Do you care if the country's population drops dramatically? I'm sure many people are fine with that, but if you're a country looking to stay strong economically the math says you'll need to incentivize childrearing somehow.
I think subsidized daycare is a great idea as long as it isn't too much of a disincentive for those who want to stay home with their kids. When I was looking into childcare I noticed there were a lot of options that were only 2-3 hours a day. It took me awhile to realize these were breaks for parents who stayed at home and they were not targeting parents working full time. The parents I do know that have stayed at home could really use and appreciated some reprieve here and there. Nicer gyms and even grocery stores offer temporary childcare. I'm confident there are fewer options in middle/lower class neighborhoods.
Most people I know who chose to stay at home have only one or two kids. Even for those who have, say, five kids I wouldn't say it would still be a net loss to the government (many regulations mandate 1:6 caretaker:child for pre-walkers to 1:15 starting at age 5 for childcare). There are other advantages to group care like being able to spot issues that aren't age appropriate. As a parent I don't have a large sample size for most milestones. "Normal" can have a range of a year for many developmental skills, but others can stick out in a group setting. Spotting these things early can go a long way in addressing them. Scheduled pediatrician visits are only once or twice a year and last ~30m. So many things can be easily missed.
>Do you care if the country's population drops dramatically?
Given our resource utilization rates and sustainability problems, isn't this a good thing? Yes, some social changes will have to happen to account for the change but this is mostly handled by automation.
I completely agree it's not necessarily a good thing, but from a government overseeing an economy perspective it's desirable. It's something Japan and a lot of other countries are trying to address. Managing population decline is complicated by not being uniform.
It was also an easy filter: who cares if child care is expensive if you don't care if the population grows?
>I think subsidized daycare is a great idea as long as it isn't too much of a disincentive for those who want to stay home with their kids.
Why would you be OK with any kind of disincentive to parents staying home with their children?
>There are other advantages to group care like being able to spot issues that aren't age appropriate. As a parent I don't have a large sample size for most milestones. "Normal" can have a range of a year for many developmental skills, but others can stick out in a group setting.
You don't have to dump your children off to be raised by minimum wage daycare workers in order to put them in a group setting. You can also create these group settings, and gain a larger sample size, by spending more time with your friends and family members who also have children. As a bonus, you and your friends and family members can observe the behavior yourselves, and not rely on the judgment and interest of minimum wage daycare workers, who could get a new job at any point in time and be perfectly content to never see your child again.
> Why would you be OK with any kind of disincentive to parents staying home with their children?
I'm just recognizing the realities of incentivizing anything. There's a difference between a work requirement for both parents and attendance requirement for children and maybe, in some cases, a portion of your income tax would go to a program you don't take advantage of.
> You don't have to dump your children off to be raised by minimum wage daycare workers in order to put them in a group setting.
Where did I say this should be mandatory or that full-time childcare was the best and only option? You're grossly mischaracterizing my position here and the realities of daycare. Part of the reason daycare is expensive, as mentioned in the article, is because of the regulations in place around the environment and staff. I've found group daycare staff are often more qualified than individual nannies.
I would love to see studies because the issues I've seen caught and missed are all anecdotal and do involve tight-knit communities--which not everybody has. The situations I've seen caught did not "rely on the judgment and interest of minimum wage daycare workers" but were done through communication. After discussing an issue between the daycare and parent it would be presented to a pediatrician or other specialist to see if intervention was needed.
> you and your friends and family members can observe the behavior yourselves
Kids act very differently when around primary caretakers and others. Like I said, part of something like daycare would be communicating what you've observed and what they've observed. A select few motivated parents read books and seek out information (often only for their first child), I see a lot of "bad advice" from previous generations. One thing I've seen come up a lot is older generations either don't know, or dismiss, "back to sleep" as a way to minimize SIDS. I also notice that knowledge about children atrophies very quickly. I constantly have to give milestones for my kid; birth weight, when they rolled over, crawled, walked, first word, first sentence. As years pass I have a rougher idea about what's normal and completely forgot about more minor milestones like; parallel play, object permanence, when pronouns should be understood, etc. even when I'm close to other families kids hitting those milestones.
Nowhere, just like where I suggested you said it should be.
>was the best and only option?
You said it was an advantage of daycare. My point is that there are better ways to get that advantage.
>I've found group daycare staff are often more qualified than individual nannies.
Minimum wage vs minimum wage.
>The situations I've seen caught did not "rely on the judgment and interest of minimum wage daycare workers" but were done through communication.
If you're relying on daycare workers to communicate to you that there is a potential issue, you are relying on them to be interested enough to make the observation.
>One thing I've seen come up a lot is older generations either don't know, or dismiss, "back to sleep" as a way to minimize SIDS.
And you're going to take the lady at daycare who has a high school diploma's word for it?
>I constantly have to give milestones for my kid; birth weight, when they rolled over, crawled, walked, first word, first sentence. As years pass I have a rougher idea about what's normal and completely forgot about more minor milestones like; parallel play, object permanence, when pronouns should be understood, etc. even when I'm close to other families kids hitting those milestones.
Some parents will be less likely to notice missed milestones than minimum wage daycare workers, I guess. Most children won't miss the milestones, but they will miss the time with their parents, whether they realize it or not.
I think subsidized daycare is a great idea as long as it isn't too much of a disincentive for those who want to stay home with their kids. When I was looking into childcare I noticed there were a lot of options that were only 2-3 hours a day. It took me awhile to realize these were breaks for parents who stayed at home and they were not targeting parents working full time. The parents I do know that have stayed at home could really use and appreciated some reprieve here and there. Nicer gyms and even grocery stores offer temporary childcare. I'm confident there are fewer options in middle/lower class neighborhoods.
Most people I know who chose to stay at home have only one or two kids. Even for those who have, say, five kids I wouldn't say it would still be a net loss to the government (many regulations mandate 1:6 caretaker:child for pre-walkers to 1:15 starting at age 5 for childcare). There are other advantages to group care like being able to spot issues that aren't age appropriate. As a parent I don't have a large sample size for most milestones. "Normal" can have a range of a year for many developmental skills, but others can stick out in a group setting. Spotting these things early can go a long way in addressing them. Scheduled pediatrician visits are only once or twice a year and last ~30m. So many things can be easily missed.