We’ve been in the dark about how we use our time for more than a decade. It’s the decade that saw the rise of the smartphone, streaming and social media.
Intergenerational care gives children and older people the chance to interact, resulting in significant benefits for participants and the wider community.
Family day care workers provide this essential service from their homes, but being classed as independent contractors means they lack many employment protections.
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Family day care workers have much in common with home-based workers in the garment industry. But the latter are classed as employees, resulting in better representation and protected work conditions.
For-profit services make up the greatest proportion of services not meeting national quality standards.
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New research shows that parenting stress is lowest if grandparents do some of the care - as opposed to more formal arrangements.
A mother in a low-income family can lose 85-95% of her earnings from working more days to income tax, loss of benefits and childcare costs.
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Miranda Stewart, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
An 85-95% effective marginal tax rate means the second earner in a low-income family can increase from two days’ work a week to three, four or five days and be better off by only about $4,000 a year.
Free childcare schemes aren’t working and babies are too important to be left on the shelf.
Making preschool free will dramatically improve affordability for families across Ontario, Canada, and lead to a predicted increase of 40,000 parents in full-time employment.
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This penalty can amount to more than 15 percent of a mom’s paycheck. Ramping up paid maternity leave and high-quality child care would probably help narrow the gap.
Out-of-pocket expenses for delivery run in the tens of thousands for many Americans.
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Some experts fret that the US birthrate is on the decline. That might not be so surprising, when the cost of having children in the US has grown exponentially since the 1960s.
A teaching assistant helps a child with glue at Redwood Early Learning Center in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
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Taryn Morrissey, American University School of Public Affairs
Even though child care costs more than college tuition in many states, college affordability seems to get more attention. Here’s why that needs to change.
Jean-Yves Duclos, Canada’s minister of Families, Children and Social Development, plays with children at a licensed YMCA daycare in downtown Toronto on March 29, 2017.
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Until all child care facilities are licensed – and required to undergo criminal record checks, fire safety inspections and first aid training – children will continue to die.
Prince Edward Island ranks first in Canada’s Early Childhood Report 2017; Nunavut scores lowest, devoting only 0.9 per cent of its budget to early childhood education.
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Schools across Canada should ‘grow down’ and offer two years of full-day preschool, according to a new report. This would allow mothers to work, improve child outcomes and reduce income inequality.
Alma Gottlieb, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Opening the minds of worried new parents to other ways of raising children may assuage fears that if they fail to ‘do the right thing,’ their children will be doomed.
Adjunct Professor, Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at Ontario Institute for the Study of Education (OISE) and Senior Policy Fellow at the Atkinson Centre, University of Toronto