childcare costs

[splashymcsplash]

This is something that has been brought up time and time again.. childcare costs are very expensive, especially in London/SE.

AIBU to ask you to sign this e-petition so maybe, just maybe, something could be done about it?

I don;t know anyone who investigated all teh costs fully before getting pg. I don't know anyone who was able to reliably predict what it would do to their personal income.

I think you are a fool for thinking that people do this stuff, and I think you are a fool for thinking our society can function without lots of people having children, and I think you are a fool for suggesting that people should turn their backs on their communities and families and it will not do any harm.

Can't we all on MN agree to never say things like 'you never should have had children in the first place'?

I mean, seriously. What a ghastly thing to say.

SQ - Well more fool them! And I cannot believe that educated women in this day and age would not consider exactly what is involved. That just shows what a rosy tinted notion this country has of having children.

And I'm not saying only rich should have children, not at all. Many poorer families provide wonderfully for their children, it's how you cut your cloth.

Dreaming Bohemian it does seem to be what its come to, how lovely..

As for downsizing I live in a one bedroom flat which is very cheap for the area, there is nothing cheaper. My dd is nearly one, I would love to upsize to the luxury of a 2 bedroom but won't be able to afford to for quite some time.

MilaMae - so how much do you reckon does one need to save up before they can consider having offspring? Especially if they don't have a partner earning in the higher taxbracket?

How much do they have to factor in changes such as paycuts, redundancy, long-term illness?

fanjo I suppose that I was earning good money, as were my friends, and none of us realised how much our personal incomes would be hit.

I had no idea that my employer would refuse to let me go part-time (before I went on mat leave they said they would), so that was the big unknown that really hit us. Things like that happened to my friends too.

Sardine you know nothing about me.I have moved away during a very difficult period in my life because I had to,shit happens.

Sorry I fail to see how your personal issues(which I am sad to hear about)should have much bearing on this issue as a whole.

Most people don't have your problems they simply have childcare bills which are their responsibility nobody elses.

Ah look at this -- good timing!

www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/sep/07/childcare-costs-poorest-families-debt

excerpts:

Britain's poorest families are getting into debt because of the high cost of childcare, while a third are turning down jobs and 40% are considering leaving work because they cannot afford to pay for someone to look after their children, according to research.

Parents spend almost a third of their incomes on childcare ? more than anywhere else in the world, according to a study by Save the Children and the Daycare Trust.

Of those families in severe poverty, nearly half have cut back on food to afford childcare and 58% said they were, or would be, no better off working once childcare was paid for.

Cuts to the working tax credit have hit families struggling in severe poverty, the charities said. Four in 10 of those affected have considered giving up work because they will no longer earn enough to cover the childcare bill. The cut has added an average of £500 a year on to the childcare bill of low income families, the research found.

MilaMae - "most people with a mortgage" - I'm not one of them, we can't afford the deposit. Makes me probably even less worthy of children than you thought I was

It wasn't the outgoings that were a problem, it was what happened to my income. I think many women these days think that having children will not interfere with their careers, and that employers let you go parttime etc. That is not true, unfortunately, and comes as a genuine shock to a lot of people.

Extortionate childcare prices seem to be mainly in London and surrounding areas. A friend told me the other day they pay £80 a day. A fricking DAY for their child.

Where I live, thankfully well away from London, that would get me a week at a childminder.

I've never really seen why people like living in London. Yes ok I would get paid a bit more but that extra would more than be offset by the double sized mortgage for a tiny flat, extortionate childcare and eye watering parking charges.

You are sad to hear about?

Don't be silly.

You say that people should move. That will have a huge knock-on effect for individuals and for society as a whole. You will end up with ghettoisation, more tensions between rich and poor, community cohesion gone, families fragmented. The consequences would be dire.

I think it is a very very poor solution.

Family, friends, where they were brought up, communities, niceguy. That is why people live in london (most of them).

YABU

Childcare is valuable work and should be remunerated as such.

However - I think that it would be a very good thing for society if childcare was a) high quality and b) heavily subsidised by the state.

Arguments for this:

Currently many, many parents are excluded from work, especially full-time work, because of the difficulties of finding good quality, flexible and affordable childcare. These parents are a burden on the state and unemployment hurts families in the short, medium and long term.

There are large armies of mothers and fathers who are currently not working who have skills which are transferrable to the childcare sector. Training and employing these people in childcare would benefit them and their children.

The most disadvantaged children would benefit most from access to high quality childcare - there is a massive amount of evidence for this. And again - in the long term this would reduce the costs of later educational failure and crime in this particular social group.

As for the argument that having a child is like some sort of self-indulgent hobby and that all costs incurred should be shouldered by parents - actually the economy and the social structure would collapse if we didn't keep reproducing ourselves. Mothers and fathers are raising the next generation of workers at considerable personal cost and sacrifice - the state should be grateful to them.

ok, a proposal. I said earlier I would pay more tax (across my lifetime) in exchange for subsidised childcare (for the next 3 years). but no one else wants to.

so how about a student loan type thing that can be used to pay for childcare? that way it is individualised (I will pay back what I borrow), yet still better for me (the state can charge lower interest rates because it can borrow more cheaply). the state supports families to afford childcare at low cost to itself (admin fees + some small insurance against those who fail to repay the full amount).

Food is a basic need so what exactly are people surviving on if they have cut back on food to afford childcare. Either they were eating too much or the family is now starving or they have a pretty effed up idea of what is important in life!

Making childcare tax deductible is hardly an insane idea.

At the moment people's chauffeurs, gardeners, cleaners are tax deductible. But not childcare. Doesn't make sense to me and the way people talk on this thread it seems that parents are to be given as little help as possible, while wealthy working people can knock off stuff all over the place.

Bizarre.

"I've never really seen why people like living in London"

Because it's the cultural capital of the country and everything exciting, new and dynamic is here.

And the restaurants are better.

More than makes up for childcare costs for me.

I've never really seen why people like living in London.

Because some of us are from London!

Its what we know = what we love!

*fanjo I suppose that I was earning good money, as were my friends, and none of us realised how much our personal incomes would be hit.

I had no idea that my employer would refuse to let me go part-time (before I went on mat leave they said they would), so that was the big unknown that really hit us. Things like that happened to my friends too.*

That's a bit rubbish of your employer, could you have taken any action against them?

I like the idea of creches in the workplace, provided by the workplace, manned all day. Then your bub is looked after, you are immediately on hand if anything goes wrong, you can spend breaks with them and take them home with no rush to get to a minders/nursery. In an ideal world of course ;)

Voluptua you seem to lack imagination.

A family might go from meat twice a week to once, or once to none.
They might cut out fruit (fruit is very expensive)
They might reduce fresh vegetables and bulk out with beans / pulses instead
They might stop eating fish entirely (which is also generally very expensive)
And so on

"Either they were eating too much or the family is now starving or they have a pretty effed up idea of what is important in life!"

Really a spectacular lack of imagination.

...and what Spudulika said!

'Food is a basic need so what exactly are people surviving on if they have cut back on food to afford childcare. Either they were eating too much or the family is now starving or they have a pretty effed up idea of what is important in life!'

There are some serious Marie Antoinette complexes on this thread.

"At the moment people's chauffeurs, gardeners, cleaners are tax deductible."

Are they? Why?

Not read the rest of the thread just saw this bit and wondered how people do this.