If I had to pick one point - it's that absolutely, yes, freedom is great, options are great. We HAVE the social and legal freedom to choose what lifestyle and combination makes the most sense for our family. And we weigh all the pros and cons and think of short and long term benefits and then have that discussion again few months later to see if anything has changed. We are lucky, blessed and privileged, on many different levels. So I don't feel picked on; I only wish more people here and around the world had the freedom, support and opportunities my wife and I have.
(as others have pointed out, daycare is not necessarily a bad thing. It's staffed by certified professionals who specialize in teaching kids - whereas let's be honest I'm just making it up as a parent. It's also great opportunity to socialize and make friends outside of their family. We don't see daycare as a downside - we see it as opportunity for our kids to get diverse experience between family and friends. As I said discussions revolve around all the many factors and options but certainly does not start from "daycare is bad" stance)
For what it's worth, everything I remember from daycare/preschool through elementary school was that it was a blast. Being home with just one parent instead of being/playing with other kids all day would've been way worse. Look at villages in developing nations: the young kids there run in packs, with free rein of everything, and are having an absolutely great time.
The only problem here is the ‘mediocre’ upbringing. My daughter is in a daycare where she is learning Spanish words/phrases in addition to English.
My daughter will be 2 in December and the daycare has her recognizing most letters, numbers, colors and shapes through dedicated practice. She uses tongs and spoons to practice picking up items and separating them by color or by number ‘grab 4 purple fuzz balls!’
These are teaching programs I would never have thought of at her age. I’d just point to fingers and toes and count to 10 or sing the ABC’s.
My daycare printed out paper with every letter and asks her to grab the letters of her name. Or she has an image with lower case letters on it and she asks my daughter to match the upper case letters out of a pile.
Long story short, raising kids newborn to 5 is a specialized skill just like teaching 5 to whatever, and society can benefit from having better educators for our children than what random adults turn out to be.
It would be great if we could come up with a socially supported system that raised the standard of child-care, so that every child gets the same treatment as your daughter.
I think the debate hasn't been settled though. It wasn't so long ago that women were, for the most part, prioritising being a successful housewives rather than their careers. Surely they had little to no choice since society expected just that from them. I wouldn't argue that the pressure wasn't forcing their hands, but was a model where the roles were gender defined. The good thing with clearly defined roles for something as challenging as being a parent is that one can work towards developing the required abilities to become an adult well equipped when family comes around.
I do see your point though. Your parental situation is not a rarety any longer, a gender based role assignment can't de facto be most adequate.
I don't have a desire to regress. It does seem to me we have regressed though. We created created society of kids at day care then schools, and are only starting to see the contradictions that come with that.
If the norm was instead working 2/3 days a week for less pay, there would be less money to spend on houses, so prices would come down (because the money that's charged is what can be afforded)
But part time jobs are nowhere near as common as full time jobs - especially for professionals.
Having parents looking after kids is a far better solution than outsourcing parenting to an external company, but it's far less profitable, and reduces things like GDP and stock markets, which is bad.
I don't necessarily agree with this. If the people/company that is looking after the children can do a good job, then it's far more efficient to have multiple children per person (company) vs 1-2 per person (parent). Plus (some of) the people that work for the company generally have an education that supports good developmental growth for the children under their care.
We could have both parents work part-time, and make everyone happy. But we want the GDP to go up, not down, throw more people and hours into the system, at the expense of children (our future they say) well-being.
IIR from the Pew Research Foundation on Family in the United States, less than fifty percent of all children in the US have two married parents, across all demographics and education levels, minus the one-percent highest income bracket.
lots of people in the city here with children, almost entirely the women.. the men are out of the picture for lots of reasons.. a non-zero percentage of young children have not met their biological father. The dental hygenist told me a month ago she has five kids of various ages and their father "lost his green card" and is gone.. she was cheerful and matter-of-fact. A plain spoken man in his fifties told me he has five children with three women and he never married any of them. This is not "terrible" it is true in his own words, he complains about the women and changes the subject.
Thanks for pointing out the separation rates. It would be misogynistic to dare considering a correlation between women not prioritising being a housewives over a career and men getting less interested in sticking around.
No, but where there are 2 parents involved in the child's birth (most cases), we _should_ have the expectation that both of those parents contribute to raising the child, barring edge cases.
colleagues - different can mean really different. Even sophisticated people don't see it .. reality speaks in its own ways
Certainly, my wife and I have ~semi-annual conversations on whether our lifestyle still makes sense (2 parents working, 2 kids under 5 in daycare:). There's definitely room to discuss that on societal level too. But there's no immediate assumption that my wife would necessarily be the one to quit work and spend extra time with kids - we're both engaged parents, both have our strengths and weaknesses, and once breastfeeding stage was complete both equally capable of parenting; and at the same time have both been career oriented and hold very successful positions.
in short:
"Are we as society on average supporting the model of two parents working" - a reasonable even crucial discussion to have.
"Should women be working" - hopefully settled a long time ago and anybody still questioning this will seem regressive at least, misogynistic more likely :-/