SOS Childcare Campaign Talking Points

I don't have children, so why should my taxes pay to take care of other people's kids?

We pay taxes for things we need from roads to our own education, to all manner of public services. Everyone does not need all of them, but we all need some of them. We benefit together when our needs are met.

Government is inefficient and bureaucratic. How can we trust them to take care of our children?

The main problem is not inefficiency. There hasn't been enough funding for social services, education, etc, and the existing money too often goes to the wrong places. Public services have been undermined through privatization. With sufficient government and employer-funded childcare, we can pay decent wages to highly trained child care workers, and we can maintain neighborhood or community control over the content and activities that are provided for children.

All of our current social and health services are being slashed. Won't funding more childcare just take more away from everything else?

The money is there for all of our needs. The problem is that a very few obscenely rich people and giant corporations have or control most of it. We need to bring these off-shore and exempt funds back into the public realm so we can use them to meet our collective childcare and other survival needs.

How can we pay for expanding childcare and other services?

Now that the State Supreme Court has overturned the two-thirds vote requirement to raising taxes, we need to seize this opening and push hard for taxing the rich and the big corporations. The amount of corporate welfare tax breaks that companies like Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks now receive could fund a lot of childcare and other services, too.

Small businesses cannot afford to provide childcare.

A progressive tax structure and closing corporate loopholes would provide the needed finding without adding burdens to small businesses. Small businesses could be paid to run childcare programs in their buildings that benefit their employees and others.

Wouldn't it be better if parents could have more paid time off when babies are born and flexible work schedules after that so they can care for their children?

Absolutely, but parents would still need some childcare, for their own mental health and so that they can take part in advocating for more support for their survival needs, including childcare.

Why can't parents pay for childcare?

The cost of quality childcare for an infant or pre-school child ($10,000 or more per year) is almost as much as one year of public college tuition. Parents can't save for college with these costs along the way. Access to affordable and subsidized childcare is severely limited. For many low-paid parents, childcare costs more than they earn.

Aren't mothers/parents best suited to care for their children

The burden of caring for children still falls more heavily on women and totally on single parents. Parents' roles in raising children are enhanced, not threatened by having quality childcare from capable, well-trained professionals. Government/employer funded childcare would be available to those who want it, but not required for those who do not want it.