Why don't feminists expect expect male parents to pay for childcare?

[quote Broomfondle]@Goosefoot

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say re a better comparison between socialised childcare would be socialised education not socialised healthcare.
Do you mean by doctors helping the population be healthier there are more people able to work?
I used doctors as their pay particularly is a reflection of the value their skills are attributed in society (also happens to be a traditionally male role). You don't work out what patients can 'produce' and then work out whether it costs the doctor's wage to treat them.
Decent early years for children could have a huge economic return. Better educational achievement, lower crime, less illness.
I think it's a bit of a fools errand working backwards from capatalism to see how everything fits rather than questioning whether that framework is really necessary.
Look at maternity leave and pay, what is the capitalist arguement for that? Could that be extended to early years?
If you don't think there is a capitalist arguement for it, it shows it can be done.[/quote]
Yes, I agree investing in kids is a great idea and probably financially worthwhile.

But you could have that with a parent at home.

Crikey, I'm sure there used to be a word for "male parents".

@Goosefoot

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say re a better comparison between socialised childcare would be socialised education not socialised healthcare.
Do you mean by doctors helping the population be healthier there are more people able to work?
I used doctors as their pay particularly is a reflection of the value their skills are attributed in society (also happens to be a traditionally male role). You don't work out what patients can 'produce' and then work out whether it costs the doctor's wage to treat them.
Decent early years for children could have a huge economic return. Better educational achievement, lower crime, less illness.
I think it's a bit of a fools errand working backwards from capatalism to see how everything fits rather than questioning whether that framework is really necessary.
Look at maternity leave and pay, what is the capitalist arguement for that? Could that be extended to early years?
If you don't think there is a capitalist arguement for it, it shows it can be done.

I’m in a very fortunate position. My husband earns more than twice what I did FT. When I fell pregnant we took the decision that the nature of both our jobs was such that we’d never see her unless one of us went PT. (we had really longed for a child and she was a complete surprise after being told I would never have kids) My FT salary would have more than covered the cost of childcare (if that’s the equation). We agreed it made sense for me to be the one to go PT. We also agreed he’d make up the difference between my full and part time salary and he sorts the rest of the childcare costs. It’s an acknowledgement that I am stalling my career and making a financial sacrifice which lets him work FT and have the family life we both want. I still have to remind him about his fare share of parent-min and during lock down we have had a few discussions about my working days being ring fenced but otherwise it works well. Either I’m leading the equality revolution or I’m a glorified 1950s housewife getting pin money 🤣 our solution wouldn’t be possible for everyone but works for us.

"Everyone took her for granted. Nobody really appreciated her, including my mother and myself.'
@Lamahaha, sadly I think this is a pretty common narrative.

Further to my previous point regarding the devaluation of childcare I think the specialisation we are forced into through employment only goes to further serve the capitalist patriarchy. This forces us to outsource so many of the things which are necessary as part of our day to day lives in order to enable to us to work long hours. It forces us to purchase goods and services and deskills us in the process. This creates an 'expertise' which is owned and controlled by the patriarchal capitalist system. Food production, cooking, cleaning, self care and grooming, clothes production has become increasingly outsourced by a large proportion of the population. Very pertinent in the current times!

I realised this far too late. As I said earlier, I was raised more by an aunt than by my mother, who despised domestic work. My aunt ran the household, did everything, looked after all of us (there were five adults and me in our home). She fed us and was the hub of everything. Without her we would have all had to do our own thing and it would have been chaos.
Everyone took her for granted. Nobody really appreciated her, including my mother and myself. It's only when mum died and I looked through her papers that I found information about my aunt -- not only that she had been married and divorced (I did know this but never thought about it) but that her husband had dumped her for a younger woman. In the 50's that must have been awful. Later she went on to care for the five children of my cousin, in a foreign country.

I don't think she minded the work itself, but the fact of being taken for granted, never really seen and appreciated, that I'm sure must have hurt. It always does.

