Some rational thoughts about having child or not
When people decide to have children, and it should be a conscientious decision, child care expenses - at a living wage - should be part of the equation. If you can't afford all the expenses associated with raising a family without working yourself to death or making others work for slave wages, stop having children. There are too many humans as it is. It's all about taking responsibility for your choices & decisions, and sometimes that means deciding not to. It's what I've always done, and I have no regrets.
Everyone can afford or not?
Many working families do not make enough to afford childcare at the current rates. $280 per week for one child under 2 for run if the mill daycare in my area. Wages across the board need to be increased. It is difficult to find a full time job paying more than $15 per hour in a professional and stressful job this is with years of experience and a college degree.
Really clearly you either had support or don't realize that outside of your bubble many people work at minimum or below minimum wage to cook your food in the restaurants you eat in or clean the public washrooms you visit! Are suggesting these people shouldn't have kids? How about pay fair wages to everyone so that they TOO can afford to pay FAIR wages! That may just mean you too will have to pay a little more for that steak dinner but hey if it means the guy who cooked it can pay his sitter then so be it!
Regarding the title of this post, child care workers and janitors both provide necessary services in our society and should be better appreciated with better pay. Having pets, in my book, is optional and better afforded by those who have more money. So, I guess I don't care what they pay the dog walker
The problem is that those who need child care are hardly in a financial position to pay much for the service. They tend to be low wage persons themselves. So the system just perpetuates itself.
No one was ever taught the monetary value of care-giving (for children or elderly or anyone who needs it - not medicine, but care-giving) because every society took mothers for granted and never thought to try and calculate the monetary value. Now that we are mostly in dual-income households (for households that have two working-age adults) the time has come to realize how hard this work is and what its monetary value to society is, and remunerate professionals in this field accordingly.
As someone who is a professional early childhood educator ( and it is indeed a profession) I have seen it this way for nearly 30 years now. Imagine this: if even 25% of child care workers all got "sick" on the same day(s), this country would come to a screeching halt! We are subsidizing the economy .
A person who hires a dog walker will typically pay around 15 dollars for the day. For childcare, unless your kid only needs to be supervised for a 15 minute walk and piss in the backyard, then you will pay around 40 for a full day or potentially 60 for a full day. If you are a single parent earning a middle class income (48k per year) you may not be able to afford food is that correct?
Unless your on some kind of welfare the working poor can't afford to pay for Childcare. Some childcare facilities charge 80-100 dollars per week. That's about a third of working poor incomes a month. What is needed is for the working poor and the middle class to see a rise in wages that promotes more spending power. In other words when Childcare users get a raise Childcare providers will get a raise. What I like to call the flood up instead of trickle down? Does that make sense?
Early childhood education is considered useless in the USA. When actually it is really important as it is the time when the neurons are making all the connections, between 0 and 7, it is a primordial time for every child to be exposed to all kinds of activities. Without these connections, children have more difficulties learning later on.
And still people tell you: when are you going to look for a real job? This is a real job. Children need it!!!
Some of the most difficult jobs are the least respected. Those who work the fields are in the same realm. I give them a blessing when I see them doing back breaking work. Same for the child care worker--our children are products of the values we espouse.
People who have positions where they are to care for others are paid some of the lowest wages-teacher, nurse, child care provider. Why? Traditionally these are "pink professions" and women make less, way less than men in the USA. None of this report should come as a surprise when you look at the facts. Now what do we do to fix it?
