We had a 24 hours electricity outage last week. (Some problem with an electric wire in the whole block after a heavy rain). Should I buy an electricity generator just in case?

I expect to be able to send the kids to school, perhaps at least a few hours per day. It is impossible now.

An in case the school is not working, I can send them with one of the grandmas or the other. But we are currently in the peak of the pandemic in Buenos Aires and it is a bad idea because they are old so they are in the health risk group. I think it is even illegal here due to the quarantine, but it is a bad idea anyway.

We take turns with my wife to take care of the kids and try to organize the activities, for example to avoid having two Zoom meetings at the same time.

Luckily we can arrange some activities to do them when the kids are sleeping or at least quiet, like preparing / checking / grading midterms at weird hour like 11pm.

One of the problems is that in the middle of a Zoom meeting one of the kids may appear and say hi, or ask to change the tv channel, or perhaps some food, or just hug me for 5 minutes. Luckily in most of my meetings I don't need a 100% of concentration, so a kid going around is not so bad.

What do parents do during the summer or before public schooling starts? I've always heard controversy about parental leave, but why haven't I heard as much controversy about parents spending less time at work when their children are very young or during the summer?

They pay for child care (daycare, summer camps, nannies) or use free child care (family, friends).

Glad to hear you're taking responsibility for your life choices in this time of hardship. But... that's what you signed up for when you made the decision to have a child.

I guess the question is: Do you believe that you should receive benefits above and beyond those of childless adults because of your life choices? That the act of becoming a parent is so sacred it should grant you benefits in otherwise unrelated areas of your life?

We have a saying here: "Today for you, tomorrow for me." I'm not sure how is the best translation.

I have a few teacher assistants in the university, and when possible we try to cover each other and keep the class going. Some problems are not related to kids.

* When the parents die, sometimes you must go all the previous week to the hospital. Or in a better scenario, you have to help your parents to go to the doctor.

* Some unexpected or chronic health problems. Sometimes small changes in the actives distribution can help.

* Problems with the car, for example after a small crash you must take the car to the official mechanics of the insurance.

* One of the water pipes is leaking and it is "raining" in the apartment bellow. The plumber promised to arrive in an hour...

* A trip to a conference or a similar event.

> We have a saying here: "Today for you, tomorrow for me."

It sounds most likely to be 'reciprocity', but could also be evoking either the notion of 'reaping what you sow' or the notion of 'paying it forward'

Yes because those of us who chose to have kids signed onto a social contract. We pay the 300-500k for raising a kid and the government covers basic schooling And child care from 5-18 so we don’t have to double that. Well the government pulled out of their end so now everyone is overloaded. Moreover even private options are overloaded so the system just broke entirely. Employers are cutting parents a break because they still want them around when the system works again. These people have nothing more left to give in terms of free time.

Everything you do depends on the services of other people, which depends on a somewhat stable birthrate. As you grow old and sick, the children of the people receiving "benefits above and beyond those of childless adults" is the only thing between you and a lonely, early grave. You honestly don't understand that?

Have it crossed your mind that maybe these people had the time and means to raise the kids, until a global pandemic has broken the plan a, the commercial plan b, the social plan c and the plan d? Because at the time the schools closed, the after school care also closed, people were told to not leave their kids with friends and no matter what never ever let them any near grandparents? Or have you totally missed that part?

Extended families have been isolating together since the beginning; Never were families discourages from isolating together.

Visiting with friends (groups under 10 people) while following safe interaction guidelines was also not discouraged.

EDIT: This is from the point of view of someone in the US; international laws vary as pointed out by replies.

> Never were families discourages from isolating together.

False - at least in the UK different households were not permitted to mix. So if grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins/etc lived in a different residence, well that is different households and no mixing was allowed. There goes a huge source of a lot of people's adhoc/emergency childcare options.

No mixing of groups of any size was allowed either.

There was some relaxing of this, but now we are seeing a second spike as obviously nothing has changed so people are back to infecting each other.

There was apparently an exception for mobile optician substitutes, however!

It most certainly was for quite a while where I am (Ontario, Canada). For months we were told to only be in close proximity to those we already lived with. IIRC it was 2 steps on the "start to relax recommendations" path before a group of 10 was permissible.

The point is that COVID removed any support networks that may have been there.

Even the most well-oiled and well-rehearsed routines were blown clear out of the water.

Where before you could rely on family, friends, neighbors, baby sitters, after-school clubs, public transport and so on, you now had ZERO options available. Basically anything - or anyone - outside of your home was no longer an option.

You could be at Bezos or Zuckerberg or Musk levels of wealth, resources, and connections but you'd not be able to get any help at all with your kids during lockdown (...unless you ignore lockdown of course...)

> You could be at Bezos or Zuckerberg or Musk levels of wealth, resources, and connections but you'd not be able to get any help at all with your kids during lockdown

That's not true. Bezos or Zuckerberg could (and probably do) pay their childcare staff to live with them fulltime and maintain quarantine. Not really an option for most people though.

I don't have kids and I don't think this is a good take on the issue considering that part of the reason that parents are having a difficult time is because of how their government managed the pandemic.

