121–127 of 127 posts
We sacrifice our time with our children for future career earnings to maximize lifetime income. People in this discussion throw around terms like GDP growth due to increased labour market participation from working moms...
It's ok just to accept what's happening. its not like you don't know what you're doing. Life is full of unpleasant tradeoffs.
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Is the situation where stay at home parents, in a two parent household, being unfeasible a majority of the time a market failure?
I think the choice to have children without ample time for child-care is a failure, but i'm not wholly convinced that it's the market that drove it completely -- more like it's driven by a poor decision making process by the parents. Historically day-care has been a service used by very poor single parents so that they can maintain a work schedule, or the affluent that want some free time away from the kids. With tha…
More than ever two working parents is a necessity for many families. To place blame solely on the parents for these circumstances ignores the larger picture of where we want to be as a society. Of course choosing to have children has consequences, but parents in the US should be able to have a reasonable expectation for affordable childcare, especially in a society and economy that demands multiple working parents.
But of course instead we could just blame the parents for creating the current scenario of unaffordable childcare.
Childcare is never as good as time with a parent. We sacrifice our time with our children for future career earnings to maximize lifetime income. People in this discussion throw around terms like GDP growth due to increased labour market participation from working moms... It's ok just to accept what's happening. its not like you don't know what you're doing. Life is full of unpleasant tradeoffs.
In Quebec they moved kindergarten down to 4 years old because they realised some kids are very "under-stimulated" at home and it sets them for failure for their whole academic career.
We believe the answer to the childcare supply crisis is home-based care. Our platform (which is regulated in the UK) exists to enable people to set up as a home-based childcare provider (in the UK these are called 'childminders', which is a somewhat derogatory name for a highly skilled professional educator!). We then make it easy to run the business through payments, invoicing, educational tools and training, marketing, etc.
We're working on the UK market first but we believe this is a global issue and have our eyes on other countries in the future.
If you'd be interested in chatting or learning more about what we do, you can reach me by email on edd@ on the above domain name :)
(And we're also hiring remote full stack engineers if you happen to be interested in joining the mission.)
As a parent of two young kids in daycare, this feels very disconnected from reality. The most glaring issue is the discussion of childcare providers as though they're totally fungible. Now, I have no idea how representative my experience is, but the parents I know are interested in things like: cost, location, holidays/time off (lots of places near me take 5-6 weeks off per year -- that's kind of a big deal for peopl…
I was a child of at home daycare by one woman who is literally my second mother (was present for all the big moments and was there emotionally for me). It also means it was a single point of failure; if Penny was sick, on vacation, then my parents were SOL.
A more corporate daycare gives you the reliable daycare but at the cost of your child being a number.
With nearly any of our social ills, the answer is housing. - The people taking care of children at daycare make pennies; most of the revenue goes to a landlord. It's very expensive because you can't just move the daycare 1.5 hours out to the outskirts of town; you actually need to pay for real estate near where people live. - Grandparents, extended family cannot afford to live near their working children. - Anyone wi…
I listened to the podcast recently (the one mentioned in the article) that went over the operating costs of preschools and daycares. Something like 85% of their revenue went straight to payroll, not "landlords."
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Now THAT is a market failure. Create a company staffed with parents who have a gap in their resumes. Pay them slightly less than market rate. In theory, that should be very profitable. In practice there are too many confounding issues and I doubt this would be successful, although I do think the companies can do quite well by disregarding explainable gaps in one's resume.
> I do think the companies can do quite well by disregarding explainable gaps in one's resume. i dont believe it is the gap, but more that a company would prefer to hire someone younger (and thus, cheaper?) if they both have the same experience.