Which is more important: affordable childcare or decent pay for child carers?

I’m not sure the views that can be summarised as ‘well I had to make sacrifices so I could choose to stay at home because my husband’s salary was low for being a sole earner with multiple dependents so I don’t see why anyone should get any help at all with childcare’ are really relevant to anything.

The problem there is that the man didn’t earn enough for a comfortable SAHM family lifestyle. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with making sure childcare is affordable, since they were not going to use childcare anyway - whatever funding was available.

I see going out to work as a choice. I stayed home with mine, ate cheaply and bought second hand. I started a career after this. I did not carry on working, after starting a family, as the childcare costs would have made it not worth it and (most importantly) I wanted to stay home with them.

It feels like an awful system where kids are farmed out to keep the workers producing, to get more money to buy more stuff. I don't want to fund that.

I wonder if it would be tax neutral in that if less people leave the workforce, more tax would be raised particularly if the idea that you keep progressing your career is true.

If people are talking about “I took eight years out” as something that happened in the past, then they are clearly so far removed from current childcare experiences that their view is pointless.

I pay via taxes for loads of stuff I won’t ever use, but it’s the right thing to do

Is it bad to work ? This sounds like it is 🤔

Haha all those things, absolutely standard for two working parents to go without all that stuff, that doesn’t look like any especial sacrifice on your part from my POV.

my MIL goes on about “lifestyle choices” wrt two working parents - as though they are all after multiple foreign holidays a year or something. The fact is you could afford to go down to one salary and did.

An economics podcast I listen to said some parts of the USA were looking at childcare loans as an option, they sounded a bit like the student finance we have. It's an interesting idea which might help but could cause as many problems as it solves.

When was this? 35k combined income is low for raising a family, even before you consider the "extras" you went without.

I don't know why massive coprorations are not instructed to offer subsidised on site nurseries. It's a thing elsewhere in the world. There should be a mandate that if an organisation has more than (say) 500 employees fte, then it has to offer a nursery/creche facility monday-friday 8-6 for a discounted fee and cover the remaining costs.

@mummyh2016

Why wow? It's a fair question. I took the financial hit of stopping working for 8 years to raise my children, by not spending money on things people consider essential like 2 modern cars, mobile phones, pay tv, streaming, gym, paid baby classes, new clothes (nothing wrong with second hand), kids not sharing a bedroom, etc. we lived on around £30k salary and that included paying the mortgage at about £750 a month.

Why should I now pay for childcare for other people's children beyond the preschool (15 hours a week) we had funded? I'm fine with supporting very low income but not those earning up to £100k

The question is poorly formulated.

The question is: why does the uk offer neither? And what could the government do about that but isn’t willing to?

We can have both, lots of other countries manage it.

I’m in the Netherlands and we do have strict ratios of children to carers here.
Childcare is being funded by the state (and the taxpayers).

The amount you pay is dependent on your income. Which also has a downside, if one partner has a big income and the other a small income, it could be you have to pay so much there isn’t much left of the smaller incone.

Tax free childcare.....gives you the 20% so pay in 8 draw out 10

Which is why the government get away with forcing nurseries to accept below the viable costs....the state run nurseries near me were closed this year as they couldn't afford to keep them open alternatives are the truss scheme of upping ratios to double what they are now so reducing quality .....which is how schools do it with one qualified teacher to 13 3 year olds....but qualifications in teaching don't include nappies, sharing, nurturing, teaching dressing

They’re equally important.

We’re planning a move abroad, there childcare is capped at around £140 per month as it is heavily subsidised, it is also a respected profession.

I’m a higher rate tax payer in the UK, if I earned the same I would be taxed at 36.5% of my income. I will be paying less tax, paying less childcare, we only use childcare two days a week yet we’ll still make a decent saving.

Both. Of course we should pay for it with our taxes; keeping women in the workforce (and financially independent) is good for society. Only a twat would not see that.

Well at the moment theirs neither. I would have found nursery fees more palatable if the staff were getting paid fairly at least.

Children having a decent start to life which for some is absolutely in a structured setting benefits society, as does making it affordable for parents (mainly women though let's be honest) remain in the workplace. There should be some reasonableness applied ie perhaps first child funded then tapers off or something but it's very small minded to say it doesn't benefit me so I don't want to pay. Plenty of tax payer money is squandered on stuff we don't personally all benefit from.

It needs to be both.

Lots of qualified and experienced childcare professionals are leaving childcare for other jobs- better paid and less responsibility. Nurseries are struggling to recruit. Childcare and education courses at colleges aren't running due to lack of interest. Nurseries are closing- this will just get worse. Those still open often have huge waiting lists. Parents will struggle to find childcare for their children- affordable or otherwise!

Childcare should be tax deductible imo

The other countries with heavily subsidised childcare have state run childcare.

Government run and owned.

Childcare in the UK is privately run.

Funny old thing, the choices society makes.

If we banned alcohol and smoking, the money the nhs would save on treating avoidable diseases and eg drunken injuries would easily fund the budget problem with childcare.

Why should my taxes fund anything that I don’t personally need? Oh yes, because I’m not a dickhead

We don't have either at the moment though. Childcare prices aren't high because of nursery staff salary, majority are on minimum wage. Most of the money goes on cost of renting premises, gas and electricity, food etc and then the big bosses of chains earning loads.

Society needs children. Because they will grow up and pay the tax which funds your pension. Because they will be the carers who look after you in your old age, the doctors who keep you alive, and everything else. You need other people to have children even if you don’t have any of your own. Which means that we as a society need to make it financially feasible for people to have children.