Certainly that's not the full cost. It just subsidizes it heavily. (Not that it's a bad idea to do so. Just that $7 isn't the real cost.)

The article has sources that claim even with the subsidies it generates profit due to enabling mothers to work (and opening up jobs for single parents) plus higher paying jobs for childcare based on studies done originally in multiple trialed places in the USA that made the same claim - for each dollar put in, the government got back twelve roughly. Simply -a mother that doesn’t work doesn’t generate income tax and children who grow up in poor environments have bad outcomes that cost the government money. No where does the article claim that the parents shoulder the actual cost.

Do those stats take into account the negative externality of the child being raise for a large portion of its most critical years by a stranger instead of the mother (or father)?

One should consider the parents who would’ve never had children if they couldn’t have someone watch their child while they work, either because they had to or would prefer to work vs perform child rearing.

Should you not have children if a parent can’t be home during their early childhood years? That’s more philosophical.

Child care providers build strong relationships with the kids they take care of, they’re hardly strangers.

As much as their mother (or father)?

That appears to be some other argument you want to make - are you claiming the roughly seventy five percent of children in the USA who do not have a stay at home parent are damaged? Is your solution to let these children drown or to pay more for the parent to stay at home or some thing else?

Did you go to high school, bn-l?

That sounds like very much a strawman argument.

Parents need to have the income to support the family. They end up putting the child in childcare and taking on extra-work or if they are fortunate to rely on family members to afford childcare.

why do you assume that it's a negative externality?

I think everyone is aware of that.