[Gabz]

There should be societal encouragement for single income families once parents have kids. Maybe an increase in the child tax credit for single income families, or such.

But if I go back to work and put my kid in daycare I can write it off my income taxes.

Yet because I don't work and sometimes pay a friend to watch my daughter, or pay for her to attend a camp program, I can't claim that on my taxes, because I don't work.

The tax code encourages the 2 income family, in some cases. In our case the tax code is why I didn't go back to work in "the real world."

[dan1123]

I noticed that write-off just this year (since my son is 11 months old). The immediate thought that came to mind was “why can you write off daycare costs, but a mother who stays at home has no write-off?”

My second thought was “how difficult is it to set up my wife as a daycare for my children to get this tax write-off?”

[luckystarmom]

I was on bedrest for 10 weeks when I was pregnant with my twins. We had to put my 2 year old son in daycare because I couldn’t take care of him. However, since I was a stay-at-home mom, we couldn’t write off the daycare expense. We called the IRS to see if there was an exception for when the mom had a disability, but no there were no exceptions.