Boston is the epicenter of the Left’s hopes for replacing the family with social workers. Where a statewide program in Tennessee found that free public pre-K led to worse results for program participants, a citywide program in Boston found the opposite.
There are many reasons why the two studies had such different results, but one of them may be that Massachusetts has some of the most expensive daycare prices in the country. The average cost to place an infant in daycare in Massachusetts is $20,000 a year.
And even publicly funded daycare advocates are perfectly willing to admit why the cost of daycare is so high: government regulation.
Under Massachusetts law, day care facilities must have one licensed staff on duty at all times for every three infants. Other states allow a higher staff-child ratio, but Massachusetts is proud of its high standards, and some want to make them even higher.
“The evidence says quality [child care] takes paid teachers — like teachers with pay and benefits — common playing time, good rations, all those things,” Colin Jones of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center recently wrote. His report concluded that increasing pay and benefits to get the quality he thinks is right would raise the cost of daycare per child to $28,000 a year.
At some point, many young mothers will start asking themselves, “Why should I pay someone else $28,000 a year for something I would rather do myself?”
The answer to that question will depend on the economic and family situation of every mother. Where are they in their careers? Is now a safe time to take a few years off? Does the husband make enough money so that one income (or one income and a part-time income) is enough to pay the rent?
And the answers to these questions, especially the last one, would certainly change if mothers became eligible for whatever subsidies federal, state, and local governments give to daycare providers.
If we are going to be spending so much money paying strangers to look after other people’s children, would it be slightly less crazy if we just paid mothers to look after their own?
