[VioletlightHeron]

This is a favourite ploy of the "daycare is evil" crowd, and again, the argument goes nowhere.

The big problem, leaving aside the question of how $100 a month is an incentive to stay home in the real world, is that you need to make the case that the benefits of keeping kids home are significant. Pointing to studies that suggest those kids are less violent or a little smarter at age 5 doesn't do it. Using those studies to make inferences about future crime rates, as social conservatives do, is bunk. Those kids will not grow up to become antisocial losers.

I'd suggest that the variability within the population of stay-at-home kids is greater than the observed differences between the populations.

The economic benefits of letting people get to work, on the other hand, are real.

It's not so much that "daycare is evil" but more along the lines of giving parents a Hobbesian choice of having cheap daycare so more people can enter the workforce or being more involved in your child's educational growth by staying home or having relatives babysit. My sister and husband have two pre-teen boys and they were extremely leary of daycare as the boys grew older because the government-subsidized ones here were terrible and they were not convenient in terms of distance and time schedule. Terrible in the sense that the first one they were in for after school programs wanted to get the youngest on Ritalin because he was so rambunctious. I'm sorry but a 6 year old is going to be a mild basketcase on a good day! :lol: I also think the government-subsidized daycare and after school programs tend to label rambunctious or independent kids as problem kids or slow learners way too fast and they do that because they either dont have enough staff or have an attitude. The other question is why should higher income single earner families be hit with a higher tax bracket because they followed the rules, got a good education and a good job? Isn't it the government's job to promote success and stable families?