> If you're only caring for your own kids, you are providing significantly less to society than those caring for many kids.

I disagree with this. Perhaps caring for your own kids produces much better kids (and eventually, adults). And that may be more of a benefit to society than a large number of people being incentivized to create large number of kids whose care is just outsourced to childcare centers where they receive less attention.

> You want to focus on raising your own kids, that's fine, but do it on your dime.

Is this really an argument for anything? One could just say “if you want to raise kids you can’t afford, do it on your own dime” and undermine your perspective.

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jjk166 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Perhaps caring for your own kids produces much better kids (and eventually, adults). And that may be more of a benefit to society than a large number of people being incentivized to create large number of kids whose care is just outsourced to childcare centers where they receive less attention.

We're not talking about some vague value to society of kids. We're talking about the concrete value of the service being provided - an adult physically present in the vicinity of children to take care of issues, freeing up adults for other, more productive utilizations of their time. A stay at home parent who looks after only their own children does not free up any adults.

> Is this really an argument for anything? One could just say “if you want to raise kids you can’t afford, do it on your own dime” and undermine your perspective.

That doesn't undermine my perspective at all. Again the argument is that division of labor is more efficient. It costs society less to have one person raise multiple kids than it does for lots of people to raise their own kids. Even if you say only those who could afford to stay at home and raise their kids should have kids, they should still be utilizing this system to reduce total cost. If they choose not to participate in the cost reduction, they ought to shoulder the burden of the higher costs on their own. Recognizing that society kind of needs kids for the whole survival of the species thing, selfish actions that reduce cost savings for everyone ought not to be incentivized.

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ndriscoll 2 days ago | parent [-]

If you're trying to be efficient, you could also put 100 kids in a room with an adult to do whatever as long as the adult can keep them alive, but most people would recognize that the services are not equivalent. It's not more efficient; it's lower quality.

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jjk166 8 hours ago | parent [-]

That's literally the exact same argument. 100 being too many doesn't mean 1 is ideal. No one is saying there isn't some threshold beyond which quality drops, just that the threshold is higher than 1.

	▲	ndriscoll 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Your characterization of the service provided is "adult physically present in the vicinity of children to take care of issues". That sounds to me like a lower quality "service" than what e.g. my wife provides, which is actually raising them, teaching them, giving them emotional support, taking them on errands around town, etc. Even with your own kids it's way more difficult to give them as much attention when there's 1 vs 2, so I find the assertion that quality of care doesn't drop after 1 to be dubious as well.

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vidarh 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Perhaps caring for your own kids produces much better kids (and eventually, adults).

In places with universal childcare provisions, one of the arguments is often that children in childcare tends to benefit from the extra socialisation. I don't know to what extent that is supported by hard evidence, but it's at least by no means clear that caring for your own children is a net benefit for society even direct economic arguments aside.