Recent debates in both countries highlight how tough it is to talk about raising children without also talking about class and the number of parents.

State-assisted child-care and parenting planning is that great liberal dream that Europe has made real but the U.S. hasn't. Or that's the perception, anyway. But a German initiative to boost these efforts highlights one of the major political challenges: to implement a certain child-rearing policy often means taking or implying a certain position on how best to raise a family.





The German state already spends plenty of money on benefits for parental leave as part of a program called "Elterngeld." The administration under chancellor Angela Merkel has also guaranteed each child a place in a daycare center starting in 2013 -- as in the U.S., daycare shortages are a common problem.





But Merkel, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, has also promised her party's conservative ally, the Christian Social Union, a child-care subsidy -- called "Betreuungsgeld." The Betreuungsgeld gives extra money to families that don't send their child to daycare, an attempt to make it easier for women to stay at home and care for their children themselves if they want to.





This has turned into a political problem, and not just because it's more government spending at a time when cash is tight. To some critics, the Betreuungsgeld plan looks like a state-subsidized return to the 1950s, incentivizing a traditional family structure with a stay-at-home mom over a two-earner household.





Der Tagesspiegel last summer ( But the class-based and socioeconomic implications are driving the harshest criticism. As one writer pointed out inlast summer ( translation ), the proposed subsidy of €150 a month isn't going to do much to incentivize wealthy or middle-class mothers, who earn significantly more than that at their jobs. It might, however, be a powerful incentive for lower-class mothers who earn a lesser rate and thus would suffer less of a pay-cut for leaving work and taking the subsidy.





Die Zeit by Katharine Schuler: The Betreuungsgeld also has an interesting interaction with unemployment benefits: the two can't be added together. This makes sense, but has some unpleasant implications. Here's a recent set of examples from an op-ed inby Katharine Schuler:



A business manager's wife raising her one- or two-year-old child at home will in the future receive 150 euros for that from the state. A single mother on unemployment benefits gets this sum anyway, so she's removed from the policy. In fact, she also doesn't have a single cent left in her wallet. Another example: a woman who earns so much that she can afford a private nanny can, according to the plans thus far, collect the Betreuungsgeld, although she's still going to her well-paid job. A woman who can't find a daycare spot and also can't afford private child-care, and thus is on unemployment benefits, won't get anything from the Betreuungsgeld.



