day or whether it’s full time.
Parents with young children who aren’t yet in school perhaps face the toughest challenges. Couples must decide whether to rely on only one stream of income for all of their living expenses — one parent works while the other stays home to look after the child — or to both work, and then spend a significant amount of every paycheck on daycare payment. More often than not, the weight of the “to work or not to work” question falls on the mother’s shoulders, despite an increasingly progressive society where both partners commit to an equally divided share of child care responsibilities.
The Leave it to Beaver days of working-dad and homemaker-wife are long behind us. In this still-struggling economy, it’s unreasonable, if not impossible, for most American families to get by on a single income. While it’s normal now for women and mothers to work, they should be doing so because they want to — not because they have to.
Child care is a special kind of conundrum. Many families can’t afford to have one non-working partner, but if both partners work outside the home, then a good bulk of that extra income must be spent on childcare. One out of every three children in the U.S. with an employed mother is enrolled in some kind of organized daycare service; these are the families that likely have no external help from relatives, no choice but to work at whatever job comes their way in order to make ends meet. We shouldn’t be placing an extra financial burden on them just for trying to give their kids a good life.
Countries in Europe like Sweden, France, and Germany all have government-subsidized daycare programs. They also have more working women. The difference is that women can choose whether to work without the crippling costs of childcare as a deciding factor. With few family care assistance programs, businesses and government could be doing a lot more to help new, young, or struggling families get by. Recent polls show that two out of every three Americans agree.
If the United States wants to preserve its family values, it’s time we put our money where our mouth is.