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What has changed is that due to labour mobility and contemporary society generally the extended family has become a non-thing for so many of us.

If we're expected to move wherever for work, then that wherever needs to provide support. Because right now I'm hours from my sole remaining inlaw and a whole country apart from my own parents and brother, and it's been hell raising children like this. And not just young children; my teenagers' mental health would be much better if they were to have their uncle and grandma nearby.

> This expects that the rest of us have to work to subsidize you having children

We can obviously unpack all the ways that this is abused, but generally speaking children are necessary for the continuation of the species. Children are also absolutely a burden on the parents, physically, emotionally, and financially.

So yes, broadly speaking, I would expect the childfree to disproportionately contribute into a societal pool to offset for the fact that they are existing in human society but not contributing their part to it's ongoing propagation.

Ultimately though, you're right - no parent should expect to have the same lifestyle as their childfree counterpart. Not with free time, disposable income, or even day-to-day "happiness".

> Both of my parents had jobs when I was growing up. Why are we suddenly expecting this to change?

Mine too. Here's what I think has changed: in that era (and for much of human history), it was assumed/expected that it "took a village" to raise children. Families stayed closer together - the previous generation was around to help with childrearing. And in general, communities took care of everyone's children in a pool that would be considered completely outlandish today. Heck, the concept of a Wet Nurse [1] is something that would probably explode most people's minds today. I bet at least one person will read this comment and not realize that this was something that was completely ubiquitous and standard for much of human history. Can you imagine that existing today? It would be inconceivable. Not that we need it since the advent of formula, but the point is simply that societies helped take care of children more in the past than they do now.

Today, people move further from home from work (losing direct family access), have children later in life (less energy to contribute/harder to tradeoff career responsibilities), and build fewer local community social bonds (online relationships may be meaningful but they don't help babysit).

I don't think we have adjusted accordingly yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_nurse

> people move further from home from work (losing direct family access),

Sounds like personal choices to me

This is more than a personal choice, it's a reality of our economy and the social / economic mobility is a net positive. maybe some of this will change with wfh movement

what do you mean by that? the most common jobs (retail, food, medicine, construction, etc.) exist pretty much everywhere there's a critical mass of people living. you don't need to relocate to get the kinds of work most people do. the people that benefit most from relocating are specialists who already get paid above the median and/or want to follow their niche passion. good for them! but I'm not sure it's something that deserves to be subsidized further.

+1 My wife and I both moved away from our families long before we had kids. I think the age of having kids also plays into the moving away for work as it's something that's just not on your mind.

Anyways, the difference between our family unit and our friends who have local family & ties is night and day different.

It sounds totally bonkers if you’re not used to it but this is actually the norm in other countries. Both of us had comparatively long parental leave for both kids. Both kids went into really nice state kindergarten before they were 18 months. Before that if we were poorer we’d have our childcare subsidised. Both kids get things like a sports club grant each year, free dental care and free healthcare. There are state run after school clubs and so on.

The amazing thing to me is you think the OP was asking for something unbelievable.

Big difference between providing a free/affordable childcare center vs. paying the parent to not work for 5 years.

Yes but I didn’t take the OP as wanting not to work or needing all their expenses covered. Subsidise doesn’t necessarily mean that.

I'm trying to find reasonable thresholds and weigh the societal pros and cons.

> The amazing thing to me is you think the OP was asking for something unbelievable.

The five years that OP alluded to is a really long time to not be working. That's 5/40 years for any given career (for a single child), meaning one eighth of a childfree person's productivity has to cover for it. At least at this extreme scale.

> Both of us had comparatively long parental leave for both kids.

How long was it? I'm genuinely curious.

Again, I'm not against subsidizing childcare and supporting children. Some of the expectations of parents seem to be really high, especially to someone whose parents both worked throughout my early childhood.

The current costs of childcare in my area are $80-$250/wk for infants unless you're going for something super Bougie for your baby.

Three months each with six months shared.

My friends and coworkers who’ve lived in the US describe pre-school childcare as dystopian. Even when expensive.

If you think of it as 5/(40 * 2) or if you had two kids relatively close together 7/(40 * 3) the math is significantly better. It’s also very telling that caring for kids is not seen as being productive.

Where does the 40*3 term come from? I'm assuming the 5/(40*2) is 5 years of subsidy out of two 40-year careers. I can't figure where the 3 term is coming from unless it's 2 children from 3 total people or something else that I'm missing.

Yes it’s three careers. I say just before it if you have two kids close together. Two years is a normal gap. So seven years of subsidy out of three forty year careers. The mother and two children each have forty years of “productivity”.

(I think) That only works if neither child is eligible for this leave during their career.

If you imagine Adam and Betty have two kids Charlie and Debbie who have two kids Earl and Felicia who have Gary and Helen… each generation receives N years of leave income from (2M - N) years of work income. You can’t take Betty, Charlie, and Debbie’s work income (or total productivity) against just Betty’s leave income.

I think you take Adam and Betty’s combined leave against their combined M years and M years minus N years of leave, C&D’s N against their 2M-N, etc. (you can time-shift it however you like if you want to think of some generation paying for a different generation, but the long-run math doesn’t change for replacement rate births)

In your example, this seems like 7 years of 73 years (9.6%) is going to this program, not 7/120 (5.8%)

It’s quite hard to follow what you mean there so I’ll assume the extra detail is correct. If you wanted to model more detail think about the growth of the effect if those children have children. That really starts to drive down that percentage.

My point was to show roughly that worrying about the cost of productivity loss when having children is the only way to sustain human productivity doesn’t add up.

> But at some threshold of subsidization this equation tips and actively offloads the entire burden onto those without children.

True, but on a long enough timeframe one could also view it as a repayment from the people who (with or without children) were once children-being-subsidized themselves.

That's a great point, actually. Inverse social security.

The taxes of people without children already subsidise schooling, healthcare and social welfare (benefits for parents).

The point stated was that there needs to be a threshold. You have introduced another topic entirely, and the person you are answering implied nothing about your topic.

> offloads the entire burden onto those without children

Are you including "people with children over the age of five to six years" in this group? Because it seems like they would be helping to raise others people's children (in your words) but would also have benefitted.

According to the first Google result I found it looks like in 2018 only 15% of women age 50 were childless. A first-order approximation assuming younger generations have kids at the same rate and it's the same for both genders (neither of these are guaranteed but it's a starting point) would lead me to believe that more than most people have children and would benefit from a policy like this over the course of their lives. People without cars help pay for roads, people without children pay for public schools...I'm not really seeing much here to suggest there's an undue burden on those without children.

> This expects that the rest of us have to work to subsidize you having children

This is exactly how society works for ages 5-18 and we call it 'school', how is 0-4 different?

It was my impression that the OP wanted subsidized parental leave until age 5 so that they could spend 1:1 time with their child and family needs.

Public school is typically less than $50/day per student. I vaguely suggested minimum wage stipends for an extended parental leave (1 year+), and this would be more than we spend on public schooling.

Lots of poor families make childcare work on shoestring budgets and have done so all throughout history. My parents did.

How much money is enough? How much is too much?

> How much money is enough? How much is too much?

Depends on who is paying

You're comparing very different levels of welfare/wealth transfer.

There are many children where you have a choice:

* Subsidize them with 15 years of child care for a relatively small amount now, and they will become productive members of society.

* Do nothing now, and in 15 years be forced to subsidize them via crime, the justice system, and outreach programs for the remainder of their life.