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?

Childcare comes out of the household budget but in reality someone has to pay the bill if you don't have joint finances (one paying the childcare, the other paying the mortgage works for many people)

Errol, I totally agree, the pressure on women to always be the one to pick up the caring responsibilities and the presenteeism pressure on men at work is harmful to both. My DH took a day off yesterday as our key worker space suddenly stopped at school and I had to work. He and the kids had a brilliant day, he brought a new energy to the homeschool (that I’d long run out of) and seemed lighter at teatime just to have been away from work for the day.

If things were more balanced I wonder if the whole work force might be more productive, especially as many people are really just approaching peak performance in their career field around the time they become parents. Enabling workers to balance/share caring responsibilities (like pp described in Ireland) would prevent a massive skills/experience drain, which impacts on society and employers.

(It might help to level the shortage of certain skills such as dermatologists and STEM teachers for example)

I think the question is also why is it alway, or nearly always, the woman who is the lower earner and whose wage doesn’t cover childcare?

No gender pay gap my arse.

@Coyoacan

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.

Sure. I think there are a number of arrangements that can work in a family.

But as far as overarching true things, one of them is, someone needs to take care of children, and families with children, even older kids, need at least some flexibility with work. For a number of reasons women may be more likely to end up in that role than men, and tha shouldn't be a problem. Unpaid work is an important part of a functioning society but we don't really plan for that.

I've often thought that a better model might be for more families to have an at home parent, who might often be a mum, and children from working parent families would send their kids to these kinds of small private care options. So more people home in the community which makes it less isolating, more flexibility in society overall for some people to take on unpaid work, (or work like in home childcare.) But this would depend on changing the emphasis on work and supporting unpaid work in some way.

@FantaOra
''Free childcare'' is childcare funded by the taxpayer, just as 'free schooling' is.

This works for women for several reasons;

• it means they aren't dependent on financially abusive men.
• it makes society responsible for raising the next generation.

@Lamahaha

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.

Yes, this is what doesn't sit right with me about the Swedish model. It assumes everyone should get back to work, despite being generous and humane about time off. But I don't see that as negating the fact that they are assuming a capitalist view of work.

And the thing about splitting leave, to me, is patronising social engineering. It's all about making sure men and women, as a group, have the same kinds of lives. So the goal is paper equality, lack of disparities around the things they happen to measure.

In decent relationships, through sheer force of bad habit, I expect. In bad relationships because they simply know that their partner (or ex) will not under any circumstances contribute.

Barring long term work to change societal attitude (which should definitely be done) I think the only thing that can be done in the case of the former is extensive, detailed conversations about how the money will work if and when you have children.

In the latter, much higher, better policed and enforced child maintenance rules with fewer get-outs. My working suggestion is as follows:

1. work out the minimum it costs to raise a child per week in this country, including full time childcare (based on the cost of outside help but which of course can be provided by the RP instead - in either case the NRP should be paying for that childcare) and halving it - that is the minimum figure any totally non-resident parent must pay in to a pot each week regardless of circumstance. Any failure to do so accrues as a debt owed to the state (even if ultimately it would be paid to the other parent) on par with unpaid tax owed. The figure can be pro-rated if residence is split (unevenly) over a week, month or year.

1. If you earn above a certain amount, once you have paid that minimum you also pay a percentage of your income above that amount to reflect what would our ought to be the circumstance were you still living as a family.

I'm sure there are many flaws in the above but it seems to me that that is the point we should be starting from, not "what can you afford at the present time?" since children's needs to eat and be taken care of can't be paused until you've sorted yourself out.

(I have no skin in the child maintenance game, believe it or not!)

But as far as overarching true things, one of them is, someone needs to take care of children, and families with children, even older kids, need at least some flexibility with work. For a number of reasons women may be more likely to end up in that role than men,

Could you expand on the 'number of reasons'? I'm struggling to find any valid reasons why this is likely to more often be the woman than the man (single parents excepted, obv ). I know how it can happen in practice, as happened with me and DH - but it wasn't a good thing.

Never heard a feminist say this before

Snort at there's no gender pay gap, yeah I'm totally going to google the shit out of that video right now...

