The Guardian’s new series, the Mother Load, explores why it’s harder to be a mother in the US than in any other developed country.

That's a load, all right.

"But who is really to blame here?"

Much of the blame belongs to parents who have children they can not afford. People who have little education and no marketable skills continue to have children they cannot afford to raise.

They insist it is their right to have as many children as they want. But, they don't want to accept that there is a corresponding responsibility to provide a decent childhood for the children.

After three children my wife and I decided that was all we could afford to raise comfortably and so we had no additional children. Personal responsibility is missing from too many people today.

They are useful daycares for people who work as first responders - nurses, paramedics, doctors, etc. who tend to work rotating and long shifts. Where I live most of the major hospitals have a daycare like that nearby.

Unfortunately, I've also seen cases of divorced parents where dad would happily look after the children at those odd times, but mom chooses to put the children in a daycare like this instead.

But who is really to blame here?

Oh, if only someone could have foreseen that coming to pass.

Oh, wait, lots of us did. It wasn't unintended. That was very intentional.

I think you missed what the blame was Jay. Children don't cause people to only work 29hrs/week on two different jobs.

The Guardian is pretty much a Marxist house organ. They make the New York Times look conservative.

My wife manages medical labs. A lot of the jobs associated with medical lab work, like phlebotomists and couriers, are entry-level jobs for the medical profession, and the bulk of the employees are working-class women with children. Whenever one of them complains to my wife about the high cost of child care, she points out that it used to be that someone in their neighborhood could take in children. But now they can't, due to the burden of government regulations. There's little competition in child care as it is, and almost none in child care for shift workers.

Ben. I never said the children were to blame. That is a straw man and attempt to change the subject. If you read my comments I was pointing out that if you have to work two 29 hour jobs just to get by, you shouldn't be having two and three children.

Again it boils down to personal responsibility.

It's great that these exist.

It is NOT so great that the need for them is growing.

HEads up!

The link to the lady in the Swiss orphanage leads to the Markets in Everything post.

Also when I scroll down everything goes wonky.

But who is really to blame here? Try the government.... ~ Amy

That's a big part of it. Government regulated shortages of desired services result in those services only being available during peak times, as there's lower demand during off-peak hours and the limited number of providers don't need to provide off-peak services to make money.

For example, my wife and went to an affair held at San Francisco's City Hall a few years back (pre-Uber). We left at 9:00pm, called a cab service, and were told a cab would be there in "10 minutes." Fifteen minutes later, there was no cab. We called again and were again told "10 minutes." After waiting almost 40 minutes in all, we walked to a BART station several blocks away, in the freezing cold.

San Francisco cabs then were heavily regulated and the number of them kept low so the existing companies would always have customers who needed a cab, ensuring the existing companies would have plenty of customers due to a shortage of suppliers for the desired service. The cabbies, who leased their cabs, made their daily nut during normal business hours and didn't have to work extra hours to pick up additional fares. Thus, people who needed a cab after 6:00pm had a smaller pool of working cabs from which to draw.

Just like daycare. Since the bulk of the demand for daycare (and the money to be made) is during normal business hours and the number of daycare providers is limited by regulation, most daycare providers will choose to operate during those hours. Parents needing daycare for off-peak hours will have a smaller pool of providers.

Uber and Lyft upset the apple cart for San Francisco (and other cities) cabbies. Unfortunately, due to concerns about child molestation, both by parents and those who could be accused, I don't see an Uber for childcare coming any time soon.

When one of my mentors was trying to talk me into a night job, she told me she would advertise for a college student to sleep over at her house the 3 nights a week she workef, when her kids were young. Its a good solution-theyre basically paid to study and sleep.

A lot of people who make really good money in really good careers, work nights. Most of them, once parents, either work alternate shifts from their spouse, or hire a nanny. But 24 hour faycares are great, not a sign of a war on women.

Sorry about the underlining thing. Gregg is working on fixing problems with the blog.

