A friend, who shall remain nameless, has just become a father for a third time, and he and his wife have come to the conclusion that it no longer makes sense for her to remain in the workforce, due to childcare costs.
The average cost for childcare in Ireland is about €187 per child per week. For three children, the cost of childcare would actually result in my friend’s wife working for no other reason than to pay the cost of their childcare, so that she can remain in the workforce. “It makes no sense”, he said. “She would much prefer to be at home with the children anyway, so that’s what we’ve decided to do”.
I asked him if he’d be happy if their roles – and salaries – were reversed, would he be happy to do the same thing. Not really, he replied, because for him work is about more than just earning money – there’s also a social aspect, and a sense of purpose that comes with his career. “But I’d still do it – money talks at the end of the day”.
Another friend – female this time – asserts that her own decision to stay at home with her kids makes her the envy of her friends, but that it’s a luxury that only comes with having a husband and a stable relationship. “A single mother couldn’t do it, or a single father”.
In both cases, the parties involve agree that Government investment in childcare does not work, popular though it is: All it does, they say, is drive up the costs of childcare because the number of children needing spaces in such facilities is growing faster than the number of available places. “If you give us all extra money for childcare, we’re just all bidding against each other and the number of spaces doesn’t go up – the cost does”.
“We’d be much better off if the tax code encouraged people to get married and work together raising their kids”.
That last quote is very controversial, because of course the number of single parents is growing – due to women having children later in life, the falling popularity of marriage, and other social factors. Rewarding people for getting married might feel like rewarding people for something – a stable relationship – that is increasingly seen as a privilege more than the norm. And yet, both friends say, to do so would be to reduce the overall demand for childcare, and therefore reduce the costs of those who don’t have the advantage of a two-parent home.
Before Charlie McCreevey introduced tax individualisation during the 1997-2002 Government, married couples used to be taxed as a unit, rather than two individuals. This provided a significant benefit to married couples as a single earner could essentially get double tax credits, and pay much less tax than a single person would, on the same salary. This incentivised single income households, and made a parent staying at home with the children vastly more common than it is today. There is likely no coincidence that since that change was made – to encourage more mothers and fathers into the workforce – the demand for childcare has exploded.
But is this the right approach? Are we a happier and more stable and less stressful country to live in now than we were before that change was made? It’s quite hard to see how.
Studies on this topic are, of course, deeply controversial, because few institutions want to stigmatise parents for working by saying that their kids would do better if the parent was at home. Such studies tend to make single parents, and poorer parents, feel bad and guilty.
But when you actually ask parents, the results are clear: Pew Research studied this very question amongst American parents in 2018, and the results were overwhelming: 60% of parents say they think their children would do better with a parent – of either sex – in the home full-time.
Why is it, then, that public policy in the west is so geared against public opinion on this question? Why shouldn’t policy, rather than encouraging and incentivising two-income households, work more towards making one-income families viable?
It seems relatively clear that more stay at home parents is both a natural result of, and also a natural solution to, the childcare crisis that provoked a protest outside the Dáil yesterday. Every survey – not just the Pew one – suggests that this is the preference of many parents. The state has a clear incentive both to reduce the demand for childcare so that it is available to those who need it, and also to facilitate people in their preferred choices.
There is ample need for a public debate on this topic that goes beyond the simple “can the state pay more”, and looks instead about whether the whole economic model of parenting that the state has embraced should maybe be re-thought.