Some other random thoughts:

When people talk about free/cheap childcare my thoughts very much turn to the professionals - overwhelmingly women - who look after our children. Does their gender pay gap not matter? Within the current system, reducing the cost of childcare either means reducing ratios, or paying these women less. Not something I'm particularly keen on as a feminist.

Men HAVE to step up here. The numbers of men taking shared family leave - which they are now entitled to take, paid - are woefully small. Can't be assed googling but it's well below 10%. That would be a start.

There's also a class/career expectation issue at play here. It made sense for me to not earn very much when my DCs were small because it kept me on the career track - I had that long-term view and was promoted twice before DS went to school. If you're not in that kind of job, the long term view of 'this will be worth it' maybe doesn't happen. I agree all women need to be thinking about their pensions but there's a real, huge, and very general knowledge gap, younger people just aren't taking the pension planning message on board.

@ErrolTheDragon

But as far as overarching true things, one of them is, someone needs to take care of children, and families with children, even older kids, need at least some flexibility with work. For a number of reasons women may be more likely to end up in that role than men,

Could you expand on the 'number of reasons'? I'm struggling to find any valid reasons why this is likely to more often be the woman than the man (single parents excepted, obv ). I know how it can happen in practice, as happened with me and DH - but it wasn't a good thing.

The most basic reason is women get pregnant, and I would add, breastfeed, though they don't need to these days. But many people think it's best for the child and want to.

So you already have women who may need to slow down and take time off during pregnancy. Who will probably want time off work in infancy, and will certainly need some time for physical recovery. In some cases this will be longer if there are issues with mother or child. For every child you add more of this time, and it can come to constitute a significant amount of time.

Something that doesn't always get talked about is this all is exaggerated in some types of work. If you work in an office, your pregnancy doesn't likely preclude your normal work. When I was in the army though, I was not able to take certain courses I needed fr promotion while I was pregnant. A lot of heavy work, dangerous work, or work with certain chemicals and things, is like this. Not many women at 8 months pregnancy are going to be working on a fishing boat, for example. So that is a good six months beyond maternity leave where they may not be progressing the same way, or getting the same experience, or even working at all in a few cases. (Add to that, these jobs can be well paid ones because they are dangerous.)

So just as a result of the physical implications of preganncy and infant care, women often will be the ones whose work and career would be affected. Which means the man's career may well be more stable, or likely to progress more, or better paid.

My job in the army for example was not, as a matter of policy, affected by my pregnancy, and they were pretty careful about not negatively treating women on maternity leaves - and men got and took good parental leaves too sometimes. But I couldn't take that course I needed - it wasn't safe - and I couldn't be promoted without it - because it wasn't safe. I have four kids - that was always something that was going to have a significant career impact and meant my husband would likely earn more. At which point, it did not make sense for him to leave his stable, well paid, more demanding job, it made more sense for me to be the flexible parent.

Aside from that, I think women are probably somewhat more likely to want to do that, compared to men. The mother child bond in infancy is pretty powerful - I've known quite a few women to plan to return to work, but who rethink their priorities after being home with an infant. I don't think that is something that we have some sort of moral or social obligation to discourage.

My DH paid for all our childcare as i worked PT so already paid my share - i felt it was important for him to see it as his cost as he also had the choice to work PT. The days I worked actually put the family unit in deficit by £9 which, across a year, was over £1000. It's an enourmous privilege to be able go to work and make your whole family worse off in the medium term.
As for the pay gap that made that situation occur. I wasnt just affected by prejudice and 'choices'- actual biology did interupt my ability to progress at work in comparison to my husband. I had three pregancies,(2 live births, one horrid miscarriage) two surgeries relating to reproductive issues and lots of health complications in the third pregancy and a permanent issue from birth. These got in the way of promotions for a few years whilst my DH was unhindered. I do feel sorry for women who sail through one pregnancy and birth or who dont want children but get penalised because other women like me exist. I also resent a system where genuine impacts from biology snowball as then you are the lower earner so it makes sense to work part time and so on.

The video with Kathy Newman is the one with Jordan Peterson. He doesn't actually say there is no pay gap. More that it isn't quite what a lot of people think it is.

"''Free childcare'' is childcare funded by the taxpayer, just as 'free schooling' is."

