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

[FantaOra]

I am serious in this question. Women seem to deduct the cost of childcare from their own career or earning contribution to the family budget and I don't get why? Why do women do that? It seems to me by doing this we participate in the perception of women's income as subordinate to men's income. Tell me why?

Why shouldn't the state provide high-quality childcare for any family that wants/needs it and recoup the cost from taxes?

And, as a feminist, I also defend the right of women who want to raise their own children.

Well, OP, I don't think your position is particularly feminist. It's just a position that sees people, citizens, in terms of their value as paid labour.

@Coyoacan

Why shouldn't the state provide high-quality childcare for any family that wants/needs it and recoup the cost from taxes?

And, as a feminist, I also defend the right of women who want to raise their own children.

I've never been a huge fan of this option. I don't think it's really pro-woman, pro-children, or pro-family. It's pro-capital. Lets get as many people as possible in the paid labour force, contributing to GDP, and making sure the value of their labour can be pushed up to the 1%. Goodness knows we wouldn't want people doing work and keeping the whole value of it themselves. If women are going to do childcare it had better be for money.

As soon as the state starts providing childcare for all, the way the numbers pencil out makes it much more difficult for any family to justify it's adults not working for wages, and often FT for wages. It also tends to affect how things like housing are priced if two income families are normative, which is not only not ideal for any family that wants to manage on one income, it's bad for families that have to.

Well yes, Goosefoot, but a lot of us are not good at being SAHM, even if we have the money to do it. I was lucky being able to study and then work part-time while my dd was young. I was able to pick her up from her nursery at 2:30 every day. I don't think I would have been such a good mother if I had only looked after her. My mother was a very brainy woman who was forced by her husband and 1950s mores to stay at home and was eternally depressed.

I have the utmost respect for SAHM who have a vocation for it.

This is why I'm so ambivalent about calling myself a feminist, in spite of having had an ultra-feminist as a mother.

It was my decision to be a SAHM. I did not want to go back to work after the birth of my daughter, my second child. I had been a single part-time working mother for my first child and I did not enjoy the working (outside the home) part of it. I felt I had missed out.

Staying at home for my second child of course meant huge financial losses on the face of it, as an employee. See, my husband and I both had exactly the same qualification, and had exactly the same employer to begin with. When I chose to stay home, he rose up and up and up, with pay increases and status, and I stayed down.

I didn't go back to that job, due to a variety of circumstances, till I was 60, and then only part time . But even if I had gone back full time, to the same employer, his salary would have almost tripled mine by that time.
Then he died, and I was a widow, and a pensioner. That was three years ago.

Looking back, I would not have changed a thing. It was my choice to be a SAHM and I much prefer looking after a small kid than sitting at a desk dealing with difficult clients, which would have been the other option.

My great, huge, luck when I see the comments here is that my husband was German and we were in the German system. Which meant the taxation system took into account my stay-at-home status, and so did the pension system.

Now, as a widowed pensioner, I am financially better off than I've ever been in my whole life, whether single or married, and that's not even counting the money I get from self-employment.

It can be done, IF the system is accommodating and supports your choice, whatever it is, including the choice to stay at home for childcare. I do realise that for the women here it's much more difficult. But:

I wonder: if staying at home to look after one's own children did not have financial penalties, would more of us (women) choose to do it? Would we still think of it as the lesser choice?

Because that was my main problem as a SAHM -- ex-female-colleagues who insisted I my mind would go rusty at home, and that what I was doing was not as objectively worthy as what my husband was doing.

OP, if your point is that, instead of simply promoting affordable childcare and and flexible working as "pro women" policies, feminist organisations should be promoting the idea that childcare is equally the father's responsibility and changes in law and culture that encourage men to take time off/work flexibly then I agree with you.

If men are just as likely and have just as many rights to take time off for children then surely employers would stop discriminating against women as there would be just as high a "risk" that their male employees would take long periods of paternity leave or request flexible working.

