Hello all!

Instead of speaking about recent tragedies and an increasing chance of a third world war, I decided to direct you guys toward some local issues. This was originally slated for a local magazine which did not answer my inquiries.

“Family values” is spoken of often in politics. It usually alludes to incredibly superficial issues – same sex marriage or abortion being among them. The actual politics of raising a family in this society are not mentioned often.

It’s incredibly expensive to raise a child in this country. Daniel Marans, a reporter for the Huffington Post, said that, in many states, it is actually “more expensive than college.” More specifically, the cost of child care for one infant exceeded that of the cost of in state tuition at a public four year university.

I talked to Christina Jacobson, who recently graduated with her Bachelor’s degree from Western Governor’s University, a Utah based accredited university that allows people to complete their degrees online. Jacobson lives in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, where Capitol Hill Times reported the average rent cost in 2014 as $1728. She grapples with that financial environment while mothering two children. She has naturally reached out to the state to help with her situation and has found the system all too flawed.

“It’s just a super flawed system,” she said, “and the state doesn’t help as many people as they should. I once got kicked off of state assistance for day care because I made $26 over the allowable income limit. So because I went over, I was on the hook for 1000/month for care which would’ve made it so I couldn’t afford rent or food. I had to agree to work less hours in order to keep my assistance. It’s like you can’t win.”

Looking at numbers specifically, programs like Bright Horizons in Redmond rake in infant care costs of $2,200 a month while Kidspace in Ballard charges $2,150 per month and the Seattle Infant Development Center and Preschool in Seattle’s central areas charges $2,000 a month. Those statistics are courtesy of Caley Cook, writing for the news magazine Cross Cut.

As unaffordable as that may seem, costs are far, far more extreme in other parts of the country. In the Bay Area, more specifically San Francisco County, the average cost for an infant in a child care center was $13,370. In Alameda County, meanwhile, the cost of an infant in a child care center was $13,320.

Such conditions, not conducive to any conception of childcare, help explain why an avowed socialist like Kshama Sawant not only won election to city council but also re-election. Socialist politics is on ascent nationally, and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has targeted America’s child care system, which he criticizes as an “embarrassment,” citing the pay rate by which childcare workers are paid as one of the most emblematic symptoms of the problem.

“To allow childcare workers, people who work with these little kids, to be making McDonald’s type wages is an embarrassment. We need the best trained, best paid, most qualified people to be working with these young kids.” What he describes as “quality affordable health care” is a major element of his presidential campaign, specifically an “early child care program” which would promote “children’s social, emotional and physical development critical to their futures and the future of our nation.”

As of this writing, Sanders had made quite an impact on the national stage, pulling Hillary Clinton to the left of many issues. Clinton still remains the top contender by large double digits in her poll numbers. National policy on child care has the potential still to lurch to the left but not to the extent that a President Sanders would propel it.

Progress is nevertheless being made. Propositon 1A, which passed in Seattle’s last general election, guaranteed Seattle’s exceptionally high minimum wage of $15 expansion toward childcare workers while reducing overall child care costs to only 10% of overall family income.

There’s still a long way to go but steadily, conditions in Washington state may become amenable to family rearing. Hopefully the rest of the country will follow suit.