Bruce Fuller may be right about parents' desperation. (I haven't read him.)

But let's not forget that the U.S. tax code allows parents to pay up to $6,000 less in taxes, if they work while they put kids into paid childcare.

Now, I doubt many parents make the choice for daycare based on that. And I suspect that this tax line is motivated primarily out of child advocacy (plus the political desire to appear like a child advocate). Nonetheless, the tax incentive is there.

In an increasingly competitive world taking a break from your job to be a full time parent until your kid(s) are in school can be a career death sentence. The tax credit can (and should) be used by anyone who is using a licensed day care provider (you cannot claim unlicesnsed ones).

I agree it isnt the ideal model-there should be a comparable tax credit if you stay home to care for the kid-after all you, you lose income during that time-but how many stay at home parents have a lobbyist?

I believe that families who give up a paycheck to provide their own child care should get the same tax break as families who pay for child care.

I seriously doubt, however, that the tax break encourages many people to use child care. It doesn't cover the full cost of child care. It doesn't kick in for the lowest income parents because their taxes aren't high enough. And many people who really need to work for the money are going to try to find free or low-cost child care like grandma.

This is a good point. BookMama has a good point also, that people who choose to stay home and care for their kids should get the tax break too.

My parents (of the middle-middle class set) sent me to babysitters, women who cared for about 4-5 kids in their own homes, and they were unlicensed.

At least one of them (I'm not sure about the others) didn't want to pay taxes on the income she got from babysitting, so she wouldn't give my parents her SSN, so they couldn't get the childcare tax credit for those years that she watched us. (I guess they must not have thought it was a big enough deal to find another care provider.) Just a personal anecdote to provide food for thought. I wonder how often that happens to others?

I am getting ready to start law school and am horribly anxious at the thought of having kids because I know my husband and I will both have to work, and the childcare factor makes me so guilt-ridden already. I really resent the fact that women my age are growing up knowing ahead of time that they have to face a choice between staying at home and sacrificing a salary or putting their kid in the care of someone else for 8-10 hours a day. We should really be pushing for work-life balance, flex time, telecommuting, etc. But at the same time, I realize that the jobs that can provide that are all upper-level jobs, not service jobs that low wage-earners are in.

acd at IUB:

I am getting ready to start law school and am horribly anxious at the thought of having kids because I know my husband and I will both have to work, and the childcare factor makes me so guilt-ridden already. I really resent the fact that women my age are growing up knowing ahead of time that they have to face a choice between staying at home and sacrificing a salary or putting their kid in the care of someone else for 8-10 hours a day. We should really be pushing for work-life balance, flex time, telecommuting, etc. But at the same time, I realize that the jobs that can provide that are all upper-level jobs, not service jobs that low wage-earners are in.

That's basically the major reason why I've decided not to have kids of my own. I love children, but I've seen way too many parents not able to devote any time or attention to their children because they are so busy working. And these are just normal working/middle class families that must have two spouses working in order to survive; not because they need any fancy cars, homes, vacations, etc, but because they need to be able to afford clothing, gas, food, college, etc. Prices nowadays are so steep that a regular family just can't afford to live on only one salary. I just don't see the use of having children if I don't even have enough time or money to raise them properly.

YOU SAID: "I am getting ready to start law school and am horribly anxious at the thought of having kids because I know my husband and I will both have to work, and the childcare factor makes me so guilt-ridden already. I really resent the fact that women my age are growing up knowing ahead of time that they have to face a choice between staying at home and sacrificing a salary or putting their kid in the care of someone else for 8-10 hours a day. We should really be pushing for work-life balance, flex time, telecommuting, etc. But at the same time, I realize that the jobs that can provide that are all upper-level jobs, not service jobs that low wage-earners are in."

Welcome to MY life! LOL!

And your last sentence, I would kiss you for it! Seriously. Because as an attorney with 2 kids and a husband and a life where we both have to work, I think flex-time, work-life balance is important to EVERYBODY - men, women, parents, childless people, single people, married people.

I'm all for profits and growing companies, but I think that if they really did the math correctly they would find that they don't have to overwork EVERYBODY EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE WEEK. Of course, I will admit that certain businesses need to have weird hours, etc. But I also think that employers and employees need to start a dialogue about the work-life balance. Families are in the 21st century, but businesses are run with 1950s business models that simply don't work anymore.