Also, in relation to @Lamahaha s post above, I wonder whether, if becoming a sahp was more common for men also, it might be less likely to be seen as a "lesser choice"..

"Well, you can campaign for free/cheap better childcare or you can campaign to overthrow the patriarchy."

The trouble with promoting free/cheap childcare is that it hurts the (overwhelmingly) women who work in the sector.

Childcare is already notoriously badly paid in this country. "Free" childcare is already available in the form of the 30 "free" hours that the Government have underfunded so that childcarers must either subsidise it or charge parents for the difference.
It's a cynical trick because parents then blame the childcarers for not providing what they were promised.

Even more "free" childcare is going to affect badly paid women even more. This Government will never fund it adequately; quite the contrary. Childcare was one of the very first sectors to see cuts under Austerity. Only affects women and children, you see.

If feminists are arguing for state funded childcare surely that's reducing the burden on men and women? Not just 'absolving men of their responsibilities'.
I also think there is a narrative that staying at home to look after a child is a 'lesser option'. Being the one that has to to stay at home because childcare costs more than you earn is a lesser option, as is being the one that has to go to work because you earn more. They difference is the 'has to'. I think it's hurts men to be 'trapped' as the higher earner and it hurts women to be 'trapped' as the lower earner and I believe it would be better for children to be raised more equally between their parents.
Does the cost of childcare contribute to this dynamic? Yes. All the maths in the world won't make a woman earn more than a man if that's the fact of the matter or mean that childcare won't have a net reduction on the family income if the woman works if it's more than her wage.
If you have choices there are better financial choices you can make (eg taking pensions into account), or there are more equitable choices you can make (Father reduces hours and family take the financial hit).
If you don't have those choices it's unproductive to point fingers at mothers in those circumstances and say they just aren't seeing childcare as the male responsibility it should be.
The original wage gap is the problem, childcare costs higher than wages are a problem, patriarchal attitudes to the value of childcare is a problem both in expecting men who may be great SAHDs to work and women who may prefer to work to be SAHMs and also to look down on SAHMs as not making a valuable contribution to society.
If we're talking about holding Dads more financially responsible then I'd argue for reform of CM and raising awareness of the impact of time not working before I criticised how two parent families did their maths.

You're basically saying that feminist organisations commenting on events is condoning them and doing nothing.

There's seems to be a push at the moment to tell feminists that they are doing the wrong thing and they're not really feminist, or they don't really understand women.

It would be great for more men to take parental leave. Sadly, my colleagues have been surprised that DH and I have both taken leave.
But equally, doing nothing and hoping that men with deep societal views that assume children are women's responsibility will somehow wake up is foolish. At least with some pro women policies, those who don't wish to give up their job or sacrifice their career are in a position to have greater financial independence and that makes them less inclined to be beholden to a man who is paying all the bills.

What frustrates me about this is that people only do the short term calculation. They don't factor in the pension contributions, pay rises, career history, promotions, financial independence (priceless).

Until it's too late, and women find themselves with 10 years of no paid work, no personal savings, and the only option being minimum wage jobs.

I do want to scream "But what about what's best for you?!" when I read that women are a SAHM because "it was best for our family".

Great post Broomfondle (I always enjoy your posts btw)

You're setting up a straw-feminist, OP.

No feminist I have ever come across says on an individual level that it's only the women's income that childcare costs should be calculated against. Every single one has made the point that looking after children is a joint responsibility, with the costs and career costs to be looked at as part of the bigger picture involving both parents.

On a class level, no feminist I have ever come across has ever said childcare ought to be women's responsibility solely. What they may well have said is that as a matter of fact in the imperfect society we are part of childcare is seen by many people (including politicians and employers) as women's responsibility. Sometimes we try to improve things to get closer to the ought, sometimes we're in the situation of firefighting the detrimental effects of things as they currently are. Both are part of feminism.

