Baby boom

"What could a childcare cost, ten dollars?"
- In Canada, yes.
  https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/news/2025/03/toward-10-a-day-an-early-learning-and-child-care-backgrounder0.htm
  As of February 2025, eight provinces and territories are delivering regulated early learning and child care for an average of $10-a-day or less, and all other jurisdictions have reduced parent fees by at least 50%.l
  
  Wow way to rub THAT in XD
  Just kidding, I love that for y'all. Every parent should have that (or better!)
  
  That's the goal. Maybe I'm in an exceptional area, but I'm not aware of any parents who are effectively paying $10/day unless their income is low enough to trigger additional benefits.
  Still HUGE improvement over the last few years though. I think we had an option for 18$/day if we packed our kid a lunch. Our daycare would feed them for an additional 3$/day. I think overall average care costs have practically halved in the last few years so even if it's not perfectly universal and perfectly $10, it's HELLA better. Strong improvement. Honestly a MAJOR factor in trying to figure out the feasibility of having more kids for us.
  
  My friends are paying $1400 a month, I don't think this is working in Ontario.
- How much clearer can i be Michael?!

y'all understand why they want conservative christians to have a ton of babies, right? the only reason that american conservatives have become as atrocious as they are is that they have the big, dumb numbers. they need another generation of idiots - forcefully uneducated - to continue their legacy of shit.
- The irony is that these conservatives often can't afford large families without welfare, the exact things Republicans are cutting. Those give a lot more than onetime 5k payments.
  
  They have to ensure that the large families are also poor, thus flooding the armed forces with young people in need of a paycheck with no alternatives.
  
  That’s why they’re getting rid of child labor laws. Make them kids earn their way!
- and of course to be wage slaves
  
  sure, if you need to throw some 4chan jaron into the jumbo that's fine.
- Yes, we're aware. But they can't even do that right. They're still too greedy to properly implement their own plans

Like I’d take it if I’m planning on having a baby anyways. But yeah, it’s an absolutely pathetic amount. And childcare is only going to get more expensive with this fucking administration
- Yeah childcare is gonna be more expensive, but they'll loosen the regulations so that anybody can be a childcare provider, without any background checks or anything, so more people can charge more money. And no vaccine requirement, so more kids can go. It's win/win/win. /s
  
  Anybody but trans people you mean
- It might be enough to cover the delivery hospital fees!
  
  It’s really not, and might not even cover your deductible.
  
  Oh you sweet summer child
  
  It's not even gonna cover your ambulance ride to the hospital because your water broke while you were at work.
  
  FWIW the delivery of each of my children cost roughly $1800. We had no complications and I have pretty good insurance. That said, 3 days after my first was born we had to take him in for UV treatment. That cost $7000 for the pleasure of sitting under a UV light for 2 days.

40k a year? So at least 3200 a month for daycare? Who on gods dying earth can pay for that? That's more than 3 times my rent and my landlord is bleeding me like a stuck pig, what the fuck
- People live in way different fuckin worlds man, and the weird part is a lot of us just go through life thinking our "version" is normal. The folks who do this and whose friends do this and whose parents did this - it's normal to them.
  I don't think I'm conveying this well. There are whole communities, made up of individual people, for whom this is standard, expected, because it's what they've always been surrounded by, grew up practically breathing it as normal. And for these folks, the reciprocal realization to the one you made, realization that MANY people do not (can not) do this - comes as a similar level of surprise.
  It's really fucked up. And it's something deeper and harder to fix than just pointing to one guy or class of people as The Problem (to be clear, that guy and class of people I'm referencing ARE an enormous, hideous problem).
  
  Oh, it's simple ~~easy~~ to fix, just very painful. Nobody wants to fix this because it means dismantling capitalism and bringing those responsible to justice. This is why there is so much support for fascism. They run from the boogeyman they know into the arms of the ones that promise a return to normalcy.
  
  I mean yes? I feel like there's an implication that you never quite said that the quality of life for people that are paying that much for child care is better and that's just not true. I was living far better in a cheap area making far less than I am now in the bay area. This is just the cost of living here. There's absurdly wealthy people here and there's, compatible to the median, absurdly wealthy people in rural areas. This price does not mean they're living in luxury, this can easily be them scraping by. This is literally the cost of child care for the middle class in the highest cost markets in the US.
- Bay area and I'm sure NYC
- When you have 3+ kids that are young.

Oh there will be a boom of... abandoned babies for the fostercare system.

