Raising kids is full time labor considering that even when you are off, you are on call.

The issue that I'm having with this, is that child care is still relatively unqualified work, so how can it ever be highly compensated?

Parents who are highly educated doctors, pilots etc argue that they should be able to stay at home for 1-2 years with almost full salary, which the tax payers should subsidise, and at the same time they also pay an uneducated 16 year old 10 bucks an hour to babysit when they go to the movies?

And you have 1 educated child care professional easily caring for 10 small children, and making a very modest salary.

It doesn't really add up.

Well, what you are saying doesn't add up because no one is really asking for 1-2 years of parental leave.

So you’re not disagreeing that it’s compensated? What decision(s) can a non-parent make to get 1 year of compensation like parents get?

The point appears to be that a year of compensation is pitiful even if one considers the 18y effort part time.

Having young kids I think it's more like full time parenting, on top of any regular day job. Unless you can find a spouse willing to do all the kid work, which is like non-stop 12-16h days until all are in school.

Heaven forbid your SO wants to homeschool and expects you to do at least 40% of parenting, with your day job.

Right, but that wasn’t the point being made. Regardless of the ROI, choosing to be a parent is something that’s compensated.

Said another way, the compensation is pitiful.

And one gives up so much time and energy being a parent, unless you're wealthy enough to outsource large chunks of the work. (Daycare in the US is 10-25K per year.)

> Said another way, the compensation is pitiful.

The whole point is that being a parent is compensated in a way that no other choice is.

Parents take on a significant burden. They are compensated for it. There is no choice I can make as a non-parent that will provide me with similar compensation.

Can you define what compensation you see as so exclusive to parenting?

If just this financial support provided by some governments then consider you could take on a very low pay job with a nonprofit and get similar 'compensation'. Albeit spread across the length of that career instead of front loaded as paternity leave/credits.

Parental leave is exclusive to parenting. See the original comment:

> Some countries give more than a year paid parental leave

You yourself are making my point by saying “similar compensation” “albeit spread across the length of a career.” There is nothing for non-parents that is equivalent to parental leave.

Thanks for clarifying your perspective. Honestly it just seems very narrow and pedantic since even non-parents benefit from efforts to blunt the incredible costs of parenting. It leads to quality of life improvements, even if modest, for families. Non-parents themselves, and all their friends, love interests, and family have to come from parents somehow. If society does nothing to help then more parents will choose to have fewer, or no, children.

And these leave benefits are just so miniscule compared to the effort and finances required for each child. So why complain about missing them?

A paid year away from work is not minuscule. The benefits of somebody else having kids is minuscule to me.

> If society does nothing to help then more parents will choose to have fewer, or no, children.

Fewer people is our best option (it is still a terrible option, don't get me wrong) for mitigating the effects of climate change.

> The benefits of somebody else having kids is minuscule to me.

Your parents having you is a miniscule benefit to you?

Yes. If my parents didn’t have me the world would be better off (not any kind of downer, just a fact that I take more from the world than I give — like nearly everybody) and I wouldn’t know the difference because I wouldn’t exist.

A non-parent can also raise a child for 1 year and get 1 year of compensation.

Name any other life choice one can spend 18+ years on (that'd be all of them) that gifts a year of tax funded compensation.

That is my point.