I've never felt more emphatic and decisive. THIS is me at my compelling, attention-demanding best.

My employer and others in this industry find it difficult to get enough people willing to work nights and weekends. So they pay us night and weekend workers substantially more money. I suppose 24-hour child care services will make it easier for more people to compete for the better paying night and weekend work. That might make me worth less money.

Jay, You didn't blame the children. But look at what you were quoting.

"Diana's mother works two jobs because neither employer will give her more than 29 hours of work. By keeping her hours down, the companies can avoid offering benefits that come with full-time employment.
But who is really to blame here?"

The question was asking who is to blame for people needing to work two 29hr part time jobs. Which is why government and employers were the two options presented. Children are completely unrelated. You went off on a nonsequiter.

Either way, site is pretty fubared for me. Best wishes to Greg I guess.

By keeping her hours down, the companies can avoid offering benefits that come with full-time employment. But who is really to blame here?

Government mandates that she get expensive benefits if she works 30 hours or more result in a sudden jump in costs to the employer. So, they hold down costs by denying her more than 29 hours a week.

Writers like Alissa Quart tend to think of that as greedy corporations refusing to pay benefits to hard-working minimum wage employees. But if she's making $15 an hour, getting 30 hours a week means a jump from $435 a week in wages to $450 a week in wages, an increase in costs of $15 per employee per week, and another $160 a week in benefits costs per employee per week (estimated at 35% of gross wages). Multiply that by 52 weeks per year and that starts to add up. Then, multiply it by 100 or more employees, not to mention an HR cost for administering benefits to more employees as well as federal and state reporting requirements and you're looking at a considerable expense.

And if it's simply Diana's mother needing an additional 11 hours of paid work in order to pay for daycare, why is she working two 29-hour jobs? Or does Diana's mother need to upgrade her skill set so she is worth more on the job market?

Perhaps Diana's mother needs a daycare alternative not saddled with expensive federal and state qualification and licensing requirements as well as compliance reporting requirements?

So, yes, who is really to blame here?

Sorry about the underlining thing. Gregg is working on fixing problems with the blog. ~ Amy Alkon at March 1, 2018 9:32 AM

I kind of liked it. It made my blog post seem that much more emphatic.

Personal responsibility is missing from too many people today.

Jay at March 1, 2018 2:03 AM
_________________________________________

Yes, well, there ARE those conservatives who argue, if not in so many words, that "responsibility" means that white, middle-class, native-born Americans "need" to create babies that they often don't even want or could afford only if they moved to a trailer. Because, you know, the birth rate is down, and the last thing we want is more babies from "those people."

Speaking of which:

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-way-we-talk-about-immigration-is-profane/

Another "opposing the Left is racist" argument. Yawn.

Yes, well, there ARE those conservatives.... ~ lenona at March 1, 2018 12:24 PM

Yeah? Name one. And cite the argument made.

So lenona, saying people should take responsibility for their decisions is racist? What in your world isn't racist?

I never said "racist." There's no shortage of poor white people who are considered to be a burden when they ask for help. (By both sides, I dare say, unfortunately.)

Anyone who complains about the current low birth rate in the U.S. but never talks about maybe doing more to help the schools in general OR about giving middle-class people more tax incentives is arguing pretty suspiciously, IMO.

Columnist Ross Douthat has certainly complained about people who refuse to have children.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/opinion/sunday/douthat-the-birthrate-and-americas-future.html

That, at best, is insulting to those who never wanted children. People have had children for cold, practical reasons for centuries, but aside from making sure some tiny remote village doesn't die out, I've never heard of unwilling people going upstairs to make more babies just for the ECONOMY's sake.

And here's Betsy Hart, Presbyterian columnist and divorced mother of four:

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/hart081613.php3#.WpiSc3xOmUl

Quote: "Where does that (childfree) movement come from, and how does it impact the children who are already here?"

