Which is more important: affordable childcare or decent pay for child carers?

[Youdoyoubabe]

It seems that we cannot have both.... without tax bills going up massively.

It needs to be both.

Lots of qualified and experienced childcare professionals are leaving childcare for other jobs- better paid and less responsibility. Nurseries are struggling to recruit. Childcare and education courses at colleges aren't running due to lack of interest. Nurseries are closing- this will just get worse. Those still open often have huge waiting lists. Parents will struggle to find childcare for their children- affordable or otherwise!

Well at the moment theirs neither. I would have found nursery fees more palatable if the staff were getting paid fairly at least.

Children having a decent start to life which for some is absolutely in a structured setting benefits society, as does making it affordable for parents (mainly women though let's be honest) remain in the workplace. There should be some reasonableness applied ie perhaps first child funded then tapers off or something but it's very small minded to say it doesn't benefit me so I don't want to pay. Plenty of tax payer money is squandered on stuff we don't personally all benefit from.

Both. Of course we should pay for it with our taxes; keeping women in the workforce (and financially independent) is good for society. Only a twat would not see that.

They’re equally important.

We’re planning a move abroad, there childcare is capped at around £140 per month as it is heavily subsidised, it is also a respected profession.

I’m a higher rate tax payer in the UK, if I earned the same I would be taxed at 36.5% of my income. I will be paying less tax, paying less childcare, we only use childcare two days a week yet we’ll still make a decent saving.

Which is why the government get away with forcing nurseries to accept below the viable costs....the state run nurseries near me were closed this year as they couldn't afford to keep them open alternatives are the truss scheme of upping ratios to double what they are now so reducing quality .....which is how schools do it with one qualified teacher to 13 3 year olds....but qualifications in teaching don't include nappies, sharing, nurturing, teaching dressing

Tax free childcare.....gives you the 20% so pay in 8 draw out 10

I’m in the Netherlands and we do have strict ratios of children to carers here.
Childcare is being funded by the state (and the taxpayers).

The amount you pay is dependent on your income. Which also has a downside, if one partner has a big income and the other a small income, it could be you have to pay so much there isn’t much left of the smaller incone.

We can have both, lots of other countries manage it.

The question is poorly formulated.

The question is: why does the uk offer neither? And what could the government do about that but isn’t willing to?

@mummyh2016

Why wow? It's a fair question. I took the financial hit of stopping working for 8 years to raise my children, by not spending money on things people consider essential like 2 modern cars, mobile phones, pay tv, streaming, gym, paid baby classes, new clothes (nothing wrong with second hand), kids not sharing a bedroom, etc. we lived on around £30k salary and that included paying the mortgage at about £750 a month.

Why should I now pay for childcare for other people's children beyond the preschool (15 hours a week) we had funded? I'm fine with supporting very low income but not those earning up to £100k

I don't know why massive coprorations are not instructed to offer subsidised on site nurseries. It's a thing elsewhere in the world. There should be a mandate that if an organisation has more than (say) 500 employees fte, then it has to offer a nursery/creche facility monday-friday 8-6 for a discounted fee and cover the remaining costs.

When was this? 35k combined income is low for raising a family, even before you consider the "extras" you went without.

An economics podcast I listen to said some parts of the USA were looking at childcare loans as an option, they sounded a bit like the student finance we have. It's an interesting idea which might help but could cause as many problems as it solves.

Haha all those things, absolutely standard for two working parents to go without all that stuff, that doesn’t look like any especial sacrifice on your part from my POV.

my MIL goes on about “lifestyle choices” wrt two working parents - as though they are all after multiple foreign holidays a year or something. The fact is you could afford to go down to one salary and did.

Is it bad to work ? This sounds like it is 🤔

If people are talking about “I took eight years out” as something that happened in the past, then they are clearly so far removed from current childcare experiences that their view is pointless.

I pay via taxes for loads of stuff I won’t ever use, but it’s the right thing to do

I wonder if it would be tax neutral in that if less people leave the workforce, more tax would be raised particularly if the idea that you keep progressing your career is true.

I see going out to work as a choice. I stayed home with mine, ate cheaply and bought second hand. I started a career after this. I did not carry on working, after starting a family, as the childcare costs would have made it not worth it and (most importantly) I wanted to stay home with them.

It feels like an awful system where kids are farmed out to keep the workers producing, to get more money to buy more stuff. I don't want to fund that.

I’m not sure the views that can be summarised as ‘well I had to make sacrifices so I could choose to stay at home because my husband’s salary was low for being a sole earner with multiple dependents so I don’t see why anyone should get any help at all with childcare’ are really relevant to anything.

The problem there is that the man didn’t earn enough for a comfortable SAHM family lifestyle. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with making sure childcare is affordable, since they were not going to use childcare anyway - whatever funding was available.

I think it’s about educating women, so they aren’t by default rhe lower earner in the majority of cases, don’t put themselves in vulnerable positions, and are less and less forced into unemployment as they have had kids they can’t afford child care for and are the lower earner.

and that education needs to extend to financial,pensions, contributions, asset (home) ownership , the protection that marriage does and does not give.

if also educate more on what a healthy relationship works. So when a woman decides to have a child, she does so as an equal partner, fully informed on the implications and her options, and the benefits and negatives of those options, as well as all the financial implications, short and longer term, from mat leave, to all child care subsidies, to career break implications, to costs. And can make a balanced fully informed decision

as the generations move on, more and more young women are becoming better informed and making better decisions that don’t leave them vulnerable , but we are a long way from having this sorted.

the proliferation of threads on here from women who have made decisions that have left them so vulnerable, believing love will last forever, it’s very sad, for me it’s not so much about costs as about educating and empowering women . Men don’t have these issues so much and it’s time we supported women so they don’t either.

Ah. A trad wife who wants to ensure no one is allowed to make choices that don’t fit that worldview. 👍

if also educate more on what a healthy relationship works. So when a woman decides to have a child, she does so as an equal partner, fully informed on the implications and her options, and the benefits and negatives of those options, as well as all the financial implications, short and longer term, from mat leave, to all child care subsidies, to career break implications, to costs. And can make a balanced fully informed decision

Why just educate women in this?

@crossstitchingnana I repeat: it's not a lifestyle choice. I work to live.

If we go off your username, your generation had a completely different set of economic circumstances. You clearly have no idea what life is like for us now, and no desire to understand.

loads Of families with two working parents eat cheaply and buy second hand. That is normal, it’s not an especial sacrifice in itself. You could afford to live on one salary, that’s all it is. I’m glad you could make that choice, many people can’t either way.

Depends who’s paying.