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The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

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Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#31

Post by detourdog »

hasoleju wrote: post #14

> childcare needs to give parents an actual break. In my experience caring for your small children is really demanding work. On the one hand you need to be focused on the situation in order to protect the children and on the other hand there is not much going on for entertaining yourself. Creative or focused deep work where you get a positive feeling of accomplishment also counts as a break from childcare for me. So…

The only thing I would like to add to this thinking is that it also explains cultural norms. If a child is getting input from that many different adults it becomes an averaging of the culture norms.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#32

Post by lotsofpulp »

EGreg wrote: post #23
micromacrofoot wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it have to be all women?

Exactly the right question. People make all kinds of assumptions and thanks to the corporate world, both sexes now slave away for the market: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 I wrote that in 2017 and it's only gotten worse since then

People could accept lower living standards and opt for single income families.

However, people like to compete, for purposes of fulfilling their own ego and attracting a mate. That is why higher income individuals attract other higher income individuals.

Corporations did not make people competitive. People want financial freedom, people want to buy goods and services, and people want to attract a partner per their liking.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#33

Post by Merrill »

Is this generally true of hunter gatherer societies, especially those in temperate or arctic climates?

Most of our ancestors have been living in agricultural villages or pastoral camps for the last 50 or more generations, which is long enough to evolve adaptation to that lifestyle. Admittedly, urbanization is a quite recent and abnormal lifestyle.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#34

Post by robwwilliams »

Podgajski wrote: post #17
Eumenes wrote: post #12

> "For more than 95% of our evolutionary history we lived as hunter-gatherers. Therefore, contemporary hunter-gatherer societies can offer clues as to whether there are certain child-rearing systems to which infants, and their mothers, may be psychologically adapted," You can cherry pick anything that fits a narrative. This narrative advocates for more funding for state sponsored daycare, which does not resemble anyt…

It could also be used to do away with the capitalist system for more anarchistic one and instead rely on community rather than on the state. In any case it all points to the fact that the way our society is set up, is creating a lack of well-being among humanity.

Disagree with your last statement. We can each look back on our own childhoods and make a local and biased assessment. I loved my childhood and all of the experiences. I thank both the modern American social structure and my parents. Could it have been improved. Well sure, probably—but that is not an experiment I can run.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#35

Post by lotsofpulp »

morsch wrote: post #24
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ratios you mentioned are 1 caregiver for 5 children. The ratios in the article for the societies they studied are 5 caregivers for 1 child.

Wow, okay, that hadn't even crossed my mind. I see your point, then.

Note that the 5 caregivers per 1 child also contains a chain of older children, each looking after one another.

You take those 5 kids, and put them in school from ages 5 to 22 or even 26, obviously, there is going to be a dearth of labor supply.

The gain is those older kids in school gain financial freedom (especially the girls) rather than having to take care of younger kids. But the cost is still coming into view (not that it isn’t worth it, but we are in for big changes).

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#36

Post by treespace8 »

stareatgoats wrote: post #20

We can only move forward, not backward. The hunter-gatherer existence is often endowed with some notion of pristine, peaceful existence in harmony with nature, which is likely far from the actual truth. That said, I for one find many aspects (but not all!) of the present situation unsatisfactory, where the needs of macroeconomy and national priorities supersedes many of our most basic needs as humans. This article co…

With all the massive life improvements we have with technology we could be investing so much more into our kids. Jobs could be flexible with short work weeks, and we could use that time to invest in kids. Parent, volunteer, mentor. Remote work done on a school site giving even more time to help kids learn.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#37

Post by lotsofpulp »

manmal wrote: post #16
hasoleju wrote: post #14

> childcare needs to give parents an actual break. In my experience caring for your small children is really demanding work. On the one hand you need to be focused on the situation in order to protect the children and on the other hand there is not much going on for entertaining yourself. Creative or focused deep work where you get a positive feeling of accomplishment also counts as a break from childcare for me. So…

In our Montessori school, parents do pick up other kids occasionally, and the kids would just stay with the family for the afternoon. Ideally, kids take turns so sometimes parents get an afternoon off. Another thing that sometimes works (lots of preconditions) - living in walking distance of grandparents or siblings, and let the kids visit family frequently.

> Another thing that sometimes works (lots of preconditions) - living in walking distance of grandparents or siblings, and let the kids visit family frequently.

If you are not sufficiently rich such that you can afford personal services such as live in nannies and flights to visit family and whatnot, I find that living walking distance to close family is one of the biggest quality of life upgrades one could make (obviously assuming you get along with them).