Keep that idea in mind in your endeavours in the future and maybe we can start an organization that fights for that kind of thing!

CHEERS!

jvanke:

But let's not forget that the U.S. tax code allows parents to pay up to $6,000 less in taxes, if they work while they put kids into paid childcare.

That's not quite accurate. Parents can deduct up to $6,000 from their taxable income for expenses relatred to two or more children (IRS pub 503). This translates to $2,100 less in taxes, at the most and that is for only the lowest incomes. This $6k deduction is not indexed for inflation. Last year I paid over $17k for full-time daycare for my two children and that is cheapest licensed provider I could find.

I understand that the middle class women of your generation are agonizing over the life/work balance, but before you get too resentful, let's remember that many women do not have the choice of "sacrificing a salary" or "putting their kid in the are of someone else. Neither my mother nor her friends had such a choice. Most of these responses have taken a story about day care for poor working women and made it about women of higher classes.

I certainly take your point. I might argue, though, that the anguish that comes with having the 'luxury' of being required to choose between salary and stay-at-home is no less valid than the anguish that poor working parents feel. There is certainly an urgency present for low-wage earners that doesn't exist for middle class parents (i.e. how will I even get food on the table for dinner), but it seems even middle class workers are having more and more trouble making ends meet these days. Making more money doesn't invalidate or make irrelevant the anxiety a woman would feel when considering childcare options, but I do think your point about work/life balance being a burden of the upper classes is a good one.

I'm not sure I understand about "choice" when it comes to poor women and middle class women.

Even though middle class women may make more money, we still don't make enough to really make the CHOICE either - we HAVE to work. And while we can scrounge up more to pay for daycare, again quality daycare for my 2 daughters cost me (and I'm going to use real numbers so you guys really understand) $1900 a month. My mortgage, property tax and homeowners insurance per month (I paid them all at once into an impound account) was $1740.

Plus whatever other bills we had (our credit card bills were non-existent or manageable, as were our utility bills. Probably the only problem was the car, but that's ONE thing and only makes so much of a dent).

So, yes sacrifices can be made to make it by, but it was tight. Not as tight as the poor, yes, but still tight.

Plus, the poor qualify for aid from the government. When I was fired during my 6 month of pregnancy (and we had just purchased our home), I obviously wasn't going to get hired anywhere with my belly out a mile. I went on disability (I was high risk pregnancy anyway) and my husband worked and we got a few bucks here and there from our parents (they were otherwise not in a position to help more than that).

BUT we didn't qualify for WIC at all or any other form of government assistance when my daughter was born. I did breast feed for 6 weeks, but that didn't work out, and so I was forced to buy formula (which I couldn't get assistance for).

Also, many poor women find that staying home is more economically feasible because the money they make working only goes straight to paying daycare, which makes no sense. I have at least one friend that realized that and she stayed home. Luckily her husband got a huge promotin and a raise to make up the difference. They are also middle class.

So, while I certainly, absolutely, sympathize with the plight of the poor (and I'm not being sarcastic), the way our system works now is they get help under the qualifications now in place (of course, many may not ask for it, but that's their business). The Middle Class does not. That's why it's a squeeze and why we can struggle just as much as, if not more than the poor (especially the poor who ask for and receive government assistance, which I'm not necessarily begrudging them either.).

Finally, work/life balance helps the poor as well in the sense that they won't always have to worry about getting fired when their kids are sick; they can make flex-time of some sort in whatever way it works for employer and employee (not coming in at 6 to open the store because your child care doesn't start until later and maybe they can work later because they have child care in the afternoon).

Work/life balance works for EVERYBODY, man, woman, parents, non-parents, single, married. It's healthy for everyone to know that they won't get fired because they have a life outside of work. Because no matter how hard you try to keep your personal life out of your work life, it is unrealistic that that can be maintained 100%, 365 days out of the year.

LIFE HAPPENS. That's what employers have to realize. And fellow employees have to realize that as well. Not everyone has a set up like YOU do. Some people have children, you don't. Get over it. As long as the employees are pulling their weight, who cares. If they are not, then management needs to learn to deal with them on an individual basis. This way, everybody knows what the rules are and they are consistently enforced, and perhaps employees should have a way to make sure they are consistently enforced.

