Preschool vs Daycare Wars

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Saying, based on shaky research, that a parent should stay home or work part time for years, is absolutely anti-woman.

Paid parental leave is great and I SUPPORT IT but no program will make that parent whole for their financial and career losses as a result of taking a step back from your career for years. For starters, no paid leave program offers multiple YEARS of paid leave. While some do mandate full salaries, most do not. And there is evidence that more than 6 months of leave has negative career impacts.

And you can say well men SHOULD be making that sacrifice just as much as women and I AGREE with that, but the REALITY is that this burden currently falls and will continue to fall mostly on WOMEN. Which you very well know and are ignoring. That sacrifice is significant and has massive impacts on women's ability to be financially secure in retirement.

Why do you need research studies for this? If you don’t have any human emotions maybe watch a few nature documentaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saying, based on shaky research, that a parent should stay home or work part time for years, is absolutely anti-woman.

Paid parental leave is great and I SUPPORT IT but no program will make that parent whole for their financial and career losses as a result of taking a step back from your career for years. For starters, no paid leave program offers multiple YEARS of paid leave. While some do mandate full salaries, most do not. And there is evidence that more than 6 months of leave has negative career impacts.

And you can say well men SHOULD be making that sacrifice just as much as women and I AGREE with that, but the REALITY is that this burden currently falls and will continue to fall mostly on WOMEN. Which you very well know and are ignoring. That sacrifice is significant and has massive impacts on women's ability to be financially secure in retirement.

Why do you need research studies for this? If you don’t have any human emotions maybe watch a few nature documentaries.

LOL

[Anonymous]

Didn't read all 18 pages but, seriously, these arguments have been going on since I first became a parent in 2001.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saying, based on shaky research, that a parent should stay home or work part time for years, is absolutely anti-woman.

Paid parental leave is great and I SUPPORT IT but no program will make that parent whole for their financial and career losses as a result of taking a step back from your career for years. For starters, no paid leave program offers multiple YEARS of paid leave. While some do mandate full salaries, most do not. And there is evidence that more than 6 months of leave has negative career impacts.

And you can say well men SHOULD be making that sacrifice just as much as women and I AGREE with that, but the REALITY is that this burden currently falls and will continue to fall mostly on WOMEN. Which you very well know and are ignoring. That sacrifice is significant and has massive impacts on women's ability to be financially secure in retirement.

So what? Having kids is a sacrifice! If you'd be afraid to take 6 months of leave due to potential negative career impacts, I don't really know what to tell you. Some of us, believe it not, would be ok with a financial loss of going unpaid for a year, so long as we had a job to go back to. The only fields where I actually know women who have been able to do this are nursing and education.

Guess I'm just not career-driven enough, lol.

What you are is privileged.

+1. You have the luxury of being able to afford to take 6 months to a year of leave from employment. Not everyone can afford that.

One of the reasons why more men don't make the sacrifice to take leave is that they would have to take LWOP. And despite the last 40 years, women still only make about 83% of what men make. That plus men still get more positions in higher paid jobs than women, it means that most families would take an even bigger hit to their family income if the father were to take a leave of absence from work instead of the mother. It isn't just an old stereotype or men that are chauvinistic or misogynistic. In many families, they make the decision that is financially better. I did take FMLA leave when my kids were born, just not as much as my wife did. At the time, I was making about 20% more than my wife so the time I took off cost us more financially than the time she took off. So she took off more time than I did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The data just doesn’t support group learning before age 3 or so. If your goal is to ‘school’ a two year old you would hire a nanny because they are learning from a single caregiver and not from peers. The peers are only competitors for the caregivers attention. Any center that is trying to sell you on STEM classes for 2 year olds is ripping you off. They are usually just trying to distract you from the caregiver ratio.

Look for a high caregiver ratio not a curriculum or ‘school’ before age 3/4. Often an in-home daycare is better in this regard, frankly.

After age 3/4 they do learn from peers so there is definite benefit to a school environment.

Let’s just be honest about the tough choices all parents make and not let an industry try to sell us on non-evidence based nonsense.

https://criticalscience.medium.com/on-the-science-of-daycare-4d1ab4c2efb4#:~:text=Children%20spending%20long%20hours%20in,negative%20effect%20on%20later%20behavior.

I can't begin to describe how disappointing it is that the supposedly educated people posting on DCUM continue to cite this very biased and deceptive blog post. I urge anyone who is making decisions based on it to read the actual studies cited by the author (whose identity and credentials are not published here). This blog post is not a summary of "the science", it is one person's opinion based on cherry picking and sometimes outright misrepresentation of research literature.