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

In my case, it was because DH paid the mortgage and a number of larger annual and bi-monthly bills, while I paid the childcare, groceries and phone bill. We had added up all the bills (and an average for groceries), and that split came out at a fair proportion each (DH paying about 60% and me 40% due to wages proportions of total income).

This reminds me, now that both childcare bill has gone and mortgage recently totally paid off, but school fees are large and groceries more expensive than previously, we should sit down and look at the numbers again and see if they are still fairly spread. But in fairness, he will pay for any groceries he gets, and we will both readily give the other any money that's needed. It's just that we have always kept separate bank accounts, even if it is joint household money and joint expenses coming from both.

Yes, 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.

In my ideal world, the parents would each work part time so childcare was covered and society would be set up for that. But that obviously doesn't work for widowed parents, single parents, parents whose other half is feckless.

It simply does not work if the amount you pay for childcare is more than a regular job. In fact a regular job has to cover enough for all the expenses of working including childcare, less time for things like cooking at home etc, plus whatever tax implications there are for the family, plus enough to justify the mental and logistical hassle.

So how do you manage to pay the childcare workers enough? Especially in a dedicated facility? The only real way is to have significantly sized groups of kids as well as finding other efficiencies, which is not necessarily good for them. If you socialise the system that helps, maybe a lot, but there is still likely to be pressure to keep it cheap, and the basic cost to society is there.

There is no way around it, children need time and people who care about them with them to thrive, and paying for that costs. And I don't think mothers will ever be eager to accept solutions that don't work for their kids, even if they tick all of the feminist boxes.

The other element to this is that as much as women on FWR like to say men should take over equal care, a lot of them aren't comfortable with male childcare workers. If that's a widespread feeling paid childcare is likely going to remain female dominant, even if men are willing to do the work.

Asda are currently being taken to the Supreme court over one of the biggest equal pay claims in the UK:

www.ft.com/content/1812fe22-06bd-46ce-b2ec-0d324bdc7983

"''Free childcare'' is childcare funded by the taxpayer, just as 'free schooling' is."

In this country, it's partially funded by the taxpayer. The shortfall is paid either by the provider or the parent.

So you get the ludicrous situation where a childminder is expected to subsidise the childcare of a well paid client whose income is far in excess of hers.
Feminism should be for all women, regardless of income or class.

The video with Kathy Newman is the one with Jordan Peterson. He doesn't actually say there is no pay gap. More that it isn't quite what a lot of people think it is.

My DH paid for all our childcare as i worked PT so already paid my share - i felt it was important for him to see it as his cost as he also had the choice to work PT. The days I worked actually put the family unit in deficit by £9 which, across a year, was over £1000. It's an enourmous privilege to be able go to work and make your whole family worse off in the medium term.
As for the pay gap that made that situation occur. I wasnt just affected by prejudice and 'choices'- actual biology did interupt my ability to progress at work in comparison to my husband. I had three pregancies,(2 live births, one horrid miscarriage) two surgeries relating to reproductive issues and lots of health complications in the third pregancy and a permanent issue from birth. These got in the way of promotions for a few years whilst my DH was unhindered. I do feel sorry for women who sail through one pregnancy and birth or who dont want children but get penalised because other women like me exist. I also resent a system where genuine impacts from biology snowball as then you are the lower earner so it makes sense to work part time and so on.

So you already have women who may need to slow down and take time off during pregnancy. Who will probably want time off work in infancy, and will certainly need some time for physical recovery. In some cases this will be longer if there are issues with mother or child. For every child you add more of this time, and it can come to constitute a significant amount of time.

Something that doesn't always get talked about is this all is exaggerated in some types of work. If you work in an office, your pregnancy doesn't likely preclude your normal work. When I was in the army though, I was not able to take certain courses I needed fr promotion while I was pregnant. A lot of heavy work, dangerous work, or work with certain chemicals and things, is like this. Not many women at 8 months pregnancy are going to be working on a fishing boat, for example. So that is a good six months beyond maternity leave where they may not be progressing the same way, or getting the same experience, or even working at all in a few cases. (Add to that, these jobs can be well paid ones because they are dangerous.)

