Alot of people at google would be likely to opt for high salaries now and extended leaves or outright departures after the kids are born. I don’t think people really want child care and work environments to coincide at all.

Would it be possible for Google to have accomplished this at lower cost? Sure. Would it be better? Well, when you come right down to it, most women who work do so at a negative rate if they have to pay for child care. That is, they wind up with a net expenditure greater than their earnings but they also wind up with bouts of freedom from child care. Perhaps the real item that is purchased in both school and pre-school is parental headache-relief, not “education” and not “care”. If the price tag is so high at Google, perhaps they are really providing a good environment? Well, the germ factories of minimum wage worker’s day care are not all that different than the germ factories of yuppie day care. Should a yuppie parent have to pay more for headache-relief? A well paid yuppie and a starving wage-slave have the same child-induced stress.