Child care.

[Simmon]

I don't know if this should be in Politics, but it fits under logic as well, so I'll post it here. Also, apologies if this has been discussed before, I ran a search and found no similar topic in the titles.

There has recently been a controversy about child care. It breaks down into the following:

Should the government:
a) Make child care a government funded thing,
or
b) Give an x amount of money to families with small children/year for the same child care purpose.

I imagine that the first option is more wize because:

a) Families who have many small children and don't care about them that much will not use the annuity for good.

b) Families who honestly love and care for their children and want to provide the said daycare will see no difference as both said plans with roughly equal each other.

There is a poll on the issue. Feel free to share your opinion, set me straight on the issue etc.
Thank you for your attention. My first real thread!

[Batman]

Daycare. Can't be abused by uncaring parents, and helps parents that would be caring if they could take the time away from the job(s) they need to feed the family.

[Coyote]

Daycare.

I'd also make a deal with businesses--

Businesses would 'adopt' a local daycare facility and encourage their employees to drop off their kids there. The business and the daycare would have an open communication deal-- if someone from that daycare calls with a child emergency, the business pre-approves the parent to take up to "X" amount of hours to deal with the situation without penalty.

The business may get a small deduction, say $20.00 a month, for each working parent that takes part in this 'business-approved' daycare. $20.00 a month is peanuts compared to usual daycare fees, and the business would take that deduction and funnel it to the daycare, since the deal improves productivity by ensuring that child care related problems are deal with pro-actively.

It is an idea still in formation in my li'l ol' brain.

[Plekhanov]

I don’t see why you can’t do a bit of both.

Even a small amount of child benefit can be very useful in alleviating the costs of raising children and also if it’s given to the poorer of the parents (usually the mother) it can give them some useful independent spending power, this is especially if one of the parents is staying at home to look after the kids and as such has no source of income separate from their partner.

I would agree though that a greater proportion of the available funds should be spent on government funded childcare however.

The high costs of private childcare mean that its hardly worth poor and even midwaged parents working, this in addition to the other costs in bringing up children can be a factor in discouraging people from having kids, particularly if the mother (who is most likely to be a stay at home parent) is career minded and doesn’t want to take a long break from it. Reliable childcare also would make businesses less reluctant to hire women of a childbearing age.

It also has the advantage of getting kids out of the house aids development of social skills.