Take the current pandemic as an example. It is a matter of "realpolitik" to point out that things like homeschooling during covid, or the prospect of schools not going back full time in September, will as a matter of fact affect women disproportionately. Therefore, regardless of how we think things ought to be, in a crisis like the current one we as feminists have to recognise that as things currently are women are going to lose their jobs in huge numbers unless we can persuade the government and employers to take action to help them.

(This incidentally was why the GMB union's capitulation to twitter TRAs in withdrawing their partnership with Mumsnet was so particularly awful.)

Actually I have been wondering recently about to what extent organisations pointing out how women are bearing the burden of childcare is negatively affecting women. It can reinforce stereotypes in a way that isn't helpful.

I also struggle with the way a lot of women's organisations have pushed for things like flexible working as a women's issue, as again it reinforces the idea that it's an option designed for women, fewer men take it up, it becomes self fulfilling.

I've spent my working life divided between the UK and Ireland and something I was really surprised to note was that in my own particular bubbles, the Irish fathers seemed to be stepping up more. And weirdly this was because of a much less established norm of working part-time or flexibly after children. V similar group of middle class right-on professionals in both places, with v involved fathers, but a norm in the UK of the women taking time out/working reduced hours and the men continuing as normal, and one in Ireland of both parents continuing full time. On the surface the UK had the more progressive option, which is certainly what I had assumed until I saw it in action, but what I saw was in Ireland women whose careers were equally valued and men who did half the childcare drop offs, vs women who slowly took on more of those burdens to the detriment of their own careers.

Again, not generalisable, but it feels a bit like the argument that every time you reinforce that someone is a woman it has a negative effect on how she is perceived professionally: the constant arguments that lack of affordable childcare is holding back women does reinforce the idea that women=childcare. I'm not sure I know what the alternative solution is, and I actually do strongly favour heavily subsidised state run childcare (with caregivers who are properly paid) but I think there is something to the argument that the debate is in part holding women back.

Also, in relation to @Lamahaha s post above, I wonder whether, if becoming a sahp was more common for men also, it might be less likely to be seen as a "lesser choice"..

Three of my female friends in Germany were the (outside the home) working partner but it was a financial decision all earned better than their dh.

In one case, he was a marine engineer, and they lived inland, and she was a teacher -- who are very well paid in Germany.
Another was also a teacher, and her husband was a civil engineer who had worked on oil-fields in Saudi Arabia -- again, little opportunities where we lived!
The third woman was a social worker in the civil service, with excellent prospects as well as health and pension benefits. Her husband was a freelance artist, and he worked from home.

I think all three of these women would, if they had the choice, preferred to be the one at home, but it just wasn't feasible.

I don't think the men felt that they had chosen the lesser option, or that others regarded them as lesser. Somehow, when men do it, childcare is seen as something heroic! Strange, that!

Somehow, when men do it, childcare is seen as something heroic!
I think it’s heroic when anyone does it FT. Especially me. 😉

I know exactly what you mean!
Drives me mad! Should be a shared cost.

Erm, no. I think it’s more of an issue when either the woman earns less than the cost of childcare (so it would be bad for the family finances if she went back to work) or where the family makes the decision that a SAHP is necessary and the woman earns less. In both cases the barrier to returning to work isn’t the cost of childcare, it’s women earning less than their husband. I don’t know if a single family with a SAHP where the higher earner became the SAHP.

@FantaOra surely, from your thinking, the fault lies with women who are foolish enough to have children with men who don't take responsibility for childcare. Evidently from your point of view you can't be a feminist if you pick a dud.

@OllyBJolly

What frustrates me about this is that people only do the short term calculation. They don't factor in the pension contributions, pay rises, career history, promotions, financial independence (priceless).

Until it's too late, and women find themselves with 10 years of no paid work, no personal savings, and the only option being minimum wage jobs.

I do want to scream "But what about what's best for you?!" when I read that women are a SAHM because "it was best for our family".

It's all well and good saying 'think long term' but in that short-term, people have to survive - bills have to be paid, food has to be bought.