Anyway, I'm not saying I have all the answers, but we have to stop being so negative about every suggestion that comes along.

Are we AmeriCANS or AmeriCANTS?

Cheers.

Your point about working to pay the daycare is a good one. A friend of mine, with a master's degree from an Ivy League institution, is a high school math (incl. Calculus) teacher. No, as a society we don't have a shortage of those or anything. After her first baby she realized unless she worked full-time, it didn't make economic sense for her to work at all. Given that a HS teacher's job is much, much more demanding than 40hr/week, she decided she wanted to spend some time with her infant and so stopped working altogether. Now that she's had her second, well the situation is only more skewed in favor of her not working.

What's my point? Aside from the issue of personal/family finances, there's a bigger issue. If the expense of childcare is pulling people out of the workforce, then there's a much greater cost to our society. Especially in the case of my friend, who is in a profession where there is a drastic shortage. I know that at least some of her education was financed using government subsidized loans, isn't it a wasted investment that she's not using it? I'm a scientist who's had much of her graduate education paid through gov't funded research. If I decide to drop out of the workforce for a few years not b/c I want to but b/c childcare is too expensive, isn't that an incredible waste of resources (more so b/c if I do stop research for a few years, it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to get back in the game at all). I guess what I'm trying to say is that we seem to value educating everyone, which is why we subsidize higher education. But then we force people (particularly women) to choose between using their higher education or caring for their children? I guess one answer is that we stop subsidizing education/career training. But I don't think I need to go into reasons why that can only hurt us in the end.

SLATESURFER SAID: " I know that at least some of her education was financed using government subsidized loans, isn't it a wasted investment that she's not using it? I'm a scientist who's had much of her graduate education paid through gov't funded research. If I decide to drop out of the workforce for a few years not b/c I want to but b/c childcare is too expensive, isn't that an incredible waste of resources (more so b/c if I do stop research for a few years, it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to get back in the game at all). I guess what I'm trying to say is that we seem to value educating everyone, which is why we subsidize higher education. But then we force people (particularly women) to choose between using their higher education or caring for their children? I guess one answer is that we stop subsidizing education/career training. But I don't think I need to go into reasons why that can only hurt us in the end."

Leaving aside whether government should subsidize education or career/training, you brought up a very valid point.

Although I consider myself conservative on fiscal issues and I believe in personal responsibility, hearing so many social conservatives act like a mother going back to work is a greater sin than murder, made me wonder - well, does that mean that the best world for them would be one in which women who wanted to have children in the future didn't get educated anymore and just looked for well-off men to take care of them and their children?

Because you are right - we get ourselves educated because it's the RIGHT thing to do, isn't it? We are taking personal responsibility for our futures and our welfare so that we won't wind up on the dole.

But then we want to have children and we have to work, but we're supposed to waste our education and stay at home for the rest of our lives in order to be considered "good".

TO SAHMs - I'm not saying that staying at home is "wasting" per se, I'm just saying that if you went to law school and are now a lawyer, staying at home is in many ways "wasting" the education, even if some of your organizational skills help around the house. Plus you still have loans to pay off (unless you miraculously were able to pay them off before you had children or didn't have any at all for whatever reason), so you are not really getting a return on your investment.

Regardless, of course, as the mother of 2, motherhood can be rewarding in and of itself for many. I know many SAHMs, was one for about a year, and kind of a "single mom" at that, since my husband was in Iraq (and he's off again in August). I respect the difficulty of it all.

I hope all of that came out okay. I hate "mommy wars" and I'm not trying to start one, I'm just trying, like SlateSurfer is, to understand the mentality of some more social conservatives (and frankly the society we live in ) where they want you to take charge of your future, but berate you when you do if it does not conform with how they would have done it.

"Family values" is often thrown around but is ultimately meaningless in this country.

I'm not saying we need the government to hand us anything per se, I'm just saying that our SOCIETY does not value motherhood like it says it does and it certainly doesn't value it in terms of mothers who go back to work. Frankly, it doesn't value the ones that stay at home since the working ones are the ones that get the (mostly useless) tax break on daycare. What do you get for staying home? Nothing.

Again, I'm not saying that government needs to give, I'm just saying that what does happen shows that family values and motherhood and parenthood mean nothing to this society.