The redundancies it provides makes for much less stressful living, along with many other benefits.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#38

Post by EGreg »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #32
EGreg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly the right question. People make all kinds of assumptions and thanks to the corporate world, both sexes now slave away for the market: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 I wrote that in 2017 and it's only gotten worse since then

People could accept lower living standards and opt for single income families. However, people like to compete, for purposes of fulfilling their own ego and attracting a mate. That is why higher income individuals attract other higher income individuals. Corporations did not make people competitive. People want financial freedom, people want to buy goods and services, and people want to attract a partner per their li…

Corporations, just like governments, engage in pervasive propaganda, from impressionable school years all the way to adulthood. Edward Burnays said propaganda got a bad name after WW1, so they renamed it to "PR".

It's how corporations got women to smoke, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom

How they control the crowd, featuring Edward Burnays and his uncle Freud (whose theories became famous ironically because of his nephew): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

How the corporate world market to kids: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/

They marketed it to Black youth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjKyVzRr_U

They marketed it to teen girls: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/30/social-m...

Sometimes the mask comes off and they do it too openly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8

The for-profit model of news corporations and social networks has led more and more adults to become perpetually angry and tribal politically: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/

There is even a term for what they resort to in order to please shareholders: surveillance capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

I was at the event in NYC when Sheryl Sandberg unveiled her book, "Lean In": https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/03853499...

Make no mistake. YCombinator and shareholder capitalism leads to this inevitably. Corporations have to please shareholders forever. And there is more and more push for inclusivity and part of that means adapting people from traditional roles (e.g. women homemakers) into types of work that benefit the market. As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined. People are distracted into being e.g. gender warriors (Red Pill vs Feminism) rather than realizing they are all being exploited by a for-profit capitalist system that gradually relegates them to gig-economy workers and depresses their wages as they get replaced by AI. It's like a slowly-boiled frog.

Anyone can opt out if they want. Opt out of the over-diagnosis of ADHD for their kids in public schools, by spending more time with them. Opt out of single parenthood and nuclear families, creating something far more expansive and with the benefits of traditional societies. Health benefits abound. Kids aren't overmedicated by amphetamines. Teens aren't depressed due to tiktok or angry due to drill music. Middle aged women aren't on antideprssants. Men aren't on opiates. Elderly parents aren't in nursing homes being drugged up. I'm not saying it's a utopia but the capitalist system has gone in a very bad direction, arguably worse than USSR where people drank vodka to cope.

Look at any traditional society even within the US, such as the Amish, or religious orthodox Jews, or Christians in small-town America who still get together for Church etc. You don't have to be religious to make it work. But it takes a village to raise a child, and today's children are raised by government schools and indoctrinated to be corporate drones, for a job market that will be gone by the time they graduate. I recommend phasing in a UBI, at least, to help save the increasingly under-employed (i.e. making too few $s) people and families from falling through the cracks even further. The best kind of UBI can be done on a community level, for newlyweds and new parents etc.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#39

Post by MichaelRo »

Merrill wrote: post #33

Is this generally true of hunter gatherer societies, especially those in temperate or arctic climates? Most of our ancestors have been living in agricultural villages or pastoral camps for the last 50 or more generations, which is long enough to evolve adaptation to that lifestyle. Admittedly, urbanization is a quite recent and abnormal lifestyle.

That's an interesting observation. Studying "childcare" probably shouldn't focus as much on the difference between "city lifestyle" and "untouched by civilization" like whatever hunter-gatherer remains but between city and, God giveth, the still overly abundant (if not statistically the majority?) rural dwellers.

Where kids still spend most of their time around their parents, help with house chores, attend the garden and the animals etc.

Re: The key to mother and child well-being may be many caregivers

#40

Post by lotsofpulp »

EGreg wrote: post #38
lotsofpulp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People could accept lower living standards and opt for single income families. However, people like to compete, for purposes of fulfilling their own ego and attracting a mate. That is why higher income individuals attract other higher income individuals. Corporations did not make people competitive. People want financial freedom, people want to buy goods and services, and people want to attract a partner per their li…

Corporations, just like governments, engage in pervasive propaganda, from impressionable school years all the way to adulthood. Edward Burnays said propaganda got a bad name after WW1, so they renamed it to "PR". It's how corporations got women to smoke, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom How they control the crowd, featuring Edward Burnays and his uncle Freud (whose theories became famous ironical…

> As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined.

Corporations did not force both sexes to flood the labor pool. Women wanted (and fought) to gain the ability to be paid. To reduce their struggle and achievement as a “corporate conspiracy” is an insult.

Might businesses influence people’s decisions with marketing? Sure. But that is not why people yearn to be financially independent. People want to be financially independent so they can live life how they want to live it, and marry or date who they want to be with, and so on and so forth.

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