How can we improve the childcare crisis?
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Anonymous
This is what mother's should be doing! |
Anonymous
| No one should be living in or paying for a house greater than 1800 sq. feet. What a crock that you can't afford daycare if you are living in a 300sq ft house! |
Anonymous
| err, 3000 sq ft |
Anonymous
Why? And how? The question of affordability aside, how many parents have college degrees in Early Childhood Development and can provide a stimulating atmosphere for a baby one to five years of age? What about socialization? The simple fact is that the housewife-home-with-kids model has been proven not to be the best for brain development. And “academics” start way before age five! |
Anonymous
Teaching. Not raising. Is the government raising your five year to eighteen year old when you send them to school? I think the biggest takeaway from this thread is seeing daycare as school. |
Anonymous
I live in a 1000 sq ft apartment. I can’t afford daycare. And before you scream “high COL area” — I live in an area with poor skills and pay $2500/mo for 2 bedrooms and 2 baths. I’m not living high on the highway here. |
Anonymous
I mean you selected into the most expensive neighborhood or building in your area then. You live in a LCOL area but paying $2500 for 2 beds? Whose fault is that? |
Anonymous
2,500 is pretty low, PP. |
Anonymous
Ok I’m a fully on board with subsidized daycare (the market doesn’t work otherwise) and universal PK. But this is a dumb argument. You don’t need a degree in early childhood education to take care of a 1 or 2 year old, and the “teaching” that kids need at this age is not academic. You need to be loving, attentive, and patient, and follow some basic expectations for providing helpful stimulation and environment for a baby toddler. This can be done in a daycare, with a nanny, with a parent, or with another adult relative. Let’s not act like you need a masters degree to care for a baby. It’s hard work but the best knowledge is experiential, not academic. And your best tools are actually socio-emotional, not intellectual. And babies and toddlers benefit from being around other people but do not actually need peer socialization until 2 at the earliest (and most kids do great if they don’t get it until 3). It’s good to be around other kids (and adults, it’s just good to have plenty of human interaction), but you don’t need to start actively socializing them to play with one another until 3. That’s when their brain development necessitates it. |
Anonymous
I live in a LCOL area with a major metropolitan area, where I have to live to work. I could live in a more rural area, but would then have to own a car and pay $5/gallon to commute. $2500 near a major city in a safe but not highly desirable neighborhood, with public transportation into the city center, is pretty decent. |
Anonymous
No, it is not. For a LCOL area. You can be paying a mortgage for $800/mo. $2,500/mo for a 2-bedroom apartment is the equivalent of a $450,000 house. Which gets you plenty of room in low-cost of living places. Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas for instance is LCOL. Housing can be had for half the price of OPs apartment and an extra bedroom to boot. https://www.redfin.com/PA/Pittsburgh/511-Edgewood-Rd-15221/home/74776442 https://www.redfin.com/PA/Pittsburgh/135-Saylong-Dr-15235/home/74603270 https://www.redfin.com/PA/Pittsburgh/110-Gardenview-Dr-15212/home/74464738 |
Anonymous
Since when do mother's need a degree in anything to be able to teach their children!? Two of my children graduated in the top ten percent of their class in both high school and The college and the third is a sophomore and on the Dean's List. I do not have a degree in Early Childhood Development. So, obviously, this degree is no needed. Let's be honest. There is no childcare crisis only lazy parents who care more about themselves than they do their children. |
Anonymous
You can’t say how much better off your kids would have been had you had a degree in ECD. Honestly. If you kept them engaged and learning. Your kids could have been smarter or happier or more creative or better problem solvers, etc. The more you know… |
Anonymous
I agree, good mothers and fathers can teach their own children, they can provide socialization opportunities and everything else that early childcare provides. But unfortunately for a lot of kids, they didn’t win the parent lottery and their parents aren’t teaching them letters and colors, reading about the best way to discipline, teaching emotional regulation, providing lots of verbal stimulation and enrichment, etc. Society needs to care about what happens to those children, too. In fact the studies on early childhood development that show an advantage of daycare/preschool only show a difference for low income kids. It doesn’t actually make a difference for wealthy kids. |
Anonymous
Yeah, I live in Alexandria and something like Bishop Ireton is still 18,000 for the first child and that's if you are a Catholic. |