Paul F. deLespinasse: Thinking about child care

A recent New York Times letter complained about "women being forced to exit the work force to care for children, since day care is unavailable or too expensive…." This comment raises interesting questions.

Since when does caring for our children not constitute "work"? As a parent myself, I can assure you that caring for young children, although a great pleasure, is also work.

In fact, it is extremely important work. The early years have a huge impact on the intellectual and moral development of children. They may set the child up for a good life or a miserable life.

To say that a parent has been "relegated" to child care grossly underestimates its importance. No work as an employee is likely to be more important.

Although it is inaccurate to say that a person caring for his or her own children has "exited" the work force, we normally wouldn't consider that this person has a "job" in the sense that one receives a paycheck for it.

Looking at the economics of child care clarifies the issue. Child care facilities will be available if they can charge enough to induce someone to supply them.

But increasing child care's cost makes it harder to afford. This is where "exiting the work force to care for children" comes in. In a two-parent family, if it costs more to farm out the children than the lower paid parent earns, it makes economic sense for that parent to care for the children instead of remaining employed.

That parent really has two work opportunities. One is to work for some employer. Assume that the wages and fringes from this job are worth, say, $500 a week. But if child care costs $700 a week the net result will be a weekly deficit of $200.

The other opportunity is to take care of the kids. There is no salary check received, but the family will have $200 week more than it otherwise would have. The parent who stays home to care for the kids is acting rationally.

Obviously, the case would be different if the parent had greater earning power. If someone can make $3,000 a week as a lawyer or doctor, the $700 weekly child care bill could be a reasonable expense.

If the government (which is to say taxpayers) subsidizes child care facilities, this will encourage parents to take jobs where they might produce less value than they would produce by doing the child care themselves, assuming they do a good job of that.

It is doubtful that whether this justifies socking it to the taxpayers who would be providing the subsidy.

This is not to say that subsidizing child care would be a bad idea. For one thing, when there is only one parent in the picture, holding down a job may be absolutely essential unless welfare benefits are far more generous than now prevails in the United States.

Another argument for subsidizing child care might be that a well-staffed facility could provide a more stimulating environment than a lower paid (and probably less educated) parent could provide. The child could be better off spending less time at home and more time in the facility. The taxpayers would be subsidizing education, not the child's parent.

If we are going to subsidize child care, we should do it with an actual understanding of why it makes sense to do so.

And of course I have simplified the actual world in order to be as clear as possible. In reality, parents would need to consider many additional factors such as government benefits which only apply if the parent has a paying job, or the possibility that work experience will help them qualify for a better job later.

In the absence of a European-style welfare state, parental decisions about child care are often going to be very difficult.

Paul F. deLespinasse is a retired professor of political science and computer science at Adrian College. He can be reached at pdeles@proaxis.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Paul deLespinasse: Thinking about child care