Just use all that stimulus money we got! When was that? Like 2 or 3 times... 5 years ago... Uh. The poor! They're stealing all your money!
- To be fair, I did have a baby in 2020 and it felt like every other week they sent an extra check for having a baby. 10/10 would recommend.

There's literally been bipartisan efforts to expand the child tax credit ($1000 per year baseline, expanded to $2000 for 2018-2025 and expiring this year, plus COVID era provisions or up to $3000 or $3600 for 2021), and the bills to do so keep dying without a vote.
If they were serious about this they'd expand the 2021 program to where parents were getting $300 checks every month, and make that permanent and indexed to inflation.
So much of the Trump presidency is announcing a new program that sounds good, but isn't even enough to make up for a program that he already killed.
- 300$ a month is already way below index.
  
  Yeah but it's fucking something man. At this point I'll take anything. That's a good grocery haul right there every single month.
  
  Well we already lost that in 2022, when it dropped back down to a $2000 annual credit you get when you do your taxes the year after, and after this year it'll drop again to $1000 unless the law is changed.
- Still waiting for healthcare to be "fixed". Definitely going to be any day now...
  
  Longest two weeks of my life.

I wonder how much woke stuff we can get for the purpose of making babies.
Mandated paid maternity leave?
Child tax credit?
Maybe some universal medical coverage for the mothers and children?
- What are you, a socialist?

Lmao anyone who thinks this is a lot of money has clearly never raised a child in the recent past. (Let's say 10-15 years? idk)
$5k is gone, like that

It costs $40k/year for daycare. Start handing out $5k to moms, daycare now costs $45k/year.
- It blows my mind that so many people don’t understand this concept.
- They already hand out 3k a year for kids, up to 6k, as well as up to 5k in credits available based on how much you spend and your income level. And I live in Jersey, where everything is expensive, and we were ranked fifth most expensive place to have kids in daycare, and even with two kids in I didn't pay 40k. Not sure we even cracked 30k, but it was probably close.
  EDIT: Info is dated, good thing I have an accountant. Looks like it's 2k per kid, and the 3/6k is for dependent care credits, which applies from 35% to 20% based on your tax bracket (goes down the more you make).

In Germany the parents (and later, the children themselves) receive a little over 250€ per month until the child is 25 or finished an apprenticeship or uni.
Germany has a very low birth rate.
Edit: copy of a text where I laid out the benefits we get in a similar discussion:
In Germany we have protection of pregnant people from when their doctor deems them unfit for work until delivery – continued payment of full wages. Two months after delivery with 70% wages and 12 months to split between both parents, which can be taken together and stretched by taking half the money for twice as long. Until your child is six you may (with some exceptions) take unpaid leave for parenting. Your employer has to keep your position for you. Childcare from 1 till school is affordable (ca. 250€/M). Healthcare is paid as a percentage from your income (ca. 15%) and has very little extra cost. You get 250€ per child per month just for having a child. Tax credits. If you are still struggling: Assistance for rent, school materials, clothing and more.
We have (compared to the US) pretty solid workers protection laws. We have a (not great but you won't starve) state pension. We have unemployment benefits, that don't run out (conditions apply). We don't have the weird Japanese shut-in young men on a scale that's worth a mention.
We also have one of the lowest birth rates in the world.
Yes, the oppressiveness of a capitalist society is a factor – Germany is far from free of that, and getting worse. But compared to the US we should be popping out babies like crazy. But it's emancipation of women and it's education, that afaik are the most decisive influences of a low birth rate.
- But it's emancipation of women and it's education
  Hey, so, funny story about what MAGA is working hard to eliminate...
- Sociatal factors suppressing birth rate in Germany may be high rents, inability to find places big enough for a child considering today's standards, and bad outlook. Also work life balance is skewed for some.
- I think the Germany benefits are amazing but I suspect people undersell how important baseline pay is for deciding on if you want to have kids. I'm a software engineer in Germany, I get paid a decent thriving wage, but I'll never own a home as long as real estate is an investment option for large businesses and conservative governments continue to get elected.
  Who would raise a child without a home to call their own? That's what goes through my head. Even if all the costs for raising a kid were offset, I'd still be behind what I need to be in my opinion. I think some people answer that question and say "I would" and I think a greater percentage agree with that sentiment.
  Couple that with the predictability of the political climate and you get an even more clear picture. Who would raise a kid in a world that's getting worse? I might need to leave Germany if the CDU and AFD stay in power for too long. I may need to leave to a country that is making progress against inequality instead of expanding it. At the current pace of the world we are approaching another major Multi-national war in the next two decades, why would I have a kid in such an unstable time.
  Having spoken to a couple women now in Germany about this subject - some of them broach the subject from a place of never wanting to but the few I'm spoken to also claim the factors above as major reasons against it.
  I think countries need to start considering that extra pay and benefits for parents is not as effective as fixing the economy and political system for everyone is if their goal is to have kids.
  