Here's what I said on her blog:

It teaches children that it's better to regret not having children than to regret having them - after all, if I change my mind, I can always adopt. What of those who have children and THEN change their minds? Sometimes parenthood simply can't be made rewarding.

It also teaches kids that it takes all kinds to make a world, and that many, such as Emily Dickinson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Pablo Casals, Rachel Carson, Linus Pauling, and Ralph Nader just might not have benefited the world nearly as much had they had children. Not everyone can juggle the way some can. (Also, look up Albert Einstein and Gandhi - both were at least semi-rotten in the parenting department. Would it really have been so terrible, in hindsight, had they quietly chosen to have vasectomies when young?)...

...Besides, as Dr. Spock pointed out decades ago, adoptive parents should ONLY adopt when they love children so much they can't bear life without them - NOT for cold-blooded reasons such as carrying on the family business! Why should the rule be any different for other parents? Don't kids deserve better?

Also, one thing the American village has NOT done well for a century at least is to teach people, young and old, that they can't have it all and so they must save and save for their old age instead of wasting money and energy on a daily basis, in little ways. If the CF population means fewer taxpayers, that's another thing they can teach the young - they can help to force them to embrace Victorian thrift for its own sake, from childhood onward. After all, even the CF will have to save - for their own nursing homes!

And, last but not least, there's Paul Ryan:

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/364920-ryan-americans-need-to-have-more-babies

OK, so I suppose if you squint, he COULD be saying, in code, that we need to loosen the immigration laws. But I doubt it.

More on Paul Ryan:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/paul-ryans-recipe-for-a-robust-economy-have-more-babies/2017/12/15/dcd767b4-e1dc-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html?utm_term=.87976459577d

Quote:

"But this suboptimal situation is directly related to policies the speaker and his party have pursued. If Ryan wants more babies to prop up the United States, maybe he and the rest of the GOP should consider making it easier to live in America with one."

“It teaches children that it's better to regret not having children than to regret having them - after all, if I change my mind, I can always adopt. What of those who have children and THEN change their minds? Sometimes parenthood simply can't be made rewarding.”

There is a name for people who regret having children. The bulk of them are narcissistic sociopaths, and I will stand by that grim assessment.

Met a woman like this at an Army class once, many years ago. She said she regretted having children, and there was no reason to have children other than because you wanted them personally, at least, I guess, for the nine months it took them to come to term.
I told her that my children were a family project and everyone's desires for children and grandchildren were taken into account.

She then told me that was ridicuclous, and I told her she had been reading too many idiot women’s magazines. Like Lenona does....

Lenona, you're reading things into what these folks are saying because deep down, you really, really want them to be racist and xenophobic.

And, last but not least, there's Paul Ryan ~ lenona at March 1, 2018 4:03 PM

So, Paul Ryan saying Americans need to have more babies in order to support population-based social welfare programs actually means they need to have more *white* babies. Got it.

Michael Porter, Harvard professor of economics and no one's idea of a conservative, has also argued that strong population growth is important to economic growth and stability.

...here's Betsy Hart, Presbyterian columnist and divorced mother of four

And Betsy Hart (who?) lamenting the disappearing village that once made having babies the default position in marriage is actually lamenting that the village is not having more *white* babies.

Columnist Ross Douthat has certainly complained about people who refuse to have children.

And Ross Douthat lamenting that America has made it expensive to have children is actually lamenting that it's now too expensive to have *white* children?

"Either way, site is pretty fubared for me."

Gregg is working on fixing it. He's been on the phone with our great guys at our hosting company, Nexcess. It's getting fixed.

It's better now - no more underlines. Believe me, this is really hard for me to have it messed up like this. But Gregg is dealing with some complicated stuff and he's making progress. Please just bear with us. Probably be a few days before it's normal again. I hope not, but it might be.

I fear thousands of deaths by starvation.

