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 think for the wages childcare workers get they do a lot more work and have a lot more responsibility than lots of other jobs however they are very poorly paid. I think if any subsidies are available they definitely should be used to subsidise childcare staffs wages, however this wont happen as it was but now the cuts have happened they are back where they started.

I understand why childcare costs what it does but it's going to cost me £1000 to START sending my child to nursery. If I can't find it, I won't be able to afford to go back to my job.

There should be a student loan type situation for parents of young children so they will definitely be able to return to work.

A thousand pounds to start nursery is beyond our means. That's two months rent! My husband has had to take an unexpected £6000 p/a pay cut this summer. I've been in tears nearly every day for weeks now worrying about how I can possibly get my child into nursery.

We'll be ok once he's in and we've got two wages coming in again but I don't know how we're going to eat or pay the rent until then.

I'm trying to do the right thing and keep my job, keep paying my taxes and support myself and my family :(

Having children is a choice and you need to be prepared to financially support them. Everyone knows that childcare costs are high and they should factor them in when deciding to have children not moan about the costs after.

If you choose to have children, they you should pay for them nobody else.

Does that include nursery provision, schooling, vaccinations, dental appts, maternity pay, ante-natal care and all the rest of it happymummy?

Oh and re the London thing.Try living in the South West with expensive housing(thanks to 2nd home owners),limited work possibilities and low wages. Most of us have family down here and battle to stay because we want to,you don't hear many moaning though and expecting the rest of the country to subsidy their choices.

Gosh when you look at it like that Sardine parents have it pretty good in the Uk and really shouldn't be moaning at the cost of their childcare.

Perhaps countries with all this cheaper childcare pay more for other things such as healthcare.

Mila, plenty of people in London only make minimum wage, £6-7 an hour.

Well in France I pay 35 pence an hour for childcare and 6 euros for a doctor's visit. I'm not moaning about either of those, I think it's very reasonable.

The Guardian article noted that UK childcare costs are about the highest in the world. Is that really not worth complaining about?

I think it is a little pointless demanding that the government do something about childcare costs unless you can come up with a viable solution. And I would imagine that if there was an easy solution, someone would have come up with it by now!

I have been musing over this and I am now wondering if it actually IS in the government's interests to reduce childcare costs and get more SAHPs back into work. Disclaimer - I am not an economist and I have very little understanding of economics. But I wonder if the government's reasoning on this issue is likely to be something along these very simplified/monopoly-money lines:

There are 50 single, childless school leavers/graduates entering the job market. Each claims JSA at a cost of £1 per annum.

There are 50 SAHMs who would enter the job market but for prohibitive childcare costs. 25 are on benefits at a cost of £1 per annum. 25 are entirely supported by their working partner at no cost to the taxpayer.

The current cost of having all 100 people unemployed is therefore £75 per annum and there is no income.

There are 50 jobs which would lead to tax payments of £1 per annum.

If the SAHMs remain priced out of the job market then all 50 jobs go to JSA claimants. The taxpayer saves £50 per annum on the benefits bill and receives £50 per annum in tax payments. The bill is therefore reduced to £25 pa and there is an income of £50 pa. The government are in profit to the tune of £25 pa.

If the SAHMs are subsidised then the best case scenario for the government is that the jobs still all go to 50 of the 75 benefits claimants, leading to the £25 pa profit position once again. BUT if all 25 supported SAHMs get jobs then only 25 benefits claimants will do so. The benefits bill reduces by £25 pa and there is again an income of £50. The net profit is zero.

If you then say that the cost of the subsidy is £25 pa and that would also be the cost of supporting JSA claimants to find jobs then the money would, from a purely financial point of view, be better spent on the JSA claimants than the SAHMs, some of whom are not a cost to the taxpayer anyway.

Now I know the real ecomonics are a little more complex than this! I know there are all sorts of factors at play like the type of jobs people apply for, the amount of tax paid, where people spend their money etc etc. But I would be interested to know what anyone more economically clued up than me thinks about this. Is there any merit in the theory that it simply might not be in the government's financial interests to subsidise childcare?

Mila what else would you like to cancel?

Care for the elderly?
Bus passes for the elderly?
Non means tested state pension?
JSA?
NHS?

The ideas of what get paid for and what do not are based on nothing more than tradition and familiarity. They are not set in stone. Lots of other countries do it differently and they think their way is normal and see things that we have as ridiculously generous.