My mother was actually the breadwinner of that family; she supported me and three of those adults. She was so proud of not being stuck in the kitchen with the pots and pans (that was her expression!) but she let her sister do the dirty but necessary work; like a husband who never helps out.

Maybe I am seeing things incorrectly in retrospect; maybe they were very close and mum did appreciate her and showed her. But it didn't seem like that to me. I do know that I did not appreciate her, and I regret is deeply. I don't think I ever even gave her a proper hug!

The problem of course is that we as a society do such a poor job of even recognising our reliance on women's unpaid caring labour, much less rewarding it. So this ends up being a very risky decision. To say nothing of all those who don't get choices.

^^ didn;t mean to strike through the "wanted" -- should have been italics!

I would however advise my daughter to never give up work if at all possible, because a long time out of the workplace will damage your chances of a decent job, and if you get divorced, there is no real guarantee of pension, share of assets, child maintenance etc for former SAHM

My daughter gave up not work, but her Uni course when she got pregnant, and is still not working, her child is 2, and is pregnant again. She always says that her friends who work outside the home are constantly complaining of stress, and she herself doesn't know how they do it -- her days are full enough as it is.
She lives in the UK so she doesn't have any of the German advantages I had. But she kind of has the same attitude I had, that things will take care of themselves if you feel it's just right -- and she does.

Could you expand on the 'number of reasons'? I'm struggling to find any valid reasons why this is likely to more often be the woman than the man (single parents excepted, obv ). I know how it can happen in practice, as happened with me and DH - but it wasn't a good thing.

I don't think there is any logical reason things aren't necessarily logical! But I do believe that for the first year at least mothers assuming they are "normal" and not egomaniacs or narcissists, and that they wanted to be mothers -- are simply more attuned to their baby, and vice versa.
After all, she had it in her body for nine months; it "felt" everything she felt, "knows" her from inside out, possibly nourished itself from her body after birth. These are powerful processes, and not to be dismissed for the sake of equality. They are an entity for quite some time after birth.
The slower the detachment process, I think, the better for the baby, and possibly for the mother as well (as long as it's what she wants -- if she resents the process, that doesn't help).

(Which might be yet another non-feminist opinion!)

I think it is sad how looking after and educating young children is undervalued. It is not valued when the parents themselves do it, if engaged in as paid work it is pretty low paid. Tbh I find it pretty degrading just to be valued in terms of my economic worth as economic worth within a capitalist patriarchal society only acts to serve the patriarchy...

The concentration of women in low-paid jobs - care and hair - is another reason for the gender pay gap of course, it's not all down to maternity/childcare issues.

Yet these are the jobs women choose to do. No one forces them.

So those complaining children are under-valued, how could a society make caring for children MORE valuable? Thats the question that would have to be answered.

Capitalism pretty much has to be obsessed with productivity, otherwise the whole banking system collapses.

But human services are very difficult to scale up.

The early years are the most crucial in a child's education. It is the interest of a progressive civilised society to invest in this age group for the future good of society.
Workers in pre schools need to be highly trained and properly paid. It has nothing to do with staff/child ratios which should be low.
The fact that workers in this sector are poorly paid is because children are not valued in this society. That and our obsession with productivity.

at the minute a large portion of affordable childcare is staffed by young women out of college on minimum wage. Ultimately someone has to pay for the affordability and it seems inevitably to be women

And children. To my mind the world is topsy turvy. The smaller a child is, the more we need high quality people to look after them and those people should be properly remunerated.

But for a parent to work, in terms of energy or labour exchange, the productivity of the parent needs to exceed in some way the productivity of the childcare worker, or the parent can't pay. If you socialise the care, you still have the question of whether the productivity of that parent in the labour force is worth enough to society that it makes sense to pay the childcare worker, and how much society can or is willing to pay the childcare worker for that productivity.

As a base calculation it often seems to pencil out, but there are also a lot of non-tangibles. What is best for kids, quality of care, quality of life for the family with two working parents, quality of life for childcare workers. And it tends not to be much of an individual decision, too, because socialised childcare works best at a society wide scale.