In this country, it's partially funded by the taxpayer. The shortfall is paid either by the provider or the parent.

So you get the ludicrous situation where a childminder is expected to subsidise the childcare of a well paid client whose income is far in excess of hers.
Feminism should be for all women, regardless of income or class.

@FantaOra

The excuse for the gender pay gap according to all feminist organizations is that women can't afford to work.

It's not an 'excuse' - it's an explanation of the fact that because SOME (many) men believe that childcare should be deducted from the mothers salary before considering if it's worth the mother working, many women are excluded from the workforce. I'm not sure why you have extrapolated that feminists support this attitude.

Asda are currently being taken to the Supreme court over one of the biggest equal pay claims in the UK:

www.ft.com/content/1812fe22-06bd-46ce-b2ec-0d324bdc7983

@Tanith

"''Free childcare'' is childcare funded by the taxpayer, just as 'free schooling' is."

In this country, it's partially funded by the taxpayer. The shortfall is paid either by the provider or the parent.

So you get the ludicrous situation where a childminder is expected to subsidise the childcare of a well paid client whose income is far in excess of hers.
Feminism should be for all women, regardless of income or class.

Yes. I think this is a basic conundrum.

It simply does not work if the amount you pay for childcare is more than a regular job. In fact a regular job has to cover enough for all the expenses of working including childcare, less time for things like cooking at home etc, plus whatever tax implications there are for the family, plus enough to justify the mental and logistical hassle.

So how do you manage to pay the childcare workers enough? Especially in a dedicated facility? The only real way is to have significantly sized groups of kids as well as finding other efficiencies, which is not necessarily good for them. If you socialise the system that helps, maybe a lot, but there is still likely to be pressure to keep it cheap, and the basic cost to society is there.

There is no way around it, children need time and people who care about them with them to thrive, and paying for that costs. And I don't think mothers will ever be eager to accept solutions that don't work for their kids, even if they tick all of the feminist boxes.

The other element to this is that as much as women on FWR like to say men should take over equal care, a lot of them aren't comfortable with male childcare workers. If that's a widespread feeling paid childcare is likely going to remain female dominant, even if men are willing to do the work.

Yes, at the minute a large portion of affordable childcare is staffed by young women out of college on minimum wage. Ultimately someone has to pay for the affordability and it seems inevitably to be women.

In my ideal world, the parents would each work part time so childcare was covered and society would be set up for that. But that obviously doesn't work for widowed parents, single parents, parents whose other half is feckless.

In my case, it was because DH paid the mortgage and a number of larger annual and bi-monthly bills, while I paid the childcare, groceries and phone bill. We had added up all the bills (and an average for groceries), and that split came out at a fair proportion each (DH paying about 60% and me 40% due to wages proportions of total income).

This reminds me, now that both childcare bill has gone and mortgage recently totally paid off, but school fees are large and groceries more expensive than previously, we should sit down and look at the numbers again and see if they are still fairly spread. But in fairness, he will pay for any groceries he gets, and we will both readily give the other any money that's needed. It's just that we have always kept separate bank accounts, even if it is joint household money and joint expenses coming from both.

In my house childcare is equal responsibility for each parent. We are equally part time (I actually earn a little more than DH). People expected me to go part time, they did not expect my husband to. I am very aware this isn't everyone situation and did it maternity leave parenting was more.one sided as we did not use shared leave (my work maternity pay was a lot better than his shared parental leave pay! All our money is shared so it didn't matter who was it of pocket but making us as a family less out of pocket was priority). We know statistically women usually do more childcare so making childcare cheaper or free will benefit women more than men in general. Pretending it isn't a women's issue doesn't help solve it.

@FlaviaAlbiaWantsLangClegBack

Yes, at the minute a large portion of affordable childcare is staffed by young women out of college on minimum wage. Ultimately someone has to pay for the affordability and it seems inevitably to be women.

In my ideal world, the parents would each work part time so childcare was covered and society would be set up for that. But that obviously doesn't work for widowed parents, single parents, parents whose other half is feckless.

I think many types of work could be arranged to accommodate this sort of arrangement, that includes both flexibility in terms of time, but also things like benefits.

