This dovetails nicely into marriage equality, which I don't know if Germany has yet, but I know it will if it temporarily does not.

The kindergarten prices are based on a sliding scale (with a maximum fee), so even a single mother with a relatively low paying job can afford it and rich people don't pay absurd amounts either. The result is that almost all parents work, it is frowned upon to be a "stay at home mom," and single mothers do not struggle so terribly, like in the US where there is very little childcare support.

The other result is that Norway is one of the few countries in Europe with a positive growth rate (not even counting immigration). One could argue that the other factors like paid maternity/paternity leave help, but the affordable child care seems much more important to most parents I know here.

Living in US, that's a huge contrast for me and I'm not entirely sure what options are out there aside from paying private.

It's incomprehensible that a parent should have to pay thousands per month just to be able to have a child and work at the same time.

Paid maternal leave is not the big issue! After six months of leave, the problem remains that a child needs to be looked after and cared for while the mother returns to work.

But why?

I'm young and child-less, so I'm not speaking out of experience, but I really see no reasons why we should be encouraging people to be able to work while having kids. Instead, I think we should enable them to not work and have kids. 50 years ago, it was more than possible to sustain a family with only a single working parent. Nowadays, this doesn't seem even remotely possible (hell, many families barely survive with 2 working parents!). Furthermore, it's not like we're facing a shortage of workforce problems - we're facing unemployment problems. If we could enable e.g. 30% of the workforce (hopefully dads as well - I would love to stay at home instead of working) to stay at home with kids instead, not only would that solve the unemployment issues, but it would also be hugely beneficial for the children's development!

Edited to add: I actually come from a country where most adults worked even 50 years ago. However, when I was young, my grandmother was already retired, so she was able to take care of me and my brother until we started school. Still, I wish my parents had been able to spend more time with me when I was little, and I wish I'll have that opportunity with my kids.

I wouldn't have children with someone unless one of us was willing to take care of the children AT LEAST until school age. I don't think it's evil or sinful or anything to put your kids in daycare, but I am very very glad I grew up with a stay at home mother. Summer daycare(or day camp every single week all summer) just sounds way way too structured(insofar as it has to be, because it has to work around the structured adult schedules of working parents) for children.

I worry that the reason East Germany was so "progressive" in this regard is that they were trying to flatten the social structure to simply the individual and the State. With no communities, families or churches, there's no framework on which to challenge the propaganda of the State.

Similarly, we often meet people who claim to want to stay at home, but can't afford to. Meanwhile they have nice cars, iPhones, etc. In reality they're working to maintain a standard of living, not because they need to. Choices, choices.

Yes, this can be done by taking the kid to a park or other social activities, but two working parents is a perfectly acceptable option too. Daycare isn't unbeneficial to a child.

That's a very simplified observation of a complex reality. Not all daycares are created equal: The National Institute of Child Health Development[1] found that most daycare operations are "fair" or "poor". Only 10% are "high-quality". Obviously the details are what matter in each case: a caring parent at home is far better than a crowded day-care. Conversely, a great daycare can help with a bad home situation.

[1] https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/documents/seccyd...

Most children in Sweden have two working parents and start daycare when they are around a year old. Daycare in Sweden is considered part of the school system and the teachers working there have (approximately) the same education as 'regular' school teachers.

Edit: Also, as a related fact in this discussion, in Sweden children that are behind in learning to speak (language development) can actually receive special permission to spend _more_ time in daycare to help speed up their language learning.

There is certainly more to a child's behavior than whether their parents were working or staying at home. There might be a strong correlation to households with two working parents and households with other developmentally-stunting factors like parental illiteracy or low education levels, low levels of parental involvement, etc, but I'm sure you would have a tough time proving to any level that, with all other factors remaining the same, two working parents cause more damage to a child than having a stay-at-home parent.

For what it's worth (as long as your anecdotal experience means something to you), my brother-in-law is a college administrator and my sister is a first grade teacher and they have two children who don't seem to have any developmental issues. But my sister has kids in her class with a stay-at-home parent who certainly do.

One relevant source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17381797

Why is it incomprehensible? Watching a kid takes time, time costs money. Someone has to pay for it. Maybe you don't think it's right that the parent should be the one to pay for supervision of their kid, but I'm still lost as to how you arrived at "incomprehensible".