> 2-3 kids, spaced 2 years, up to 3-4 years old = a career break of 5-8 years. That ought become social norm and be encouraged.

This is what a lot of wealthy people already do, because they can afford it due to one spouse's very high income, so the other spouse has a sort of vanity job (i.e. serving on the board of a charity).

But for the working and middle class, this is a bit of a pipe dream. Two people working are needed to pay the mortgage for the house that gets you the "good" public school.

Universal extended paid family leave and health care are a good way to encourage people to take time off to raise their young children. Many European countries do exactly that. I have friends in such countries who continued their academic careers part time while raising their children. It didn't hurt that they never worried about health care coverage for their families. It is a reason why European academics move back to their home countries after stints in the United States.

But things like that that will require raising taxes, and well, are we actually ready for that conversation?

Solving this by regressing to a society that discourages women from doing jobs outside the home is backward. Instead, change the system so that working parents have more freedom to make that choice to stay home with kids if they want to without imposing unreasonable struggle and risk upon their families, just like the wealthy have that option today.

> Do we want Mothers to shape their young children's behavioral patterns, or low paid child care workers with no skin in the game

I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of childcare workers more passionate about raising children than the parents themselves.

Fwiw, in many societies retired grandparents raise the kids which has better alignment and allows parents to readily keep their jobs.

No matter how well-trained and passionate the childcare workers are. At least in my country, a typical daycare has around 6 kids per caregiver for children less than a year old, 10 for 1-year-olds and maybe 15 or so for 2-year-olds.

If you have ever cared for a less than a year old child, you will surely know that caring for six at the same time, and doing it well, is simply impossible. So most of the time they end up sticking them into "baby holding devices", largely ignoring them (as they have no time to pay attention to all the children), or what's worse, hypnotizing them with videos on a smartphone.

I don't blame the childcare workers, I would do the same (or worse) because it's physically not possible to do better with such numbers of children. I don't blame the childcare managers, childcare is already a significant expense for most parents and if they multiply the cost by 2 or 3 by hiring much more personnel, most parents just wouldn't be able to afford it. It's a problem that really needs either heavy public spending or societal change to fix.

Those are pretty high ratios - and I agree detrimental to children and very hard on the caregivers.

As we're talking about stem mothers, I was thinking more of ratios I've seen in the SF for more affluent parents:

* Private nanny offering 1:1 time until kid is 2 or so (better option than daycare) or daycare with 1:3 ratio for infants

* Preschool for kids older than 2 with a 1:6 ratio.

My general read is that some childcare providers can outperform some parents. Yes, it's not their kid, but the higher passion for education can more than outweigh that.

That's not necessarily an argument against daycare, it is an argument for high quality daycare.

Studies show that boys with working mothers are less sexist and have more positive relationships with woman in general. Picking up behavior patterns goes both ways.

Yeah here in Iceland we have state run kindergarten’s open to kids from 18 months. They are staffed by degree educated people specialising in child development as well as assistants. They’re nothing but delightful in my experience. They are definitely underpaid though and I would absolutely like them to be paid more.

I’ve also heard horror stories of private daycares from my friends who have lived in the US though. Particularly those studying so without particularly high incomes.

They do have skin in the game. As shown in many studies, people generally are good. Therefore, most daycare workers would prefer if the children they worked with turned out good rather than bad.

While daycare workers may be underpaid, in many countries they work requires at least some education. They would also accumulate experience in proper child care the more years of experience they have in the profession. I.e. it is not a given that mothers are better than professionals in raising their own kids.