Teachers would be a better comparison. But classrooms have what, 25 or 30 kids per teacher?

I probably should also mention, not having read all the other contributions, that although I was the one who tended to organise childcare, extra curriculars, buying uniform, meal planning, diary organisation, groceries and other shopping etc, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that I would and plenty of jobs were fairly shared.

DH would drop DD to creche in the mornings (commuting by bike) and I would collect in the evenings (collecting by car until 2.5, and by public transport until primary school, then it had to go back to car for logistical reasons). DH would also often do the morning drop at school when he was at home (he was away 50% of the time for work in the lower 4 years of primary, so an au pair helped a lot at that stage).

If DD was sick, we would jointly look at our diaries and juggle who had the greatest needs at what times, mostly we managed to do it by 1 doing a very early morning start, swopping at lunchtime, and the other staying later than usual, and both catching up in the evening at home. But being flexible about what meetings couldn't be cancelled or moved for each other.

Yes, I did most of the PT meetings (DH did a lot with me, but not always), and almost inevitably was solo at the shows, events, presentations etc in school if I could get there. But DH brings her to training, and matches, almost every weekend. And spends hours on end out the front doing extra training with her. And video analysis and other things with her.

While I've been the main one to do training for ASD, we both did the parenting course, and he has actively listened when I have told him things I've learned. We have developed plans and strategies together (I may have done a lot of research before talking to him, but sometimes he will have too, and we agree the strategy before implementing anything) and while there might be some slight difference in how we approach things, we are working together and are able to give the same messages to DD.

And DH is actually far more likely than me to do housework on a daily basis. In recent years, the split has moved from either doing anything that's needed, to more like I'll cook and he'll washup (although he is a decent cook), he does laundry (including all ironing since DD was born and he couldn't feed her) but I will sort a load if up earlier to do it and hang out plenty on the line. We have different skills in DIY - I'm great at preparing for painting but leave streaks, whereas DH is slapdash preparing but great at the painting, he tiles while I grout, I'll tackle most emergencies and have the contacts to call in tradespeople if needed, but DH would tend to do more of the regular maintenance and putting together things (although I am the one who tends to deal with blocked pipes and gutters....as I will do a pro-active check (and cleaning) regularly whereas DH will leave it til there's a problem).

And he is happy to share driving too - whether on long or short journeys, and whether in his car or mine.

It might not be entirely equal in everything, but it is a fair balance on the whole.

We do manage to pay doctors etc non-minimum wage even though they work in the NHS. Technically artificially low globally but socialised childcare doesn't have to mean low paid women. It depends on what you value and I would argue caring for children needs to be valued much more highly by society.

I will say, I find the idea of women in a marriage being the ones paying for childcare hard to identify with. We have separate bank accounts, mainly because I am bad at keeping track and it prevents errors. But we don't really have separate money, and didn't when we both worked FT either. If someone earns less or more it affects us both, and decisions about that are made together.

OTOH there are also a good number that are more intense kinds of work, or have special conditions that make it unworkable. When my children were small my husband used to go to a remote island for three month stints - that can only work if there is good flexibility for childcare. In our case, I didn't work outside the home and we deliberately moved to be near extended family.

It seems in both cases to come down to families needing to get by with less than two FT jobs, and maybe only one in many cases or periods of time.

In my house childcare is equal responsibility for each parent. We are equally part time (I actually earn a little more than DH). People expected me to go part time, they did not expect my husband to. I am very aware this isn't everyone situation and did it maternity leave parenting was more.one sided as we did not use shared leave (my work maternity pay was a lot better than his shared parental leave pay! All our money is shared so it didn't matter who was it of pocket but making us as a family less out of pocket was priority). We know statistically women usually do more childcare so making childcare cheaper or free will benefit women more than men in general. Pretending it isn't a women's issue doesn't help solve it.