If you find child care unaccommodating, you are NOT alone!
Child care in the US is crazily expensive. It’s almost impossible to find child care that is flexible, good, and affordable. This problem affects families with a wide spectrum of income range, even upper middle class. Some lawmakers such as Elizabeth Warren have attempted to address this issue. Even Ivanka Trump said that we need a federal policy to help parents with young kids. Then, why is America lagging behind when it comes to child care as well as paid parental leave compared to many developed countries?
It is the parents’ job, not the government’s job
One of the reasons is that not all of us agree that moms should work. Nearly half of the Americans believe that it’s better for young kids to stay at home with one of the parents, preferably the mother. A few years ago, if someone told me that mother should stay home to take care of the kids, I would have gotten really mad at that person. The issue that mother should work or not was one of the deal breakers for many of my past relationships. As soon as I found out that my ex-partners expected me to stay home with our kids, I would walk out of the relationship without any hesitation. Now as a mom of 2, I am more understanding of that viewpoint because I want to spend more time at home with my kids and I can see how happy they are to have their mama around. However, I still disagree with the belief that one of the parents should stay home. To me, parents should be able to choose if they want to stay home or if they want to go back to work. Parents’ mental health is important and it has a huge impact on mental health of the kids.
Given that many Americans still believe that it’s better if at least one of the parents stay home with the kids, it makes sense why pushing for any child care policy can be challenging. Also, many tax payers don’t want their taxes to fund child care for someone else. It’s the parents’ job, not the government’s job, they assert. Now the problem is that not all parents can afford the luxury of staying at home. If both parents are low-income workers, one sole breadwinner may not make enough money for the growing family. Further, sometimes it actually saves money for one parent to stay at home with the kids than both working and sending kids to daycare. This can be a heavy mental toll on parents, especially if they love their jobs. This is not the end. The sad part is that parents don’t usually have paid parental leave. Yes, there is no universal paid parental leave in America. Of course, some companies offer it; however some don’t. Business say it would be detrimental to their revenue if they have to follow a strict/universal guideline on paid parental leave.
So here we are. Many of us don’t want our tax to be used for child care subsidy. Many of us think that at least one parent should stay home with the kids. However, not all parents have access to paid parental leave because many business cannot afford such a thing for their employees. So then who are the victims of all of these? PARENTS AND THEIR KIDS!.
While it is true that parents should be for the upbringing of their kids and ideally consider advantages and disadvantages before having kids, it is also the responsibility of the society to make sure that kids and parents can get access to useful resources and tools.
What have lawmakers done?
To name a few, Ivanka Trump pushed to increase child tax credit from $1000 to $2000 per child. Any parent with kids would know that $2000 is really not much, maybe a month of tuition for a good-quality child care. It is a minimal achievement, but to be fair it was hard for her to push things through the conservative portion of the Congress. Elizabeth Warren proposed a bold legislation on universal child care. While it received lots of praise from working family, it received backlashes from stay-at-home parents. They argue that it’s a penalty for staying at home because they won’t get any financial help. When I first read this plan 8 months ago, I was excited, and her plan was the thing that got me into US politics. However, after a few months working from home and now planning for some home-schooled style activities for my preschoolers, I start to see some shortcomings of her plan. It is not cheap to home school your kids, and thus I believe that stay-at-home parents need support too. After all, parents of school-aged kids can get access to voucher program as part of the school choice option; then maybe something like this for stay-at-home parents could be really helpful.
Moving forward …
In essence, child care is a complicated issue, and we will need many solutions to solve the problem. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Working parents will need affordable and high-quality child care. Stay-at-home parents may need some sorts of voucher program to help support homeschooling their young kids. And of course, parents deserve universal paid parental leave. To some small business, it can be difficult; so lawmakers will need to come up with something to help both the business and the family. To big corporation, I don’t think it will be too difficult for them. Indeed, there are big business that offer paid parental leave for their employees; this package can be really attractive to talented working parents anyway. After all, a good capitalist would make sure that their workers and their family have access to basic living standards and good education so that the capitalist can continue to hire the next generation and build more wealth. Finally, the best investment is to invest in the next generation of the country, and it takes a village to raise a child!
References
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/2136595001
