Does everyone think childcare should be paid for?

[Cococomellon]

I have seen a lot of posts in social media about the cost of childcare, that it should be free and all the reasons in favour of that such as allowing both parents to work and the impact on the economy.

I can see how this would be a benefit. I have a young child and pay for childcare but I planned for this and it is not a surprise to me.

Who pays for this "free" childcare? Is there spare money the government has squirrelled somewhere? Should we all pay more taxes? Will the nhs get even less funding? Schools?

Perhaps I am just very right wing as I don't see to see the counter- arguments but I'm sure many people (some who don't have children) don't want to pay for others children to go to nursery?

That’s why I said in most cases…🙄 far too many what ifs and maybes on that one.

People can have a percentage tax free costs and parents get free hours at certain ages. So in fact my taxes are already going towards under 5s education/development. Also I worked as a nursery nurse for £3 a hour many years ago so I do value their care and development.

I actually said in my post that I’m not sure why I don’t agree. Just a gut feeling. I think maybe I’m against a blanket of covering childcare costs for all that I disagree with when some people can actually afford it.

Unlike many on this thread I do absolutely agree with the policy of deprived children getting free childcare at an early age. It’s not for the parents it’s for the child’s development

How os it unfair if that child can grow up to be an educated, fully functioning member of society?

There is plenty of money to fund this.
It isn't done because the government doesn't want to.

They'd have to cut back on the money grabs and pet projects, which they'll never do.

Plus how is it illogical when an enormous amount of research suggests it works?

Childcare should be free paid for by taxation. This allows both parents to work and thereby pay tax. If both parents would prefer to work then society gets the benefit of their labour. Childcare professionals look after multiple children so there is a benefit of economies of scale. Raising a child is a benefit for the whole of society and the burden of this should not fall solely on the lowest earner parent, usually the mother.

Do you honestly honestly believe this? @ouch321 you specifically mentioned you pay for other peoples’ children to go to school: when you find yourself in a position to go to a&e I presume you’ll choose not to, as you didn’t want to pay for the doctors and nurses education?

and @Winterpetal a slippery slope - yes people choose to have children (rapidly declining birth rate so thank god they choose to) but people also choose to smoke, drive over the speed limit, ignore lumps, go paintballing. Would you deny them help your taxes?

nurseries differ - some are very nice, and some not so nice. I’m happy to pay a lot for my child to go to the nursery I want them to go to - if it wasn’t subsided when he reaches 3 I’d have to quit work and pay thousands and thousands less in tax each year. It makes sense to subsidise.

I have 2 toddlers under 3

I think that children are essentially the next generation of working adults and society. To me it makes sense that the government should invest in them from the start. Low income children are at higher risk of not having facilities/nutrition/development opportunities from a young age through no fault of their own and families are more likely to be low income and struggle if childcare isn’t affordable.

I think it’s a bit hypocritical for the government to fund so much for elderly but so little for children. Before anyone starts wielding their pitchfork screaming ‘well people shouldn’t have kids they can’t afford’ at what age exactly does the child become a person in their own right and not simply the ‘fault’ of their parents? I mean 95yo Doris is costing the country £500k+ a year in care and NHS costs (never had a job because that’s how it was in her day she stayed home) and that’s fine…but someone suggests 2yo Margot’s daycare should be subsidised and ‘shouldn’t have had kids you couldn’t afford’ is thrown around like Margot isn’t actually a person who deserves anything and is simply her mums ‘fault’.
I mean Doris had parents too, maybe they shouldn’t have had her if they couldn’t afford to leave enough in their will for her future care to be paid for.

Scandinavian countries have a much more holistic approach to young families which produces a much happier and healthier society. It feels like the U.K. get very cross at the thought of kids being given anything other than by parents

Yes there is a sense of entitlement to help. Would you be happy only your taxes go to your families healthcare? Or would you like us all to chip in so they can get better healthcare?

works the same way with childcare - as I’m sure you’re aware your child going to nursery benefits them greater than if they were stuck at home all day. Which in turn will benefit us all. (You paying more taxes, spending more and arguably your child doing well at school and beyond).

My kids are well beyond childcare age but I think we really do need high quality subsidised childcare where staff are properly paid. (I think subsidised rather than free, but very affordable, maybe cost would be related to parents’ salaries in some way?)

That would mean people who want to go to work wouldn’t be forced to give up and instead would work the hours they choose, and pay tax on their salary, which would make them and their families better off. There would be fewer staff shortages across the economy, including in nurseries, which would become a more attractive career option. And grandparents wouldn’t feel they had to step in to provide free care. Really can see this being an investment that pays for itself. Don’t know why we wouldn’t.

Absolutely agree. Because it isn’t healthcare and the kids are “playing” all day, people don’t get it.

Doris didnt work a day in her life and is costing £500k (nothing wrong if you don’t work).