  I don't think you need to own your own place to call it a home. Having grown up in East Germany, most kids I went to school with didn't grow up in a house their parents owned. It's different in the countryside, but in the city I grew up in easily >90% rented.
  It would be nicer though, for sure. For me it's also not on my financial horizon to ever own a house or flat.
  I'm with you on everything else. The question remains: leave for where? Everywhere is going to shit.

Ban corporations from owning residential properties. Outlaw rent as a form of slavery. Every person currently renting residential property becomes the owner of the property they're renting. The 14,000,000 empty residential properties in the USA which are mostly corporate owned get confiscated and distributed based on the needs and skills of the families that need them. Empty 6 bedroom farmhouse on 40 acres of land goes to a family with 5 kids that is willing to farm. One bedroom condominium in the city goes to a single person or a couple. Housing is a human right. Fuck corporations. Tax the wealthy the way they did 80 years ago and use the money to pay for universal health care and free college. Tax robotic labor and AI administrative labor to pay for universal basic income. Let the robots do the work, just give us all our fair share. Nationalize all fossil fuels as a step to phasing them out. When the money from selling oil all goes to the public good rather than corporate profits, it will be much easier to switch to renewables. With free housing, UBI, free college, and universal healthcare in place, lots of people will be interested in having children.
- You can have practically free housing. Just buy this for 18500 euros.
  https://www.rumah123.com/properti/batam/hos19254242/?price-unit-type=metersquare
  Or do you want.. free stuff while also having people invest capital in your area?
  I don't think it works that way.
  Best we can do is tax your labour and redistribute it.

Maybe if the world people were raising their kids in didn't look so fucking gloomy thanks to some fascist fucks, they'd want to have more kids.

Orphan boom.
- Orphan to foster care to homeless to prison to free labor pipeline.

In my country the government decided to give hundreds of euro each month for 6 years to who have a baby (my friend gets €400/month) but SURPRISE! Birth rate didn't increase
- In Germany it's something like 260€ per month until the child turns 25 if still in education (university, apprenticeship) (26/27 if the child served one or two years as a soldier or in a social or climate project)
  And yeah birth rates didn't increase either AFAIK
  
  It's been in place in more or less its current form since 1975, have a graph. Colours are generally for 1-4th child if there's a fifth one then that's a tax deduction. Before that there were schemes but they would not kick in for the first child and generally speaking it was even more of a pittance. In primary school, in the 80s, our maths teacher actually did a run-down of how much that money didn't pay for our new shoes.
  That's West Germany in the east they spent a lot on free daycare which seems to have had much better results. Plenty of states nowadays do have free daycare at least for poor parents, and generally make the fees income-dependent, but the level of service still isn't anywhere like it was in the GDR where you could also offload school-age kids to the state when they had holidays, summer camps and stuff, but you didn't. Which isn't exactly rare kids get more holidays than workers.
  Overall, the reason our birthrate is only stabilised at a low level instead of at a reasonable level is because conservatives care more about supporting family models few people want than about solving the issue. Nah not even "conservatives", it's specifically Catholic conservatives.
  And, no, I'm not advocating for re-introducing the FDJ, blue scarves and everything. How about handing organisations like the Scouts some money so they can offer summer camps for pretty much the cost of food. It'd be mostly money to allow adults to not work while running those camps (that is, extend their holidays) as well as some materiel costs. Increased tent wear.
- That's € 28 800 btw, to compare to Drumpf's measly 5000.
  Anyhow, same here and afaik it continues in some form or other until they're 18?
- Similarly, I went out to eat and offered them a crisp dollar bill. Surprise! They didn't serve me.

People are not having kids because the middle class cannot afford it. Assuming your household has the average American household income of 80k. This would give the household something like 40k at most after the kid's associated expenses, which means that each parent would have a whopping 20k to themselves. This is positively fucked because they would have to have a quality of life similar to someone who is eligible for food stamps, but they would not be themselves. Kids are for those who already benefit from government programs, or those who can afford a very expensive pet for a minimum of 15 years.
All this will do is increase the number of children born into poverty, which already accounts for the majority of children born in America.
You want an actual solution? Give parents food stamps up to a yearly income of 120k
I also find the implication that a human life is worth $5,000 disgusting.
It was clear to me that when the gov't went after reproductive rights, it was because declining birthrates are detrimental to capitalism. The money cannot stop; the money cannot slow down. Capitalism REQUIRES exponential growth in every regard.
Any "moral" reason given by a politician against abortion is a thinly veiled disguise to ensure that the machine always has enough cogs to keep running and growing.
How are you going to say a fetus is priceless and then say a live infant is worth $5,000? Fucking disgusting.
- I don’t see a clear association in saying a baby is worth $5,000 when existing tax law says a baby is worth $2,000 off your taxes. It’s an incentive, not a bill of sale.
  
  Drops back down to $1000 for 2025 unless the increase is extended. A $5000 payout is actually less of a payout than just extending the current CTC.

After we had our first child we went to some institutions to fill required papers. In the waiting area, there were informational posters everywhere to tell people to not get pregnant too early. One read:

A child costs you 160.000 € until its 18th birthday
- Shithole state Americans: "One hundred sixty dollars? I'll take four!"
- Thats a very low estimate, although maybe its different in a country with ant semblencr of public healthcare. I've always heard $1,000,000
- it's? Maybe its? Or their?
  
  Probably neither, seeing as it was most likely not written in English but OP translated it for your benefit.

How the fuck much are they making that it is still worth it after taking $40k off the top?
- It's probably in NYC or San Fran if that's for one kid. Both parents could reasonably make 100-200k around there.
- I mean anything more than like 60K is still technically making money. If they're in a place where Childcare costs 40k it is likely they make at least 80k due to the high cost of living or they have more than one child. The poorer people in that area have to use family, friends, and less official care. Federally, parents only get 12wk of unpaid leave.
  
  Child care costs are also tax deductible. Does help a bit.
  https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/child-and-dependent-care-credit-information
  
  For me, it would have to be at least 80k, otherwise you would effectively be earning less than your daycare provider. You could find one or two kids to watch with your own and effectively be making more money while being there with your child.

lol at one point I was paying more for daycare than my mortgage.
5k, these people are 🤡

Maybe they should improve the quality of life for working families to get them to be confident enough to have more babies naturally?
....nah, it's obviously the queers fault!

Place where I live also gives about the equivalent of 5000 USD for a birth. My wife got a single room in the hospital (very basic public hospital, but not a room with 4 other mothers). The 5k just about covered the medical costs for the pregnancy, birth and the additional cost for the room for 3 days ...
- 🤔 is your country having an election soon
  
  Nah, this system has been in place for years.

So that's $5k per month, right? Right?
- What's interesting is 5000$ today is about 129$ in 1860.
  Slaves were, on average, worth about 800 bucks in those times. I'm not sure how much a baby would be worth, but even if it comes to a quarter of what a full grown slave is worth... that means that they literally think we are worth less than slaves...

Sadly, I could see this convincing people desperate enough for cash...
- Those poor fucking kids.
- I saw ads before Christmas incentivizing people to refinance car loans and get cash in hand :<
- That's absolutely what this is for. Uneducated people have more kids; trump lives the uneducated. Those kids grow up to lick their oppressors boot, or end up in the prison system. Either way it's a win for conservatives.

May barely cover the hospital bill for those many without health insurance. But of course the proposed bonus is intended for middle class white babies
- Average cost for an uninsured birth is 19,000.
  
  How much to hold my baby?

Japan has an aging population and tried a lot, with not much success...
Prosperity = less kids, so we shouldn't be surprised what Trump is going to try...

That tracks. I'm paying about $15k for pre-k/daycare throughout the year, which really only covers about 7-8mo, then there's camps, babysitters, etc. I easily spend $25k on each kid and I'm not in New York or somewhere.

"I mean it's one child, Michael. How much could it cost? Five thousand dollars?"
- Aw you got it before I did...

What's a baby cost? $5,000?
- I can get you one for $4k. No take backs though.
  
  Well, most of a baby. Do you want the front half or
  
  I'll buy the orange baby man for 4k.

Remember all the garbage about welfare queens? I thought this was something that was morally wrong in the 90s to support people who have kids?
- Better: remember all the gnashing of teeth about "latchkey kids"? These people will do anything besides the minimum necessary.

Giving everyone 5k would more meaningfully improve birth rates than asking educated young people worried about their future childrens' standard of living to take a leap for the cost of one small medical emergency.
- I can't tell if sarcasm or not. But no this won't do anything.
  Russia/Asian countries do this already it has barely any effect at all. Again it comes down to both money and culture. Can't throw money at a problem without changing the culture you're just half assing it.
- 5000 is genuinely nothing when it comes to raising a child.

40k/year sounds premium. But what little do I know, I am German and pay about 3k/year for a very nice Kindergarten.
- Here’s typical day care rates for Tulsa, Oklahoma.
  Oklahoma is one of the lowest cost of living states in the nation, because it’s a hell hole with no social services and has been already doing Project 2025 for the past five years. This means salaries are similarly depressed - as a teacher, my first year take home pay per month was $2200. If I had a child then I would have nothing between day care and rent. (And I also would have needed the daycare, first year teaching is 60-100 hours a week.)
  The people working at the facility are likely barely qualified and probably not making enough to support their families - likely on welfare.
- This could be “premium” childcare like a Waldorf school or it could be the cost of putting 2 kids into regular daycare in an expensive city like San Francisco. It would certainly be cheaper in less expensive places, but incomes would also be lower.
  Here are some estimates by state: https://illumine.app/blog/how-much-childcare-costs-by-state-in-usa
  
  My friend went to a Waldorf school and she told me they didn't teach her to read.

What’s stopping communal childcare from becoming a thing again? This is how working parents did it for thousands of years.
- Decades of distractions and propaganda to ensure you never speak to your neighbors.
  
  Also zoning laws helping to destroy walkable "third places."
  
  True. Gotta break out of that habit. My friends are starting quarterly block parties in our neighborhood. We can get back to it but we probably need to stop using social media so much.
- The grandparents who would have been available to watch the children are still working at 65 because they can't afford to retire.
  
  Well luckily this won’t be a problem since we won’t have the money, space of career stability to have kids until we’re 40 anyway. By then they’ll have no choice but to retire.
- I imagine a mix of the already diminished size of extended family units, and the liability implications if it's outside your own family unit.
  You're essentially just describing an unlicensed daycare if it's not a family member, and those exist.
  
  Gotta rebuild our community support networks. There are obstacles but it seems solvable.
- A lack of communities. Communal child care works great when you live in a village and you know everyone and most people around you are related to you.
  We don’t have that anymore. People live in suburbs where they don’t even want to talk to their neighbours. Their relatives live far away, potentially in other provinces/states or even other countries.
  Heck, a lot of people don’t even like their own relatives!
- Nothing. You can find communities online (I don't have one to recommend.)
  Just remember, for most of history your neighbors were at least distant relatives.
  
  Technically speaking they still are because everyone is a relative.
  Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

But the orange leader said that tariffs will pay for child care

He is rich and has no reference for the price of everyday items
- It's one year of daycare, Michael. What could it cost? $5000?
- Think of how many bananas you could buy with $5k.
  
  "It's raising a child for ~20 years, Michael. What could it cost? 5k?"

Only among the very stupid
So half the population
- More MAGA!

Do we get to choose how it’s distributed? Here are some fun options I came up with.
$13.69 per day for a year. (Nice). About $419/month. Maybe they could round up to $420 because they stale internet meme culture is hip
$0.76 per day for 18 years. A guaranteed $22.80 per month for an entire childhood
$5000 lump sum. I can’t find any widely accepted figures for average out of pocket cost of prenatal care, child birth, and infant health visits. I’ll wild ass guess it a at covering 20-75% of those visits for people who have insurance. For people without insurance, looks like an uncomplicated vaginal birth averages $14k. But again huge variations in price

Where is all this daycare money going? My daycare was like 8 ladies that just sat around in a playroom doing arts and crafts with us all day and took us to the pool and library in summer. They could have covered that on 2/3 kids each at 40k a year/kid. They didn't seem to be particularly well off...
- Daycare workers can cost about $30/hour, if you include taxes, insurance, benefits like paid time off, etc.
  A typical daycare needs about 50 hours per week of coverage, and something like 8am to 6pm is about right.
  Each worker can reasonably be expected to look after 4 kids.
  So with perfect staffing (no overtime pay, enrollment at a perfect whole number multiple of 4), labor costs alone would be something like $375 per kid per week. Throw in rent, insurance, food, operational costs, administrative costs including certification and licensing, furniture/equipment, utilities, etc., and it's not unreasonable for that cost to balloon to $750/week, or $39k per year.
- This might give some clues: https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Two-Pager-Understanding-Private-Equity-in-Child-Care.pdf
  
  It’s amazing how they get away with paying so little. My field is adjacent, and I’ve been open to working with elementary age, but the positions I see as “master teacher” at daycares are usually around $9-10 an hour - what I was making working at a fast food restaurant in 2015.

How many friends are we talking about?

Only $40k?
- It's a rural area