Demographic timebombs are real and having nothing to do with race. Please see the situation in Japan.

http://www.businessinsider.com/myths-about-japan-put-demographic-time-bomb-in-perspective-2017-11#myth-people-in-japan-arent-interested-in-having-sex-3

@Crid,

Extremists are way worser than what you'll see in the USA/Canada. Be it Antifa, animal rights activists, upper-middle class millennial Muslims/Socialists, or whatever analogue mirror of the useful idiots from the BLM movement.

I haven't a clue what you're trying to say.

Neither do I, I thought it sounded good -and made sense- in my head, but in hindsight, something was lost in translation.

Give us more tomorrow.

I told her she had been reading too many idiot women’s magazines. Like Lenona does....
_____________________________________________

What makes you think I read ANY women's magazines? I don't.

My favorites, in no order, include The Atlantic, Time, Newsweek, and New York.

Conan, why do I have to spell everything out?

Racism is very often there (even if it's difficult to pinpoint in individuals, no one wants to see their property values go down), but it's just one piece of the puzzle, as I thought I made clear. I.e., you just know that those who complain about a low birth rate do not want to encourage POOR people, regardless of color, to have more babies than middle-class couples. The latter refuse to have more, often because they don't want to have to work 60 hours a week - or slip into true poverty. Again, no one has more babies or unwanted babies for the sake of the economy, so if a politician, in particular, says we need to have more, it's only civilized to offer plausible financial solutions for those who WANT babies but are afraid to have them. (That includes the childless poor, of course.) Otherwise, that politician might as well be saying "this isn't my job" and blaming innocent people.

And any politician that refuses, at least, to OFFER help for the American middle class (still mainly white, I believe, but maybe not for long) to have more babies almost certainly doesn't want more immigrants either. It's one thing for a professor to talk objectively about the pitfalls of a low birth rate; it's another for politicians or political columnists to use loaded words like "decadence" or "stagnation" - or to refuse to offer help.

Last paragraphs from the WaPo:

"...Of course, maybe Ryan does really care about our demographic difficulties but doesn’t want to go about fixing them through economic means. If so, there is the obvious solution of liberalizing immigration, yet Republicans from top to bottom have refused to consider it.

"When it comes down to it, there is a raft of policies that could help mitigate the problem of falling birth rates. The fact that they remain unimplemented suggests that maybe Ryan hasn’t 'done his part' as well as he thinks."

I told her that my children were a family project and everyone's desires for children and grandchildren were taken into account.
___________________________________________

If I may ask...

An adult couple should be free to have children so long as that will not automatically burden other adult relatives, right? So if all four of a couple's parents were opposed to it for some foolish reason, the couple should ignore that, right?

In the same vein, if the four desperately want grandchildren and the couple wants to stay childfree, why should they have to do more than listen politely to their parents for a few minutes before sticking to their decision?

Also, given that so many kids are still born by accident, more or less (and according to the Guttmacher Institute, the failure rate for the Pill is MUCH higher in the first year of use, per se), how is it fair to say that the MAJORITY of those who regret having children are "narcissistic sociopaths"? Somehow, I doubt most psychologists would say they are. Besides, plenty of couples have children only because their parents guilt-tripped them into it.

There's a 1970s novel by a well-known author in which the parents divorce. There is no infidelity involved, and no apparent money problems. But...it's revealed that the problems in their marriage really started when their third child was born. Since their first two children were likely born in the 1950s and the mother, IIRC, had to drop out of college, that would suggest that the first two weren't planned - but getting married and having children in the 1950s were practically mandatory anyway. But...the third was born after the Pill became available, so maybe they were using the Pill and it failed. Knowing they should have been able to avoid it but still couldn't get an abortion anywhere could likely have broken their marriage.

Also, when you think about it, maybe the fierce push to conform in the 1950s - plus many teen marriages - could have accounted for the high divorce rate in the 1960s and 1970s, after which it died down, since condoms started being available over-the-counter and the childfree life became more acceptable for both sexes.

