Free Essay: Childcare Costs Continue to Rise

Childcare has become one of the most expensive things around the globe. Every parent wants to offer their children the best life they can afford, running from the best schools, excellent health care, best fun moments and lifestyle. Due to the many upcoming changes in gender equality, tight economy, modernization and other factors, many parents are mostly working. Many women no longer stay at home to take care of their young ones, but hence opt for child care services where other people professionally take care of the young ones as their parents go to work. The childcare sector has improved more than any other period in history, which has posed indirect childcare costs. This essay aims at analyzing the various factors contributing to the increase in child care expense among the working class families and how they affect child care organizations.

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Child care services include personal home care, nanny share care, kindergarten, family day care, child care center, outside of school time care and nanny care. Many parents prefer this any of the child care methods above due to the many activities they have to run, especially when they have to go to work (Pecora, 2018). Business people have taken the opportunity to offer professional and quality child care services to suit the schedule of any working class person, either during the day or through the night (Singer, 2017). The services go for a certain cost, depending on the period for child care, services extended to the child, quality of child care a parent can afford, and the amount a parent is willing to pay for childcare (Barth, Barth & Barth, 2017). The child care organizations involve trained individuals or a group of people that have a better understanding of staying with kids and various ways of coping with the many kinds of children (Pecora, 2018).

Yes, Childcare services are readily affordable for every level of working-class people. Although there is a great difference in earnings among various social classes, each sector has its specific child care services accommodate (Blumenthal, Abrams & Nuzum, 2015). The low-income families, whose parents still need to work for their living, require child care, which they cheaply find around their homes (Del Boca, 2015). Similarly, the middle class and rich families have their preferred child care system that works within their budgets. However, everyday care organization or persons have to be professional, and their work has to have a valid license. These costs fall into the hands of the parents wishing to put their kids under daycare, which elevates the costs of childcare (Ortega, Rodriguez & Bustamante, 2015).

The quality of child care varies depending on different people and institution, but most of them up to hold the necessities required for safety, cleanliness, mental health and general satisfaction of children (England, 2014). The standards of child care have proved good over the years, depending on results given by many parents and statistics of past years. Children give reports of being close to their nannies and having found new friends apart from their family members (Tuncalp, Were, MacLennan, Oladapo, Gulmezoglu, Bahl & Temmerman, 2015). Daycare services help build a child's language, interaction skills, and ways of reasoning and hence it calls for the best child care system available. Thus, I think that the quality of child care has gotten better in the new 21st century, as people have learned the best ways to keep their business running and highly competitive is to offer beyond what people expect (Song, Rose, Safran, Landon, Day & Chernew, 2014).

The economy around the universe has taken a sharp rise, making everything more expensive than it should be. Also, the increasing inequality among social classes or different races has caused a great rift between the kind of child care offered to each group (Das, Holla, Mohpal & Muralidharan, 2016). For instance, there rich prefer the expensive child care system, spending lots of money for something that is not worth all the waste. The inequality has caused the economy of child care to become very expensive for the middle class and the poor people to afford (Drummond, Sculpher, Claxton, Stoddart & Torrance, 2015). The quality might be good and pleasing for the parents and kids, but the prices are becoming way too high for such services. The unimaginable childcare costs that don't match the quality of service offered have pushed much middle class and low-income families to opt for their unlicensed family members and personal caregivers for childcare since they cannot afford the trained and licensed childcare services (Folland, Goodman, & Stano, 2016).

Mostly, mothers feel the pain of having to work and leave their children under child care systems. Nevertheless, they are forced by circumstances to leave their children under child care for working purposes (Bordone, Arpino & Aassve, 2017). Many caregivers have failed to offer exactly what each parent wants for their children. However, as a parent, I accept the fact that the caregivers do their best for the children. Although not entirely satisfied with caregiver services, it was good enough to give me time to work and run errands, while the kids had a positive attitude about the care system (HoshiWatanabe, Musatti, Rayna & Vandenbroeck, 2015). Besides, many working mothers always opt to work somewhere close to home or near the institution they entrust their kids for care, to be closer to their children. It always feels safer to know that the children are min away from the parent's place of work (Walsh, 2015).

