We Need Consumers. Thus, Workers. We Gotta Lower Childcare Costs.

Is America a society where now only the affluent can breed?

It’s a relatively well-reported (well, somewhat) trend since COVID that child care is increasingly expensive. A lot of couples I know, and couples you see on the news or YouTube, will talk about spending more on child care than their mortgage — which seems especially logical if they’re on “rate lock” at 3.5% or whatever. I know a few parents who think child care for 0–6 is “more expensive than college,” which doesn’t seem right but I’m sure it can feel that way in the moment.

The child care discussion is interesting for people because it’s so deeply tied to lots of other relevant discussions, including:

• Money

• The role of each gender

• How to seem successful vs. how to actually be successful

• Social media and its illusions of grandeur

• How many kids you can actually have

• Whether having that many kids is selfish and/or sustainable

• Etc, etc.

Before we go any further, I think we need to establish this one basic fact: most of American life is designed to benefit the affluent. Child Care is no different. If you’re rich, this stuff is challenging — but much easier. If you’re not rich? Pull up your bootstraps and get rich, kid.

Well, Patrick Bet-David did a video on the child care crisis/cliff recently, and it’s not bad: