I like the messaging part, and these are good policy suggestions that we should pursue (with the exception of loosening ratios, which I don't think is possible w/o comprising safety in most states), but they wouldn't get you very far. The fundamental issue is that child care for young children is very labor intensive and most families will struggle to pay what it costs to provide, particularly as wages keep rising. Public investment is needed to fill that gap and really improve child care supply & affordability.
For several years I worked for a small group of Montessori schools. Zoning, building codes, licensing requirements, ratios etc. had a huge impact on both whether we opened new schools (several became plane infeasible even in neighborhoods with lots of families and a huge gap in available care) and the cost of offering care. I wouldn’t be surprised if reducing artificial constraints could reduce cost by 30% or more without any negative impact on quality.
Infant/toddler childcare is a great starting area of focus because those are the hardest and most expensive parenting years by far. But there's a lot more that could be done to reform education and human capital formation (aka the first few steps in the modern success sequence) that would be realistic, pronatal, and pro-human-flourishing generally. I laid out one fairly radical sketch of how that might work here, which I have been too lazy/busy to fill in further:
I hate being this guy, but I've noticed The Rebuild regularly has way more typos than anything else I subscribe to. I love what you're doing and want it to spread far and wide, and it would help if your content were as professionally produced as any other media outlet. If you have the budget, I hope you'll strongly consider hiring an editor or copy editor; if not, maybe your contributors would consider stepping in as copy editors for each other.
Overall agreed, but one very important point.
We shouldn't be preferring child care over one parent staying home.
Any money available to pay for child care should also allow a parent to stay home
Another way to reduce childcare is to normalize bringing babies under 24 months to work, and also tax credits for WFH
I like the messaging part, and these are good policy suggestions that we should pursue (with the exception of loosening ratios, which I don't think is possible w/o comprising safety in most states), but they wouldn't get you very far. The fundamental issue is that child care for young children is very labor intensive and most families will struggle to pay what it costs to provide, particularly as wages keep rising. Public investment is needed to fill that gap and really improve child care supply & affordability.
For several years I worked for a small group of Montessori schools. Zoning, building codes, licensing requirements, ratios etc. had a huge impact on both whether we opened new schools (several became plane infeasible even in neighborhoods with lots of families and a huge gap in available care) and the cost of offering care. I wouldn’t be surprised if reducing artificial constraints could reduce cost by 30% or more without any negative impact on quality.
Infant/toddler childcare is a great starting area of focus because those are the hardest and most expensive parenting years by far. But there's a lot more that could be done to reform education and human capital formation (aka the first few steps in the modern success sequence) that would be realistic, pronatal, and pro-human-flourishing generally. I laid out one fairly radical sketch of how that might work here, which I have been too lazy/busy to fill in further:
https://futuremoreperfect.substack.com/p/education-for-a-more-perfect-future
I hate being this guy, but I've noticed The Rebuild regularly has way more typos than anything else I subscribe to. I love what you're doing and want it to spread far and wide, and it would help if your content were as professionally produced as any other media outlet. If you have the budget, I hope you'll strongly consider hiring an editor or copy editor; if not, maybe your contributors would consider stepping in as copy editors for each other.