We've got to stop telling ourselves we can't be as good as other countries on child care

The most pithy summation of the child care situation in Minnesota that I've heard is this: It's hard to afford in the Twin Cities and hard to find in the rest of the state.

Last summer, I wrote about efforts by city governments in Luverne and Hills in southwest Minnesota, and Warren in northwest Minnesota, to build or support child care centers.

Child care is needed to keep Minnesota parents working. And earlier this week, I noted some recent steps the state took to help defray the costs of child care and suggested Minnesota create incentives for employers to increase the supply of it.

Those steps may not be enough. I wonder, down the road, whether Minnesota might become one of the first places in the U.S. to create a government-mandated network of child care providers, similar to countries in Europe and a few others.

Your gut reaction is probably the same as mine: No. There's certainly not the money nor the will for that right now.

A few years ago, however, I read the most compelling argument I'd ever heard for the takeover by government of common needs like child care and old-age pensions. It came in a book by a Finnish writer named Anu Partanen who, after marrying an American and moving to New York, realized the most important thing that the safety net in her native country provides.

Freedom.

Finland and the other Nordic countries are famous for providing basic services to citizens through all stages of life — child care, education, higher education, health care and old-age security.

"They don't have to risk their financial future on any of it," Partanen wrote in her 2016 book "The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life."

In the Nordic countries and a handful of others, that means people are free to pursue whatever life they want, protected from what Partanen calls the "lottery of bad luck" and free from unnecessary fear and anxiety. They flourish, each country with higher labor participation than the U.S.

People in Nordic countries pay higher taxes than Americans, though not that much higher. And there are still fees for things like child care, though they are based on household income. Many Finns pay nothing for child care, while the wealthiest pay about $300 a month.

A year after the book published, Partanen and her husband had a daughter, which meant they got to experience child care in the U.S. Then a year after having the baby, Partanen was offered a job in Finland and they returned there as a family.

In a conversation last month, Partanen told me she's extremely grateful that her daughter, who is nearing school age, could spend her preschool years in the Finnish child care system.

"Of course, it's the money but it's also just logistically easy," she said, after recalling the difficulties the couple faced finding child care in New York. "I can trust my child is in a good place and that she's happy. I have been overall very happy with the system in Finland."

Finland since 1973 has required cities and towns to offer child care to meet local needs. Just as in the U.S., child care can be provided in home-like settings run by entrepreneurs or in bigger settings run by cities themselves. In recent years, growing suburbs around Helsinki have been under the most pressure to keep up with demand.

There is a shortage of staff in some child care centers, though the profession is highly-regarded, Partanen said. The staff-to-child to ratio is one to four, the lowest of any developed country.

"It matters whether the day care staff have some sort of pedagogical training, even if they're not all teachers trained in universities," she said. "They have an understanding that they can help the children play in ways that are creative."

As women streamed into the American workforce in the 1970s and 1980s, there was little consideration that government should provide or help pay for child care, except for lower-income families. It was seen as just the price of having a two-income household.

Today, labor is scarce in much of the U.S., and Minnesota and other states in the northern part of the country are experiencing even greater scarcity. The moment for big change in child care is more ripe than most people realize. Employers are competing more intensely for workers and the economics of the child care industry are breaking down.

Universal provision, overseen by government, would be a big change. It would take a lot of money. First, Americans would have to get past the pejorative labels that are immediately tossed around whenever a common good is taken over by government.

“Finland did it to encourage parents to work, and this is very important,” Partanen told me. “At the same time, there was this emphasis that it is a child’s right to have an early childhood education.”