We are supposed, we think, to gasp in horror at this. Yet it seems entirely logical to us:
Almost twice as many working mothers as fathers have considered leaving their jobs because of the burden of childcare, research reveals.
A survey of 3,000 parents with children under four, commissioned by women’s rights group the Fawcett Society and Totaljobs, shows that new mothers disproportionately feel the strain of juggling childcare and work, and that it affects their finances, work-life balance, careers and aspirations.
One in five (19%) mothers of young children have considered leaving the workforce temporarily or permanently due to the challenges of balancing childcare and their career, the research by Opinium found. For fathers, this figure was one in 10.
As we’ve noted a number of times over the decades someone, somewhere, has to take care of the children. Given the mammalian nature of our species for at least some of the necessary time that will be the female part of the household. We’re also not surprised if - given that mammal thing - there’s some preference in the split of that part of the overall household labour burden in further years too.
Note that we don’t say there should be anything at all. Only that we’re not surprised by a possible divergence in average preferences.
However, since that’s not how the current zeitgeist views it we should move on to possible solutions here. So, what are they?
Well, given that the children do need caring for clearly the only possibility is that some other people work to care for the children while the parent (s) work doing something else. But unless there’s some distinct - and large - economy of scale in child care it’s not obvious that that drives society forward in any grand sense. The same number of labour hours will be spent caring for children, just by different people. That division and specialisation of labour thing does rest upon the assumption of greater labour productivity after all.
The idea of tax subsidy - whether by making childcare a tax relief, or direct subsidy of the costs - doesn’t change this either. We’ll still have a largely female workforce spending their time caring for children whichever way this is done. Parents care for their own or others work their lives caring for the children of others.
We think we’ve got one of those problems that doesn’t, in fact, have a solution. Children need to be cared for so the only argument being had here is who should it be doing that? We don’t reduce the costs, nor increase productivity, either way. So perhaps there just isn’t that solution to be had?