So just as a result of the physical implications of preganncy and infant care, women often will be the ones whose work and career would be affected. Which means the man's career may well be more stable, or likely to progress more, or better paid.

My job in the army for example was not, as a matter of policy, affected by my pregnancy, and they were pretty careful about not negatively treating women on maternity leaves - and men got and took good parental leaves too sometimes. But I couldn't take that course I needed - it wasn't safe - and I couldn't be promoted without it - because it wasn't safe. I have four kids - that was always something that was going to have a significant career impact and meant my husband would likely earn more. At which point, it did not make sense for him to leave his stable, well paid, more demanding job, it made more sense for me to be the flexible parent.

Aside from that, I think women are probably somewhat more likely to want to do that, compared to men. The mother child bond in infancy is pretty powerful - I've known quite a few women to plan to return to work, but who rethink their priorities after being home with an infant. I don't think that is something that we have some sort of moral or social obligation to discourage.

Snort at there's no gender pay gap, yeah I'm totally going to google the shit out of that video right now...

Some other random thoughts:

When people talk about free/cheap childcare my thoughts very much turn to the professionals - overwhelmingly women - who look after our children. Does their gender pay gap not matter? Within the current system, reducing the cost of childcare either means reducing ratios, or paying these women less. Not something I'm particularly keen on as a feminist.

Men HAVE to step up here. The numbers of men taking shared family leave - which they are now entitled to take, paid - are woefully small. Can't be assed googling but it's well below 10%. That would be a start.

There's also a class/career expectation issue at play here. It made sense for me to not earn very much when my DCs were small because it kept me on the career track - I had that long-term view and was promoted twice before DS went to school. If you're not in that kind of job, the long term view of 'this will be worth it' maybe doesn't happen. I agree all women need to be thinking about their pensions but there's a real, huge, and very general knowledge gap, younger people just aren't taking the pension planning message on board.

Never heard a feminist say this before

But as far as overarching true things, one of them is, someone needs to take care of children, and families with children, even older kids, need at least some flexibility with work. For a number of reasons women may be more likely to end up in that role than men,

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.

In decent relationships, through sheer force of bad habit, I expect. In bad relationships because they simply know that their partner (or ex) will not under any circumstances contribute.

Barring long term work to change societal attitude (which should definitely be done) I think the only thing that can be done in the case of the former is extensive, detailed conversations about how the money will work if and when you have children.

In the latter, much higher, better policed and enforced child maintenance rules with fewer get-outs. My working suggestion is as follows:

1. work out the minimum it costs to raise a child per week in this country, including full time childcare (based on the cost of outside help but which of course can be provided by the RP instead - in either case the NRP should be paying for that childcare) and halving it - that is the minimum figure any totally non-resident parent must pay in to a pot each week regardless of circumstance. Any failure to do so accrues as a debt owed to the state (even if ultimately it would be paid to the other parent) on par with unpaid tax owed. The figure can be pro-rated if residence is split (unevenly) over a week, month or year.

1. If you earn above a certain amount, once you have paid that minimum you also pay a percentage of your income above that amount to reflect what would our ought to be the circumstance were you still living as a family.

I'm sure there are many flaws in the above but it seems to me that that is the point we should be starting from, not "what can you afford at the present time?" since children's needs to eat and be taken care of can't be paused until you've sorted yourself out.

(I have no skin in the child maintenance game, believe it or not!)

And the thing about splitting leave, to me, is patronising social engineering. It's all about making sure men and women, as a group, have the same kinds of lives. So the goal is paper equality, lack of disparities around the things they happen to measure.

@FantaOra
''Free childcare'' is childcare funded by the taxpayer, just as 'free schooling' is.