As I mentioned, apparently not boldly enough, there's many reasons children could go to school, the pandemic being only one.

Of the hundred+ billion humans to ever live, practically none of them were planned. Children will come, and their ability to thrive is a commons. Moralizing the decisions people make that result in kids is my goto example of how poorly a decision can be made when you defy data.

You are basically asking for human civilization to end within 50 years, so yes, that is going to be an unpopular opinion.

> We should not be rewarding or elevating people for having unprotected sex without the support network to take care of their children in the event they are unable to attend school.

Hey, I get it. Here's the thing: that "support network" used to exist in the form of close-knit local groups of parents, churches, etc. which are all fading from our society as we atomize into our own little bubbles. COVID has amplified this phenomenon exponentially.

It is an unreasonable request to expect people to weather MONTHS of their children not being able to attend school. Not without government assistance. People's lives are not structured for this kind of contingency; and if you had more perspective as to the way people outside of the tech sector lived, you'd understand this. On HN there aren't that mean people living paycheck to paycheck; but out there in the real world, where single moms scrape along on next to nothing, it's unrealistic to expect everyone to be able to handle this without a lot of things falling through the cracks.

> If your plans for raising a child rely upon schools being able to take them off your hands for 8+ hours a day (not to mention feeding them), that's your problem, not ours.

What an insensitive, hyper-individualist attitude. EVERYONE'S plans for raising a child include having schools take them for 6-8 hours a day, and have for almost a century now. Everything about the structure of family life and the normal routine people follow is designed around making this possible because no compelling alternative has presented itself.

> It's "selfish" and "immature" to bring a child into the world that you don't have the time or means to raise.

It's selfish and exceedingly immature for you to believe that it's okay to just point to the next generation of humans and say "that's your problem, not ours". There's no "ours" if you think that way, there's only "mine", and it sounds like a better summary for your outlook is just "fuck you got mine", which doesn't scale.

One day, maybe you will be so lucky as to have children, completing your own obviously-incomplete journey into mature adulthood, and at that time I hope you think back on your previous mindset. As someone who never dreamed of children when I was in my early 20s, I can see that I might too have produced some cringeworthy posts like yours, but with more perspective it's clear that community effort, sensitivity, and understanding is crucial to making sure we produce a new generation that can take on the challenges handed to it by the old. You'll get there too.

I have. I have a lot of empathy for children who are going hungry because their parents brought them into this world without a means to support them. I have a lot of empathy for children who are unwanted, ignored, and otherwise harmed by "inconvenienced" parents.

I have no empathy - I have nothing but contempt - for the parents who bring those children into this world.

Is it 'inconvenience' when an uninsured motorist injures a parent badly enough such that they can no longer provide for their child?

Fundamentally, how big a hedge do you believe parents have a duty to incur before society should reasonably be expected to intervene and help carry the burden?

It sounds like you believe that only those with enough wealth that they can fully self-insure against all conceivable events of any frequency greater or equal to once a century that causes loss of ability to care, should procreate. Given our history as a species, that would be an extreme and significantly non-obvious point of view to hold at all, let alone with the vitriol that you seem to harbour on this matter.

I've heard this argument before: "I have no empathy for people who bring children into this world" but rather from a financial perspective, it's from a climate change perspective. Like the financial perspective, If you peel back the layers, what it all boils down to is the individual's selfishness, and inability to see the humanity in others.

The other issue I have with this line of reasoning is everyone seems to have their own qualifiers on what sort of situation should or should not be available for birthing children. How about we make childrearing (as it has been for basically all of history) a pre-eminent feature of our humanity and existence? There is nothing more awe-inspiring (or more powerful) than bringing new life into this world. It symbolizes a chance to start fresh and anew.

Don't taint this with postmodernist critiques of what should or should not constitute a stable environment for bringing new life into the world.

(Just to drive the point home, George Carlin once had a great skit that had quite a bit of truth to it, exposing the hypocrisy of the then "environmentalists" at the time: it's not about saving anything or "the children" it's about making the world more comfortable, clean, and cozy for themselves. In this case it's "ugh why do people who can't afford children keep having them? they just are a drain on society! Now I am going to have to feel guilty about all those starving children! How irresponsible of those parents!" -- and similar objections -- It's really selfishness when it's all said and done. The most ironic part I find, is the people who tend espouse such beliefs tend to be on the left side of the political spectrum, who vilify the "personal responsibility" mantra of the right, yet this is just another form of that.)

If a pandemic were the only potential cause of a child not going to school, you'd be right. But it's not. Between mental issues, behavioral issues, and health issues, there's many potential causes for a child to not go to school. Not to mention the first 5 years of a child's life and summers.

And there are usually ways you can exchange money for help with those things. Special schools and programs for those with different mental or behavioral issues (this one often doesn't even need extra money, if your school system is adequate). Temporary leave for extreme cases like hospitalization. Day care or babysitters or nannies.

Think about those first 5 years of life and summers you bring up. Obviously there are normal mechanisms that these parents used in these cases in the past. Now they're unavailable. And you have contempt for the parents because they didn't anticipate that all of these options could evaporate all at once. Please.

What duty do we have to the well-being of the child that had no choice in this matter?