There seems to be another well-meaning article every few weeks about why women with children should go back to work regardless of the exorbitant cost of childcare. And they make excellent points, particularly with regard to the damage retirement and career advancement that women experience as a result of long career breaks.

But why should women be in and out of work when the work we do benefits all of us? Why do women have to choose between working effectively for nothing, or improving their career? It seems we are always between a rock and a hard place.

• No ‘sick leave’ for mothers at home

Repeated recall in such articles suspends the calculation of childcare fees because the percentage of female wages is reasonable. It should be viewed as a household expense and not a personal expense for the mother. But what if this “percentage” is 100 percent or more? What happens when childcare fees actually exceed a woman’s salary?

The truth is, if a family with only one parent could have more money in their budget to work with, that’s probably what they would do.

The new changes to the childcare discount, set to take effect from July 1, 2018, are not helping the situation for many families, who have no choice but to pay higher childcare fees. In fact, for many people who live in high-cost cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, the new changes will leave them with less money in their pockets.

While changes in childcare deductions are excellent for low-income families (as they should be) and great for encouraging women in these families to return to the workforce, women in middle- or high-income families are significantly less supportive. encouraged. Get back to work. Some of them will be aborted (already).

A big change to the child care deduction is to put a cap on the price of child care that the government pays. Currently, the government pays 50 percent of the actual cost of childcare, while as of next July it has set today’s rate at $115.50, well below the average cost of childcare in many suburbs (once you’re on site). I receive) !).

For my family (and we only have one child), if I go back to working full time, we’ll get $32,900 out of my pocket for childcare (according to a calculator on the Federal Department of Education website). To put this in perspective, this is similar to the annual tuition fee for senior students at some of Sydney’s most elite private schools.

And if I have another child (which I expect), all of a sudden the cost exceeds the house wage. In fact, it would take my family to work full time for $2,000 a year (and I’m not alone).

Sorry but we just have to expect the police that the expenses are rubbish.

This is good in all respects and outlines all the ways a woman destroys her financial and career prospects in the future, but in the competition between going to work and selling a home, the choice is an illusion.

The cost of not doing the job is very real, too. A woman who earns, on average, 10 years in the workforce leaves an $85,000 gap in her pension balance. Taking a break from work to raise children makes up for a 17% lifetime income difference, not to mention hurting leadership progress.

Basically, women lose in both cases. We must be angry.

We have the most educated and productive women in the world. Just a 6 percent increase in the number of working mothers would result in a $20 billion profit for our economy.

Therefore, it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that women are effectively supported not only to return to the workforce, but to benefit financially from their work.

Women shouldn’t just suck it up and take less cash home – or even pay for the privilege of working. Especially when society, the economy and the budget benefit from our work. It is appreciated by our society that it takes advantage of mothers’ work in not paying their wages effectively.

We are caught between sacrificing future finances for our jobs and families, or sacrificing most, or all (or more) of our salaries for the good of the nation, and future revenues.

And even if we refrain from calculating out-of-pocket childcare costs as a percentage of a woman’s salary, we still have to make up a third of the household income for many families.

Husbands must be excited about the drain on their family budgets, their wives’ demands for progress in their careers, and the lack of pension that follows. Because when wives end up with a lower pension, husbands end up with less community wealth in their retirement.

Even when calculated as a percentage of household income, it shouldn’t be put off. We must call for change.

We need structural changes in the childcare and education sectors. We need to at least organize childcare fees. If the government decides that $115 is the maximum spending on childcare per day, it should regulate it. Market power won’t drive costs down (it’s not yet, we’ll have to wait a while), especially when finding a babysitting place in Sydney is so hard that it’s hard for pregnant women to write their baby’s name. …required before it appears.

Ideally, what we need is free, public early childhood education (which we know improves children’s school outcomes later). Those who advocate the return of women to the workforce because of the potential risks involved in long career breaks are correct in many ways, but by suggesting that the solution is women’s responsibility (“returning to work no matter the cost”), they forget that This problem is not the responsibility of individual women.

Government, society, and the economy at large are increasingly benefiting from every benefit paid – and unpaid – to working women. So our collective responsibility is to make sure they have the support to do this work. It must be paid for.