Reply to NY Mag: Daycare is Broken

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What's broken is an economy that forces a majority of parents to work full-time in order to make ends meet.[/quote]

This.  Institutionalized child care is never a good thing for babies and young children.  It’s just a sad result of our economic system. [/quote]

I agree totally that institutionalized child care is never a good thing for babies and young children.  However, while the economic system often seems to make this inevitable for many families, I also wonder why so many people do not consider this hard fact when planning, or failing to plan, their families.  The attitude in this country seems to be that everyone is entitled to have as many children as they want rather than encouraging people to figure out what they actually can afford, what daycare options they can reasonably plan for, before bringing children into the world.  So many new mothers and many new fathers as well are quite surprised by how much they would prefer to care for their own infants at least the first few years but find they have failed to anticipate this and therefore can't economically find a way to do it.[/quote]

I don't disagree with you, but would argue that this cuts both ways. I took time off when my child was born (and chose not to have another child) specifically because I did not want to put her in institutionalized care as an infant or toddler, nor did I want to do that with a subsequent child. We adjusted our financial planning to accommodate this and have never regretted it.

But I also have empathy for people who struggle with this because I know better than most that when you take time off to SAH, there are serious career consequences. It's really hard that these consequences almost entirely fall on women since that is most often who is going to stay home with a very young child due to breastfeeding and how infant bonding generally works. Plus men face a ton of stigma for taking time off. I get why not everyone is able to do this. And I'm not willing to argue that you should only have children if you can afford a full time nanny -- I think that's really limiting and classist.

We need to make it possible for middle and working class people to be good parents without having to rely on institutional care for very young kids. That means mandating longer parental leaves, creating more part-time options for parents of young kids, or maybe reconfiguring our social structure to enable extended family to help more with children.

The model of the dual-income family with kids in insitutationalized daycare was not invented by parents. It's the result of a very capitalist society that encourages people to move far from family in order to have profitable careers, and then to outsource childcare to professionals. It benefits corporations and people who sell things, because it puts more people into the workforce and increases family incomes to buy stuff. But families themselves have been complaining about this set up for decades now. A lot of people want out. But it's not something that can be solved via personal choice.[/quote]

+1.  I also think that American society never really adapted to more women attending college and subsequently having careers.  We encourage our daughters to pursue their dreams and goals but then don't offer any support to maintain both a career and a family.  [b]There aren't a lot of fields where you can take 1-2 years off with each kid and easily jump back [/b]in.[/quote]

Actually there are!  Most industries do.  There are exceptions, but not many.  The US has one of the most flexible labor markets in the world.  Paid parental leave is way more necessary in Western European countries where it’s not as easy to land a permanent job and reenter the labor market.  I’d argue it’s one of a few main reasons we don’t have government paid leave.

The other sad reality is that an American woman who wants to be home with a 1 year old probably wants to be home with a 3 year old. Parental leave only gets you so far and the reality is it’s hard to have a productive workforce if you gave key employees leaving for years to have a child.  The US has high productivity rates and the higher salaries here reflect that.  There would have to be a huge cultural shit for most American women to be working with a one or two year old child like they do in Europe.  [/quote]

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