But isn't childcare skilled labor?
In some trivial sense, all work is skilled. Walking is a skill that takes years to master. So is carrying items from point a to point b. But when the majority of the population has your skills, we do not refer to the employment of them as "skilled labor".
Childcare is hard. I would far rather do almost anything else than care for someone's baby full time (I am told I will probably feel differently about my own, in the event that any arrive). That doesn't make it skilled. Cleaning houses is also incredibly difficult. But assuming that one has had a semi-normal upbringing, one can master the tasks involved in well under a week. After that, the main skill is not jumping off a bridge on the walk home.
There is a lot of talk about the way that traditionally "women's" professions are devauled, and I think that there is something to that, but those women's professions also have odd characteristics--like flexibility in hours, and the ability to take long periods of time off without suffering much of a wage setback--that make direct comparisons somewhat more difficult than most people quoting those statistics take into account. We can have a long, elegant discussion about whether all professions should offer such perks, but the fact remains that those benefits have economic value, and you have to pay for them by accepting something less elsewhere.
If the most recent wave of newly-arrived immigrants to this country are found in great numbers doing that work, chances are very good that work will not classified as skilled labor.
I would think, by definition, skilled labor is something that takes much time and energy to learn to do properly that your peers would accept your results. So skilled labor takes training or study on the order of years.
The thing is we accept non skilled non quality childcare because for most people it is all that is available or all they can afford. Trust me, child care done right is extremely skilled. It is also extremely rare.
RobbL: Do you mean "child care done right" as performed by the majority of parents on this planet, or did you have some other definition in mind?
What a parent means by childcare is "I choose not to parent my child during these hours because I'd rather work, so I want to hire someone to take my place for that time."
If a reasonable cross-section of society are looking to hire childcare, then by construction it is not a "skilled" task, as it is one that would normally be done by the parents, who are anybody and everybody.
I think if you want to argue that childcare needs to be a skilled task, you need to be arguing that the people who hire childcare are all the really good parents. I suspect that not to be the case.
This isn't to say that childcare, on average, is any good. What is required is not skill so much as application and diligence - not qualities that are always in evidence in poorly paid work without an easy way to assess the quality of the work performed.
Paying for quality, skilled childcare is one reason that many married couples choose each other as "babysitters".
It's overlooked here too that running a household requires a lot more than cleaning it. Negotiations with plumbers or other repairmen, or the knowledge (and skills) to do it yourself are required.
Stocking the pantry with food, preparing the food, and doing it keeping in mind everyone's taste and making sure everyone has at least the minimum nutrition requires more than just shopping (which is a skill in itself, especially for groceries). Doing laundry is more than just tossing everything into the machine and adding a cup of soap, it entails care of clothing some of which is rather costly to replace.
And the stay-at-home part of the couple does all that while teaching a toddler to talk and/or caring for and being observant of an infant (why is he crying right now).
Shall we get into the financial skills involved in banking, keeping records straight for medical care, insurance, taxes, etc.
No, you don't necessarily have to have a college degree to do all this, but to do it well an MBA or engineering degree might help.
And by that definition, child care is skilled labor, is it not?
I'm not following this. A reasonable cross-section of society are looking to hire plumbers; are you saying then that by construction it is not a skilled task?
This does not follow. Childcare needs to be a skilled task because of the children. Parents, sadly, are very often not skilled at this. If Mom sends her 12-year-old down to the corner score with instructions to buy her Ten High and a cartoon of Kools, I would take this to be evidence that she's not doing a very good job. Would you then say that the the 12-year-old only needs the sort of childcare commensurate with that level of parenting? I would hope not.
Skilled labour is a relative definition. It depends on what everyone else can do in the workforce. CAN 80%+ of the workforce do child care in a way that some parents would find acceptable? The answer, given the fact that most people DO childcare at home in a way they find acceptable is "yes."
In the 1500s, being able to transcribe writing was skilled labour, because so few people could read. Now almost everyone can read, so it's unskilled labour.
Skilled labour gives you a higher salary, because not everyone can be trained to do it within a short period. Most people can't be hired by The Atlantic and trained in econoblogging within one or two weeks. Most people could be trained to work in the daycare center at The Atlantic within that timeframe.
If most people can quickly learn your profession, you won't be able to get a premium above the prevailing wage for "people willing to do easily learned tasks."
And of course there are degrees of things. At some level of skill in a task, you can become skilled labour. A cashier at McDonalds and the maître d'of a four star restaurant are not the same, because you can't teach the second quickly.
If your competition is 15 year olds looking for some pocket money, then you're in trouble.
It's not skill that makes labor valuable, it's scarcity in a world that demands it.
Skill often goes along with scarcity -- the years of education needed to become a brain surgeon reduces the number of them in a world that wants them, and the extraordinary physical abilities of top professional athletes makes them rare in a world where many millions of people will pay money to watch them -- so there's a popular impression that "skilled labor" is (or should be) valuable. But there's nothing automatic about it.
There are a lot of skills that once were practiced by the masses that are generally lost for lack of value today -- being able to look up at the stars and navigate by them, weave one's own clothes, etc. And not to slight our own time, there are a lot of real skills we masses have today that would have stunned people in earlier eras -- but these real skills are not rare, so they don't make us all rich.
Other rare and high-quality skill sets have little market value for lack of demand -- I've known low-level chess grandmasters who had PhD-level education in the game and were extraordinarily skilled gamesmen compared to average human beings, but they were driving cabs, giving lessons, being messengers, hustling however they could to make ends meet. (Ken Rogoff even became an economist.)
An education as a brain surgeon might make your labor as a practicing brain surgeon valuable in the market today, but an equally extensive education in medieval alchemy probably wouldn't put much market value into your skill as a practicing alchemist -- even though your skill could be higher and certainly would be more rare than the brain surgeon's.
So nobody should get righteous about "I have a high degree of skill, so I should be paid a lot". That's not how it works.
How many other people have that same high degree of skill? How many people on the buying side care?
Having a 3 and 5 year old, I don't think that raising kid is something that can be picked up in a week or two. My mormon nanny who had a childcare degree from BYU and years of practical experience was amazing with my babies and toddlers. I learned a huge amount from her when she was caring for my kids.
It also doesn't mean there will be a lack of supply. Many immigrants have more hands on experience than American moms. Many immigrants (especially from Ireland and Brazil) have formal childcare training. Many women immigrants don't have other skills, and most prefer childcare to cleaning houses. Not only is the pay better, but it is far more rewarding.
Of course, that doesn't mean moms SHOULD outsource childcare - it does take skill, but it's not so complicated that any motivated, dedicated person can't learn. But it's hard to argue that there's a market failure that is depressing the wage of childcare workers. There is lots of supply, and demand falls sharply as costs increase.
"I choose not to parent my child during these hours because I'd rather work, so I want to hire someone to take my place for that time."
So when the dad goes to work every day, he's not parenting?
Don't be an idiot. Parenting is the act of providing for a child's development and care. If two parents hire a full-time nanny and then send their child to boarding school, they are still every bit the parents of that child.
Jenny, it's not that people can pick it up quickly, it's that lots of people have picked it up slowly. You have experience with childcare from raising your own children, and could enter the child care industry if you chose. Since most people are parents, it means most people have those skills. If prevailing wages in child care were $40k/yr, the market would be flooded with people willing to do the work, and the wages would go down again.
Er, I think you need to be reading what people actually say. The original contention was that child care wasn't a skilled profession. Someone else said that a skilled profession takes several years to learn, or at least learn how to do well. It was then pointed out by that definition that child care is a skilled profession.
Really.
The comment about the parent who is bad because he/she send their child to buy them stuff is the grossest, most idiotic comment on this blog since 1955. My dad used to send me to buy him stuff. Anybody who dare day to my face that it made him a bad parent will face a refutation and a generally unpleasant thereafter.
ScentOfViolets,
The point I've been making is that that isn't the definition of skilled. Megan made the same point. Skilled labour is skilled if and only if the skill is uncommon. Reading takes many years to master, but mastery is common, so it doesn't let you charge a price premium for your services. Likewise, childrearing is difficult, but since so many people do it as parents, it's not at all an uncommon skill, and therefore you can't get a premium.
To simply take care of child, at basic, is not really skilled labor. To fix yourself a meal is not really skilled labor.
However to be a chef I think is plausibly deemed skilled labor. To be trustworthy, safe, and beneficial to a child can take skill or training. Especially in some circumstances.
Like my nephew has Asperger's. When he has a babysitter s/he is a skilled laborer and s/he is trained. Good foster parents are often skilled and even the bad ones have to take courses to get some kind of training.
So I think it depends on what we mean by "cook", "child care", etc.
Childcare isn't a high-level skill. Childraising is! If you care enough, you put the first team on it. That's yourselves. Want your kid to read at age three, this takes some luck and a lot of work. Forget the 'childcare' specialists.
Thomas R is correct, most humans throughout history have learned to fix themselves a meal and wipe their own ass. They can do the same for children, sometimes many children. Some people are better suited for it than others, but it is hardly skilled.
Same thing with educating children, most idiots can teach, say, the alphabet; how to sing "if your Happy and You Know It...". Once you get to fractions and verb tenses, one needs a bit more preparation.
The notion that the low wages in these fields are because AmeriKKKa hates wymen and children is bunk.
Something that is important, may not necessarily be highly paid. I would mention the so-called diamond/water paradox of classical economics, but some of you would never get the linear, patriarchal logic.