If being at work means having less money because childcare needs to be paid for, saying that I'll get a pay rise in a few years doesn't feed my children right now.

I think the discussion on this (in general) focuses on women with 'careers' rather than 'jobs' and doesn't always take into account that minimum wage jobs don't pay as much as childcare costs.

Meh, maybe I'm being oversensitive.

www.theguardian.com/money/2014/may/31/costs-childcare-britain-sweden-compare

Old article on Swedish vs British Model. Sweden heavily state subsidises childcare, shared parental leave and has a flexible work culture for men and women. So possible to argue for both.

Most modern capitalist economies need kids to be born, both parents to work and women to return to work.

Most studies show women want to work at least part-time (probably a lot of men would like to work part time as well).

Women historically have always worked, only for a very small period in post war history in the west (when economy and wages were in the ascendent) did a large pool of women not work, including upper working class women and middle class women.

It was a very distinctive period, that can be over romanticised. Many women enjoyed being wives and mothers, other women felt hugely frustrated. Friedan's the Feminine Mystique - though based on the US context - was the great expose of educated, middle class women in a society with school systems and white goods to make housekeeping easier - just absolutely crumbling at the drudgery and boredom of modern motherhood.

Also what we would see as parenting today, very intense involvement in the lives of a small number of children, that is combinable with housekeeping, is light years away from even 50s parenting. My grandmother made 3 cooked meals a day, shopped daily, still had to hand sweep floors and carpets. She didn't play with my mum and her siblings at all - they went out to play in the back yards and on the streets. Noticeably the women in the late 60s and early 70s, staying at home with their kids, started to set up the playgroup structures to get them and their kids out of the house.

We've always had a joint account, and even though he has always been the higher and more consistent earner, what 'his' is mine; although I get it that not all couples operate in the same way, and that some men like to keep to rigidly separate and specifically demarcated accounts.

It depends who earns more. My friends do this the other way round, and it isn't viable for her DH to work as his mimimum wage job paid less than 2 x nursery costs.

No feminist I have ever come across says on an individual level that it's only the women's income that childcare costs should be calculated against. Every single one has made the point that looking after children is a joint responsibility, with the costs and career costs to be looked at as part of the bigger picture involving both parents.

That's why, again, I can't be counted as a feminist. I don't fit the narrative. I did absolutely consider childcare to be predominantly my domain, and this is how we organised our family life. Childcare was what I did best, and enjoyed more; earning money was what he did best and enjoyed more. It was never 50-50 everything. I didn't really like the job we both did: he did. He wasn't very good at baby stuff -- I was. When our daughter started at nursery school and school, I made all the arrangements, kept up to date with what was going on, and I was happy with that. He did things I hated, such as taxes and all bill paying and accounting. He also did all the gardening (which ihe was very good at and loved) and yard work. I did most of the domestic stuff. I didn't mind.
I like a clear division of duties -- and it worked for us. It was good fortune that there was no financial penalty for this. Yes, I lost out on career opportunities, but frankly, I didn't care as my main interest and ambitions lay in the creative field, which I started when she was ten and which turned out very well.

Which doesn't mean that I didn't sometimes leave her to him while I went off to do something else, or even on holiday once with a friend, and he stayed with the kids.

He was a good father in spite of not having as much time with dc as I did. We all miss him...

ld article on Swedish vs British Model. Sweden heavily state subsidises childcare, shared parental leave and has a flexible work culture for men and women. So possible to argue for both.

I didn't read this article but it's my understanding that they HAVE to share childcare, maternity/paternity leave. That they can't delegate one person to take the entire leave, and that childcare is subsidized.

This would not have worked for my family, and I'm glad I wasn't living in Sweden when my children were small.

I did not want to return to my paid job under any circumstances. I wanted to be with my daughter. I wanted a traditional (ie old-fashioned) set-up and didn't feel diminished or penalised in any way because of it. Quite the opposite! Being at home while my daughter was at nursery school enabled me to put time into doing what I really wanted to do. I do hate one-size-fits-all solutions.