If society cared, it would see that more women are entering the workplace, that this is a good thing, and to make it a little less stressful. Employers can do that with flex-time, on-site child care, telecommuting, heck, even plain old understanding that your life is not necessarily your work.

I mean, some people work because they are just obsessed with it. They work all hours even when they don't have to because they love it. The rest work it only to get ahead. If you found out that you didn't have to work like that to get ahead, would you? Most of us wouldn't. I don't mean we'd slack, we'd just actually have a life, work hard and do a good job without being chained to our desk, or register, or machine, or whatever, 24/7.

Our choices as women are almost the same as they were in the 1950s - work and be single or married with no children; or have children and stay at home.

Working and having children is still so difficult to do that many women don't do it anymore.

I have a neighbor that is 26 years old, very bright. She has 3 children, 9, 5 and 2. She became pregnant at 18 with her first and the parents, being Mormon, I'm sure "encouraged" them to get married. I'm not sure she and her husband dated long before this happened, although I don't know the details. I know that she had a full scholarship to University that she had to give up in order to have the child.

Her husband was able to finish school. He has a well-paying job in audio engineering and although she worked some part-time gigs in department stores, she otherwise stayed at home. She had her second shortly after my first and later had the third (it was an oops). Now, after almost 10 years of marriage, he decides that he doesn't want to be married anymore; plus, all this time, he's been suffering from mental illnesses which he refused to be medicated for (OCD is one; I think there was another) and which made him verbally abusive.

So while it's good that she's now in the process of getting a divorce from the idiot, she is also un-educated past high school and has never held a job other than department store clerk. In the State of CA, she will have to support herself sooner rather than later because the marriage is under 10 years.

So, on the one hand, she was "blessed" and stayed home with her kids. On the other, she is at risk at being one of those single-mom statistics.

Is this what we want for our daughters? To not get educated, or to get educated but do nothing with it, which is almost the same thing (no experience).

I'm sure there is a way to help out working families, of whatever economic class. We are just not thinking hard enough about it.

A quibble - it's a long life (if you're lucky) and children are only young for a short time.

Ok, 2 quibbles - an education is not wasted if one doesn't "use" it slogging away in corporate America for every last one of one's working days. When I think of a wasted education, I think back to college and the drooling kids who snoozed their way through each semester when they bothered to show up in class at all. That is, unless an "education" is nothing more than a degree that is purchased like a ticket into a "good" job. I don't think that's what it is.

Well, unless one is independently wealthy, that's mostly what education is for. Because if you don't get it and since most employers require it, you're left working crappy jobs.

That's just a fact.

The fact that you get something else out of it is only a plus, not a requirement.

And yes, your children are only young once, but that doesn't make it a reason to stay at home UNLESS YOU WANT TO AND YOU CAN AFFORD TO DO SO OR YOUR FINANCIAL SITUATION DICTATES THAT THAT IS THE MOST ECONOMICAL THING TO DO.

I don't feel like I missed much of my children's youth (and they are still 4 and 5 1/2) because I worked most of it. I enjoy them when I am with them and I enjoy my work. But my main reason for working right now is that I HAVE TO.

If I could have stayed at home until they were in school full time, I would have. Then I would have went to work since sitting home all day isn't really my cup of tea, even if I kept myself busy with housework or what not. I'm not domesticated and never was.

And many women find the same thing - they get fulfillment out of both work and children. Others get it from one or the other.

It's about CHOICE right? Not whose the better mommy. Or whether someone wants to be a mommy.

A SAHM is no better and no worse on average than a "working" mom. That depends on the individual mother, not whether she's at home or not.

And a woman is not less of a woman if she decides she doesn't want children.

No mommy wars, thank you.

I agree that there are many ways to use an education, but it's a myth that after a few short years off being a SAHM you can easily go back into the workforce. And as ladykrystyna points out, why is it so bad to be a working mother (and to want that)? I was raised by a dual career family. I loved that my mom was a doctor. It gave me something to aspire to. And, for the record, had she stopped her residency when she had my sister, her medical education would have been close to useless. yeah she would be better informed when we got sick, but she couldn't actually treat us. She's happiest being a doctor. I was happiest trailing after her around the hospital seeing what it was like. But if my parents' residencies had been more sensitive to their having kids, maybe they could have spent some of their time parenting their infants together instead of switching off night calls so that one of them was always home, one always at work.