Most families have more than one earner, though.

It'll be curious to see what the ramifications are of sending a kid to daycare basically straight away, vs rearing him at home until he's ~5.

The costs in cities like NY and SF are so high that many kids end up in care as soon as parental leave expires. One of the big recent public policies in NYC is "3K," public schooling for kids starting at 3 years old.

A small sample size, but all of my kids which go to a pretty high-end daycare seem to have a bit leg up on peers who have stayed home in terms of social skills, language, reasoning, and reading. That's not just me acting like my kids are the best (of course they are), that's those other parents mentioning it to me.

It's practically a college tuition per kid at age 0 though.

More than a few do not. You shouldn’t have to barely scrape by as a single parent in one of the most wealthy countries in the world.

It does when the biggest expenditure category is for a positional good (ie. rent). There's only so much land in new york and so many apartment units. Being in a wealthy country means your peers are also wealthy, which means a household with double income can easily outbid a household with a single income.

Most families don't have a strong union that can negotiate a decent wage.

"It's not a bad deal because you can just deploy more of your household's available labor to earn more."

This has to be the most out of touch comment I have read ever here.

100% out of touch, yes, but not wrong. Before kids I had the same exact sentiment, and now, with kids, I still do.

Raising a family is a choice, and that choice should be made deliberately, considering all aspects, including financial impact.

It is no more the responsibility of the employer to consider the family of the employee anymore than for them to consider if the employee is a gambling addict, or spends frivolously on OnlyFans subs or funko pop collecting.

This is some Andrew Tate level logic

I guess we disagree on whether unions should fight for enough wages for their workers to support a family.

Should people with families get paid more in order to support them? Why would a single person need to get paid as much as a person supporting another adult without a job and two children?

Yes. So much of our economy is built on the idea that future people will be able to support and pay for today's economic choices.

IMO single people should also make more.

I just think "can they support a family of 4" is a decent heuristic for whether people are getting paid enough.