Germany moves to pay women to stay at home taking care of kids

If you are going to have the government pay people to take care of people's kids, why not give that money to the mom's themselves?  Who is going to do a better job taking care of kids?  From The Economist:

CRITICS call it a “hearth bonus” or “keep-your-kids-out-of-school money”. The government prefersBetreuungsgeld (“child-care benefit”). Few of its ideas are as contentious as a planned €150 ($199) monthly payment to parents who do not put their children into crèches. Angela Merkel, the Christian Democrat chancellor, defends this as “an essential part of our policy of freedom of choice.” But it seems to contradict much of what she stands for.
Germany’s long-term worries include a shrinking and ageing population, immigrants who are not fully integrated into the workforce and women who are both underemployed and underpaid. German women work fewer hours than women in most other OECD countries (see chart). The gap in median pay is the third-widest in the club, after South Korea’s and Japan’s. That is partly because mothers stay at home. In 2008 just 18% of children under the age of three were in formal child care, against an OECD average of 30%.
. . . . By 2013 parents will have a legal right to a day-care place after a child’s first birthday.
Good crèches are thought by some to be a cure-all. By helping women to combine motherhood and career, they relieve skills shortages, boost growth and reduce inequality between the sexes. They might even lift Germany’s miserably low fertility rate. . . . .