The more I think about this, the more frustrated I get…: Â I think it’s messed up that daycare expenses are tax-deductible but that there do not appear to be analogous breaks for women that choose to stay home to care for their children.
I wouldn’t necessarily advocate that there be some kind of across-the-board tax-break just because she decided to stay home but looking at it closely, it seems to suggest a kind of penalty for mothers that choose to breastfeed. Â Especially during those first few months, breastfeeding is practically a full time job. Â Making daycare expenses tax-deductible without some equivalent or analog for breastfeeding mothers seems to stack the economic deck against this decision.
It occurs to me that this would be a tough thing to put in place. Â How do you verify that someone is exclusively breastfeeding? Â Do you take away the tax-break if someone slips in a bottle of formula once in a great while because of some emergency? Â I suppose there is no easy answer but it also seems like we’re not trying hard enough as a culture ensure that parents aren’t penalized for what should be good, smart decisions in their child-rearing.