Jennie's comment above reminds me of an unsolved question that has been hang around my mental attic for nearly 50 years. When and how will paid child care be skilled-up, like for example nursing? Trained child cares do give better results; as do trained nurses. Jennie's comments on her nanny are very similar to my own mother's on our nanny of many years ago. So why are trained child carers still so rare? Parents are now investing in their children much more fully than in the past. Why not in this form?
Other rare and high-quality skill sets have little market value for lack of demand -- I've known low-level chess grandmasters who had PhD-level education in the game and were extraordinarily skilled gamesmen compared to average human beings, but they were driving cabs, giving lessons, being messengers, hustling however they could to make ends meet.
Don't top-level chess players often have personality deficiencies that make it difficult for them to find and hold decent jobs (and meet women)?
Shrug. I'm merely going with what this poster said:
Further, as it's been suggested many times already, there's a difference between doing something, and doing something well. Yes, most adults adults can read. Can they read well enough to, say, review Updike's or Lethem's or Roth's latest? No.
I would suggest that yet another one of the reasons that the market rate is so low is that the consequences of bad parenting, bad child care aren't immediately obvious, that is, the costs of the alternative are not immediately apparent, and are spread out later.
Labor markets can fail in _sooooo_ many ways :-(
From Jim Glass:
Exactly!!
Most people who have cared for their own children (or younger siblings while growing up) have all the necessary skills to care for the young children of others. Is this a skill? Of course it is, but there are a lot of people who have this skill. In addition, a lot of people get quite a bit of satisfaction in caring for their own children- a satisfaction that reflects itself in the relative reluctance of people to pay for the service even if they could use the free time to earn twice or more of that amount.
There is a significant difference between raising your own kids at home versus taking care of other people's kids in their homes or in institutional setting. They are overlapping, but distinctive skill sets.
I still can't get over the original post equating child care with babysitting. It's obvious who hasn't had kids around here.
M. Hodak,
Almost completely overlapping skill sets. In my mind, the only essential, additional feature of caring for the children of others is doing the task with the same high-level of attention to detail you should use with your own children. This is an issue of character and maturity. Given that most parents do a socially acceptable level of care of their own children, the potential pool of labor for this service is enormous.
Now, there is a niche market for highly specialized childcare. Sometimes the child has special needs, or the parents are attempting to provide their young children with the absolute optimal environment for development- an environment they can't provide themselves personally. This is a different skill set, and the practitioners are far more scarce, and the service is correspondingly more expensive.
I'm curious as to who, and who has not been responsible for three or more kids for an extended period of time.
For example, Yancey, do you have any kids? From you r postings I would lay long odds that you don't, but one never knows.
Diversity:
Trained child cares do give better results
Do they? There's really no way of knowing this without a long-term controlled study. Do you have one in mind?
"Thomas R is correct, most humans throughout history have learned to fix themselves a meal and wipe their own ass. They can do the same for children, sometimes many children. Some people are better suited for it than others, but it is hardly skilled." Jozef
TR: That's not all of what I said, if you read the whole comment I meant something different from what you're saying.
I was talking about at a basic level. At a basic level something may not be a skill, but it doesn't mean it's never a skill at any level. Julia Child was making meals, but I think it'd be wrong to say that she was an unskilled laborer. She went to Le Cordon Bleu, etc.
I know the foster-care system sucks, but some of the more trustworthy foster parents really do have a skill that they have learned through experience and even training. Likewise with people who care for special-needs children. It's true some people might have this naturally without any training. However some people can multiply large numbers in their head or play complex musical pieces without training. That doesn't mean being a mathematician or musician is simply an unskilled job.
SOV,
I had two, much younger sisters for whom I was free childcare many, many times- so, yes, I know exactly what is involved in caring for children, including infants.
No one, including me, has claimed childcare is easy, but the point was this- the very fact there is a large pool of parents who have actually cared for their own children in the past means the potential pool of labor for childcare, competent childcare, is enormous compared to most other professions. This is one of the primary reasons the pay for childcare is so low compared to equally difficult jobs- every childcare laborer is competing on price with parents themselves. If there were 50 million people that had graduated from medical school in the US, doctors would make a fraction of their present compensation, too.
Brandon Berg,
Since you ask, yes.
The study I have in mind whereby my hypothesis could be demonstrated to be inadequate is a re-analysis of data from a number of the child development cohort studies that have been conducted in recent decades in various developed countries. Significant amounts of care in childhhod from a trained child carer seems to be a fairly rare event in most such countries. The most comon form is probably where the authorities take a problem child or child from a "problem" family into care. There may be sufficient data to show if training makes a difference to these kids futures by major country. However, I am more interested in comparing matched groups of kids in families, one recieving trained care and one not. That almost certainly requires aggregating different studies and countries.
I stress, my interest is in seeing the results; not in doing the hard, detailed work involved. Like nappy-changing and washing, it is worth the effort; but I would much rather someone else supplied that effort.