The fact that people get so outraged at the idea that childcare be paid from gross salary is funny really. It's such a minor thing but it gets some people really worked up! OH MY GOD we can't help people that would be so wrong wouldn't it.

And the suggestion that people stop having children. That's going to help the country isn't it.

kungfupanda you miss out the aspect of social engineering that can be achieved by different policies.

Sardine we already are helping people.

Also the fact is many mums who work wish to be SAHMs but can't.Personally if I was going to start dishing out financial help to families my priority would be to the mothers that want to be with their kids and care for them themselves.

How about government help for SAHMs or don't they count?

Mila, as I noted earlier, a lot of families with a SAHP do get subsidised by qualifying for tax credits and benefits because of a lower household income.

I think there should be more support for ALL parents. For example, I think there should be more programmes to help SAHMs re-train for entering the workforce and things like that.

What a strange question

Of course they count.

In an ideal world, women (and it is women) who want to comtinue to work would be able to afford to do so, and women who wanted not to work would be able to afford to do so.

At the moment the govt is pushing highly qualified women who want careers out of the workplace and into the home, while simultaneously insisting that single parents go out to work even though they will not break even when they do so.

Meanwhile families where the men would like more childcare time are denied it by the way our society and workplaces are structured.

It makes no sense and is a poor use of teh resources of this country.

SardineQueen - I missed out a lot of things that I don't understand well enough to comment on.

But I would like to know if this is a possible factor that makes it unlikely that childcare will ever be subsidised across the board.

Dreaming that is only very low income families,what about Joe average?Families with SAH perents are going to get clobbered when CB goes for those earning over what was it 36K?So basically those families on 2 incomes earning best part of 80K get to keep CB and need help with childcare bills too .

Many,many mums not just those on very low incomes would prefer to care for their dc themselves,I fail to see why they're less deserving. There just isn't the money to go round to help all families and I really don't see why families with 2 working parents are more deserving than those with 1.

Part of the problem is that the min wage is just not high enough in parts of the country. The London Living Wage (calculated as the bare min to live on) is way more than minimum wage.

kungfu I mean that when they sit down and work out where to spend the money and what on, it is driven by ideology rather than logical calculations like yours.

Also the good thing about forcing women back into the home is that many of them don't claim benefits so it doesn't show as the unemployment rates increasing (as someone mentioned upthread) which is a big deal for the govt. a well as meeting their ideology about family etc.

£36K is a pretty reasonable income though. i know loads of people who get by on one income less than that. I don't think people in top tax bracket are "joe average" at all.Joe average is on twenty-something

Sorry the gov are not pushing highly qualified women out of the work place,how ridiculous.Children have 2 parents who come to their own conclusions and aren't told what to do by a government.I know many SAH dads where we live.

The fact is when you decide to ttc instead of sticking ones head in the sand and thinking the childcare bills will pay themselves couples should be saving or planning their careers accordingly,many do.My sister and her dh both dropped one day and share a nanny 3 days a week.

Instead of shelling out money the gov should be making flexible working hours mandatory everywhere.

The reason this country is in the mess it is is because people just don't bother planning for anything financially,think they can have it all then moan when paying for it becomes painful. Anybody taking on a big mortgage,loan or rent lease should think very carefully re finances before they have children not after. It's financial suicide not to and applies to everything not just childcare.

36K doesn't go far when you pay higher income tax,pay a stonking mortgage for a tiny house,high utility bills,high food prices and don't receive CB,tax credits or anything else.

Why stop at childcare maybe we should be helping out with food bills too.

"Also the good thing about forcing women back into the home is that many of them don't claim benefits so it doesn't show as the unemployment rates increasing (as someone mentioned upthread) which is a big deal for the govt. a well as meeting their ideology about family etc."

Yes! That is what I meant. Is there any real motivation, even allowing for idealogy, for the government to remove any of the childcare burden from the individual?

You think that women who want careers should have one child or two only?

This stuff is just bizarre.

Who wants a situation where the vast majority of successful women are childless?

Oh hold on that's pretty much what we've got.

£36K is a high income, much higher than average.

Have a look at this table here for how income is distributed in the UK.

Is this supposed to be a boohoo for higher rate taxpayers thread? Christ and you have been accusing others of whinging