Children always look for attention, care, love and a listening person. A care-worker need to know how to build a good relationship with kids through paying attention to know what they like hate and how they like to get treated (van Groenou & De Boer, 2016). The age of a caregiver doesn't affect the quality of the relationship between them and the children, as long as they connect well with the children. Children tend to have pure intentions and judge less by age, but on how someone treats them. Forming a positive relationship takes a cheerful, soft on correction, playful and fair caregiver, who gets along easily with children. Once a caregiver can reach the hearts of children, then their age doesn't matter because they have the secret of coping with kids (Cook, Spinazzola, Ford, Lanktree, Blaustein, Cloitre & Mallah, 2017).

The age of a child has a big effect on the cost charged for health care. It is because children of different ages have different needs and levels of attention. For instance, children below one year require lots of attention, care, caution, diaper change and other delicate care services hence offered special treatment (Garbarino, 2017). On the other hand, children above 3-5 years require care system with lots of toys, a listening ear for their many complaints and questions, and protection from harmful objects on their reach. Children above the age of 10 need less attention as they are aware of the things that can hurt them and know the difference between right and wrong. The disparities in age come along with various services that might result in the various costs (Roberts, 2017).

Working parents leave their children under various types of care. Some prefer the caregivers to take care of the kids from their home while others prefer taking them to caregiving institutions. The location of a child must not affect the childcare cost, which has not been the case. The caregivers calculate the distance they travel every day to offer home bases child care and hence it costs the parents some extra coins. However, the price remains constant for children who get dropped for care in the caregiving institutions, because there is no extra traveling cost imposed on them. In other cases, the same daycare institution might charge more because the children surrounding it are from affluent families, but charge less in areas with average kids (DePasquale, Davis, Zarit, Moen, Hammer & Almeida, 2014).

On a monthly basis, I spend an average of $600 for every child, which is very high for a middle earning worker. The cost is way too elevated, and the services are not worth the cost (Abrassart & Bonoli, 2015). However, the costs vary depending on where someone lives, the age of the child and the kind of caregiving a parent prefers for their children (Givord & Marbot, 2015). Home nannies proved way cheaper services than kindergartens and child care centers. Also, the cost depends on the total number of weekly hours a child spends under care (Grindal, West, Willett & Yoshikawa, 2015).

Yes, my child has gone through childcare in the previous six months. Leaving a child under the care of someone else depends on trust. A parent has to enquire and learn the good and the shortcomings of every type of caregiving before engaging in it (Bakx, Meijer, Schut, & Doorslaer, 2015). Caregivers can take care of children properly, but sometimes people opt to leave their kids with their friends or a family member because it is easier to trust and feel safe with a person we know that with a caregiver we know nothing about them. Consequently, circumstances can force someone to opt for the nearest and cheaper care especially when in a new working environment and in pressing the need for caregiving (Herbst, 2015). The caregiving that my four-year-old son received within the past six months was informal, where my younger sister looked after him as went for a night shift job. It is usually easier to leave a child with a family member especially when taking night shifts because the child feels less lonely and comfortable with someone they have known (Bloom & Phillips, 2017).

In conclusion, people still need caregiving services and can barely do without them. People also need to understand the importance of licensed and trained caregiver. Besides, a combination of both formal and informal caregiving can be beneficial to a child's development, because it enlightens a child about the outside world and also about their family members. However, the costs of caregiving are increasingly becoming so high and unbearable for parents who desperately need it. Child care organizations are flourishing fast due to the increased demand for child care services, which has contributed to the increased child care prices. Working families with little children carry monthly bills for caregiving, which further stretches their budgets. Institutions should invent a caregiving system that considers the needs of the poor and the middle-class families. Child care organizations have no control over economic changes in a region, which makes it difficult for them to offer cheap and fair baby care services

References

Abrassart, A., & Bonoli, G. (2015). Availability, cost or culture? Obstacles to childcare services for low-income families. Journal of Social Policy, 44(4), 787-806.

Bakx, P., Meijer, C., Schut, F., & Doorslaer, E. (2015). Going formal or informal, who cares? The influence of public longterm care insurance. Health economics, 24(6), 631-643.

Barth, R. P., Barth, R. P., & Barth, R. P. (2017). The child welfare challenge: Policy, practice, and research. Routledge.

Bordone, V., Arpino, B., & Aassve, A. (2017). Patterns of grandparental childcare across Europe: the role of the policy context and working mothers' need. Ageing & Society, 37(4), 845-873.

Bloom, B., & Phillips, S. (2017). In whose best interest? The impact of changing public policy on relatives caring for children with incarcerated parents. In Children with Parents in Prison (pp. 63-74). Routledge.

Blumenthal, D., Abrams, M., & Nuzum, R. (2015). The affordable care act at five years.

England, N. H. S. (2014). High-quality ca...