What makes you think I read ANY women's magazines? I don't.

My favorites, in no order, include The Atlantic, Time, Newsweek, and New York.

lenona at March 2, 2018 11:54 AM

Yep.. women’s magazines.

Conan, why do I have to spell everything out? ~ lenona at March 2, 2018 12:14 PM

Because you start with base assumptions of venality in anyone with which you disagree. And you refuse to see that your own prejudices have colored your point of view.

You argue as if you've only ever discussed politics in an echo chamber, with people pre-disposed to agree with you. So, you don't defend your position, you cast aspersions with the expectation that the room will applaud your insights.

In this case, you took for granted that Paul Ryan is racist and expected that the room would agree with you - because, Ryan, republican, and racist.

For you, anyone opposed to open immigration and government social programs is, by default, racist.

Racism is very often there (even if it's difficult to pinpoint in individuals, no one wants to see their property values go down), but it's just one piece of the puzzle, as I thought I made clear. ~ lenona at March 2, 2018 12:14 PM

Isn't it wonderful that you can suss out the racism in these secret coded messages these foul conservatives are sending each other? Yep, those mean ol' racist conservatives will never get anything by you, will they? You're onto them.

Of course, you started with the assumption that those folks were racist so you didn't actually have to listen to anything they said. I'll bet that helped, eased your conscience a bit too.

And any politician that refuses, at least, to OFFER help for the American middle class (still mainly white, I believe, but maybe not for long) to have more babies almost certainly doesn't want more immigrants either. ~ lenona at March 2, 2018 12:30 PM

Right, 'cause without government programs middle class people can't have babies. And anyone urging people to have more babies without legislating expensive social welfare programs is, by default, xenophobic and hates immigrants.

lenona (ad infinitum):

And any politician that refuses, at least, to OFFER help for the American middle class

"Government Offering Help" = Leviathan tossing some pennies back at The Little People after confiscating dollars.

There is no help here - certainly not for the middle class that paid the taxes.

We have reached a tipping point where more Americans are receiving "benefits" than are paying for them.

Let's re-read Jay's comment in that light:

People who have little education and no marketable skills continue to have children they cannot afford to raise.

They insist it is their right to have as many children as they want. But, they don't want to accept that there is a corresponding responsibility to provide a decent childhood for the children.

Lenona - these are the people "getting helped" by taxes or counterproductive minimum-wage-and benefit laws. Taxpayers are taking up the, uh, slack.

Which is why people with the skills and stability to pay in are *curbing* the number of kids they have - that is, reducing the number of well-raised, productive future citizens:

After three children my wife and I decided that was all we could afford to raise comfortably and so we had no additional children.

Three was "all we could afford" - under the current regime of salary and property taxes, funding the "help" given to others.

Now go re-read Ryan et al. This is the reality that are talking about.

Similarly, the waitress is given less than 30 hours - because that is "all they can afford" or to be more blunt, all that her unskilled labor is worth to the company. Wishful legislation doesn't change that reality - and in fact has hurt the worker it was supposed to help: now she must find and juggle 2 employers.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "government help".

Please stop huffing about this - stop smearing race/class/ethnicity icing on top of a caked baked with socialist economic lies.

Isab, you know perfectly well most people think of fluffy publications than that when they hear "women's magazines." Like Cosmopolitan. (I've never heard anyone call The Atlantic fluffy.)

And, what I'd like to know is, why don't we hear more people on the left calling for more babies?

Maybe it's because they know perfectly well that people who don't have more babies just plain SHOULDN'T be having more, whether for their own sake or for their existing children's sake? It would be arrogant and condescending to suggest that they ignore those serious considerations - so they don't suggest it. (Reminds me of a veterinarian who said he didn't like the campaigns to push people to take in shelter animals, because, he said, anyone in this have-it-all society who doesn't already have a pet SHOULDN'T have a pet. No, he wasn't talking about shelters vs. pet stores.)