This works for women for several reasons;

• it means they aren't dependent on financially abusive men.
• it makes society responsible for raising the next generation.

But as far as overarching true things, one of them is, someone needs to take care of children, and families with children, even older kids, need at least some flexibility with work. For a number of reasons women may be more likely to end up in that role than men, and tha shouldn't be a problem. Unpaid work is an important part of a functioning society but we don't really plan for that.

I've often thought that a better model might be for more families to have an at home parent, who might often be a mum, and children from working parent families would send their kids to these kinds of small private care options. So more people home in the community which makes it less isolating, more flexibility in society overall for some people to take on unpaid work, (or work like in home childcare.) But this would depend on changing the emphasis on work and supporting unpaid work in some way.

I think the question is also why is it alway, or nearly always, the woman who is the lower earner and whose wage doesn’t cover childcare?

No gender pay gap my arse.

Errol, I totally agree, the pressure on women to always be the one to pick up the caring responsibilities and the presenteeism pressure on men at work is harmful to both. My DH took a day off yesterday as our key worker space suddenly stopped at school and I had to work. He and the kids had a brilliant day, he brought a new energy to the homeschool (that I’d long run out of) and seemed lighter at teatime just to have been away from work for the day.

If things were more balanced I wonder if the whole work force might be more productive, especially as many people are really just approaching peak performance in their career field around the time they become parents. Enabling workers to balance/share caring responsibilities (like pp described in Ireland) would prevent a massive skills/experience drain, which impacts on society and employers.

(It might help to level the shortage of certain skills such as dermatologists and STEM teachers for example)

Childcare comes out of the household budget but in reality someone has to pay the bill if you don't have joint finances (one paying the childcare, the other paying the mortgage works for many people)

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 wage would not have covered the cost of childcare. That would mean that if I worked, as a household, we would have less money. As we were poor, that would mean we would not be able to cover essential bills - food, heating, housing. So that is what many women mean by they can’t afford to work.

In a joint household income, you can imagine it as coming from one of both incomes, but the reality is if you can’t afford to live on a lower income, you can’t afford it.

True feminism is the fight for equal rights. I've never met a woman who claims to be a feminist that would take that stance on paying for children.

Isn't not being able to afford to go back to work a pragmatic issue rather than a feminist one? I work, my husband does not, because that makes sense financially. The feminist issue I think is that generally women get paid less so this pragmatic arrangement is more common the other way around.

As far as I know, the norm for two-parent families is that childcare is another expense from the family pot, so ‘Men should pay for childcare!’ doesn’t really make sense.
More challenging is the argument that both parents continuing to work (even though it brings in less money than one taking time out) can be sensible long term, but not every family can afford to do this, or actually would want to.
My own utopia would have the majority of men and women working part time with affordable childcare to fill the gap. But I’m sure someone will be along to tell me why that’s rubbish.

Choices aren't made in a vacuum; in addition to a plethora of individual circumstances and preferences, there's society and culture, legislation, taxation considerations whether good or bad etc.

When we had our DD, DH would have liked to have more than a few days off but that wasn't possible back then. We were fortunate enough to be able to afford me going back to work FT after maternity leave - I can't remember which of us paid our nanny's salary, but certainly it wasn't considered as anything other than a joint responsibility. However, when DD started school, having no local family for support, it was clear that two full time jobs wouldn't work. In an ideal world we'd have both dropped our hours. In practice - my company was amenable to me working half time (being aware of the importance of retention of staff) though they'd have been happier with 3/4; no way on earth would DH's have considered him dropping his hours to allow for him to take his full share of parental responsibilities. So, long hours in a stressful job, he ended up with a health problem and downshifting to consultancy .... lose/lose for him and his company.

These old fashioned societal attitudes aren't good for anyone. But to move away from them - well, some companies like mine can see the longer view and manage a win/win. I don't know how others can be dragged into the 21st century - other than somehow via legislation and taxation levers.