OTOH there are also a good number that are more intense kinds of work, or have special conditions that make it unworkable. When my children were small my husband used to go to a remote island for three month stints - that can only work if there is good flexibility for childcare. In our case, I didn't work outside the home and we deliberately moved to be near extended family.

It seems in both cases to come down to families needing to get by with less than two FT jobs, and maybe only one in many cases or periods of time.

I will say, I find the idea of women in a marriage being the ones paying for childcare hard to identify with. We have separate bank accounts, mainly because I am bad at keeping track and it prevents errors. But we don't really have separate money, and didn't when we both worked FT either. If someone earns less or more it affects us both, and decisions about that are made together.

We do manage to pay doctors etc non-minimum wage even though they work in the NHS. Technically artificially low globally but socialised childcare doesn't have to mean low paid women. It depends on what you value and I would argue caring for children needs to be valued much more highly by society.

I probably should also mention, not having read all the other contributions, that although I was the one who tended to organise childcare, extra curriculars, buying uniform, meal planning, diary organisation, groceries and other shopping etc, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that I would and plenty of jobs were fairly shared.

DH would drop DD to creche in the mornings (commuting by bike) and I would collect in the evenings (collecting by car until 2.5, and by public transport until primary school, then it had to go back to car for logistical reasons). DH would also often do the morning drop at school when he was at home (he was away 50% of the time for work in the lower 4 years of primary, so an au pair helped a lot at that stage).

If DD was sick, we would jointly look at our diaries and juggle who had the greatest needs at what times, mostly we managed to do it by 1 doing a very early morning start, swopping at lunchtime, and the other staying later than usual, and both catching up in the evening at home. But being flexible about what meetings couldn't be cancelled or moved for each other.

Yes, I did most of the PT meetings (DH did a lot with me, but not always), and almost inevitably was solo at the shows, events, presentations etc in school if I could get there. But DH brings her to training, and matches, almost every weekend. And spends hours on end out the front doing extra training with her. And video analysis and other things with her.

While I've been the main one to do training for ASD, we both did the parenting course, and he has actively listened when I have told him things I've learned. We have developed plans and strategies together (I may have done a lot of research before talking to him, but sometimes he will have too, and we agree the strategy before implementing anything) and while there might be some slight difference in how we approach things, we are working together and are able to give the same messages to DD.

And DH is actually far more likely than me to do housework on a daily basis. In recent years, the split has moved from either doing anything that's needed, to more like I'll cook and he'll washup (although he is a decent cook), he does laundry (including all ironing since DD was born and he couldn't feed her) but I will sort a load if up earlier to do it and hang out plenty on the line. We have different skills in DIY - I'm great at preparing for painting but leave streaks, whereas DH is slapdash preparing but great at the painting, he tiles while I grout, I'll tackle most emergencies and have the contacts to call in tradespeople if needed, but DH would tend to do more of the regular maintenance and putting together things (although I am the one who tends to deal with blocked pipes and gutters....as I will do a pro-active check (and cleaning) regularly whereas DH will leave it til there's a problem).

And he is happy to share driving too - whether on long or short journeys, and whether in his car or mine.

It might not be entirely equal in everything, but it is a fair balance on the whole.

@Broomfondle

We do manage to pay doctors etc non-minimum wage even though they work in the NHS. Technically artificially low globally but socialised childcare doesn't have to mean low paid women. It depends on what you value and I would argue caring for children needs to be valued much more highly by society.

I don't think being socialised is the issue. I'd not compare doctors, most are supported, so to speak, by a patient load that can be quite large. Teachers would be a better example, but there is always a real push to keep education costs low.

But for a parent to work, in terms of energy or labour exchange, the productivity of the parent needs to exceed in some way the productivity of the childcare worker, or the parent can't pay. If you socialise the care, you still have the question of whether the productivity of that parent in the labour force is worth enough to society that it makes sense to pay the childcare worker, and how much society can or is willing to pay the childcare worker for that productivity.

As a base calculation it often seems to pencil out, but there are also a lot of non-tangibles. What is best for kids, quality of care, quality of life for the family with two working parents, quality of life for childcare workers. And it tends not to be much of an individual decision, too, because socialised childcare works best at a society wide scale.

Teachers would be a better comparison. But classrooms have what, 25 or 30 kids per teacher?