[jballanc]

When I was a young kid, my mother was a “stay at home mom”, which meant that she babysat the kids of 5 or 6 of the other families in our neighborhood where both parents worked. For me, it was a wonderful experience growing up having a ready-made group of close friends and my mother close at hand. It did mean that my mother effectively sacrificed her career (though she eventually went to work for my father as his office manager and was instrumental to his success), but I’m certain she was not charging $20k/yr/kid (or whatever the equivalent in 1980s dollars would be).

What Americans seem to only just now be waking up to is that lack of work/life balance, lack of family leave accommodations, and loss of community has a very real, very tangible dollar amount cost. I’m very, very tired of the knee-jerk response to every “socialist” proposal being, “yeah, that’s great, but how are you going to pay for it?”

How are you going to pay for not having family leave? How are you going to pay for not having universal healthcare? How are you going to pay for not having tuition-free college for all? These choices have a cost, and Americans are paying that cost every day!