Daisy needs a good start in life and might earn £500k a year one day!

completelt agree we should invest in our future bus drivers, teachers, doctors, gardners, accountants, carers, the list goes on

This isn’t meant to be goady btw I’m just using examples to show how I don’t understand the train of thought. How one scenario is totally fine whilst the other is detestable to people

Its like it’s ok for adults to cost the government money but not small children. Regardless of the fact that 30/40 years from now society will be dependent on those small children

Lots of countries do have highly subsidised childcare Canada/France/ Netherlands /Scandinavian countries are some of them. When I had DC I was earning £40K but was married so no childcare help for me. He was a higher earner and by the time no 2 came along it made no financial sense for me to work.

Standard story of divorce blah de blah. I earn about £24k now in a flexible job and get UC top ups. If I still earned 40k I’d get no UC.

yes I know I should of stayed in work and hindsight is a wonderful thing. Even wraparound care is rubbish where I am though no breakfast club and after school childcare finishes at 5. No childminders.

If you want a healthy state pension pot you need to ensure the tax paying workforce will continue to be filled. Making it possible for people to have more than one child and then ensuring that child has good early years provision (as a recognised key foundation for later good attainment) makes fiscal as well as social sense.

What if both parents don’t want to work? By that I mean the woman as it’s not often an option for the man. We have moved towards a society where 2 wages are needed to raise children/run a home but IME a lot of women don’t really want this. This has been driven by rising house prices but also more women entering higher education and having careers. In my graduate class, having spent (or parents spent) tens of thousands on becoming qualified in a traditionally male subject, out of the 10 women I am the only one (we are all still in touch) working anything like full time.

I think it was probably easier when women hoped to find a rich man to look after them and their children tbh.

Plus I also very much believe that we as a society pay it forward. We pay for children to have an education because we ourselves were educated. In the future I will want to afford to retire, and those children whose childcare I paid for will by then be paying taxes. And so on.

It's true people aren't being incentivised to have children but that's probably not a bad thing with climate issues.

I appreciate people have to have children for society as a whole to carry on but we are still having far too many children purely because people see it as their right

By the time most under 35 retire there won’t be a state pension, not like there is currently anyway, why else do you think the government enforce paying into private pensions?

If child care, education, health care, old-age/disabled adult care are all free. And housing, food, all living costs for those not working are free, (which they are in the form of benefits and old age pensions). Then who is contributing???

Nonetheless, those children who are born should have a decent start, in a family that can afford a decent quality of living. It’s not fair to penalise kids for the climate excesses of the top 1%. Research suggests birth rates are slowing/declining around the world - any growth is really because we are living longer - and also that those who have the highest carbon emissions are the richest. Not subsiding childcare isn’t an effective way to affect their behaviour.

I think it should be heavily subsidised. Staying at home with your children should be a privilege IMO and working should be the norm, in reality a lot of women stay home or work part time in very low paid jobs that work around their kids because they can't afford childcare costs.

Plus the government already does subsidise childcare costs quite a lot with universal credit and tax free childcare but I don't think a lot of people know about it and they don't pay the costs upfront which means unless you have a months childcare fees up front you can't afford to go back to work, which kind of defeats the object.

Of course if it's a choice between funding the NHS and this then I'd choose the NHS but the government pays for lots of things which are far less important IMO. I think they could fund these things properly, they just don't care to.

The countries that make childcare free ir very heavily subsidised (max a couple of hundred pounds per month) i.e. most of our comparable European neighbours plus some others do not do so out of altruism. They do so because it's been proved by the data to be beneficial for society as a whole.

It increases tax revenue and productivity. In reduces inequality. It stops the waste of many women's skills and aids their career progression, which then leads to more women later in life in senior positions and it's also been proved that companies with Boards with a mix of men and women in executive positions produce more profit and are more stable than those with men dominating, therefore greater ecomonic stability and more tax take. Higher productivity. Less stress on marriages so lower divorce rates, lower gender paygap, better example set to children, etc etc.

It's a no brainer basically and pays for itself many times over. That is why sensible countries subsidise it almost entirely/ fully cover the cost. The reason this doesn't happen in the UK is the same reason we have the lowest productivity in the G7, the reason we had Brexit, the reason the NHS and education are collapsing, the reason our infrastructure is falling apart and the reason that there were no plans in place for food and energy security: no long-term planning from successive Governments, and an electorate that doesn't demand it or hold them to account for not doing it.

Everyone who earns more than around £12,750 a year pays tax. Including many pensioners - and no doubt a fair number of children.

But also, few suggest these are all free. Affordable would be a good start.

Childcare is ALWAYS paid for. Either by someone being paid to do it or by someone not working in a paid job in order to do it.

We have a country where the birth rate has been steadily dropping, and where we are not meeting the replacement rate, and have not been for some time. On top of this we have a major economic crisis, and the government is searching for ways to get economically inactive people into work to prop up the economy, and the tax coffers.

A significant proportion of low and none active people economically will be women with care responsibilities, either for children or older adults. Either they can't afford to work or can't make it work with other commitments. Getting those women back into work requires investment in the social infrastructure they need to support them with their responsibilities. That means childcare, carers, adult social care and more. Not just subsidised, but solid investment to provide high quality services, which are well paid, and become valued career paths for the people that work in them. (A woman can dream, right?)

I have kids, and I have my own opinions of the eye-watering cost of the childcare I've used for my two. I think we can and should do a lot more in this country to support families, and especially children.