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Germany Fights Population Drop

nytimes.com

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Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#41

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #39
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #29

> “If you look closely at the numbers, what you see is the higher the gender equality, the higher the birthrate,” I think that's exactly backwards. Afghanistan has the highest birthrate. The less gender equality, the higher the birthrate. You get astronomical birthrates in the Hasidim and Islamic parts of Africa where women hold a subservient place to their husbands and have a constrained gender role. The Nazis had s…

Nah, you can fix the sentence by adding what was unspoken but assumed: > "If you look closely at the numbers, what you see is that in developed countries, the higher the gender equality, the higher the birthrate,”

It's so obviously not true between developed countries and across time. The more traditional the gender roles (opposite of "equality") the higher the birth rate. I would have to see the data before I even believed the claim that within an industrialized nation more "equal" couples have more kids. I highly doubt it.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#42

Post by pjmlp »

lkrubner wrote: post #28

This is an editorial comment disguised as objective reporting: "But bogged down with failed banks and dwindling budgets, few are in any position to do anything about it." The reasoning is something like "We can not save ourselves from collapse because we are collapsing." This is not a serious line of reasoning. Whenever people are faced with 2 problems, they need to make a decision about which problem is more urgent.…

As Portuguese living in Germany the way day care and primary schools work always surprised me.

We have lots of bad things, specially in the current times, but I would say day care options in Portugal are way better for working parents.

Having the option to drop the children between 8 am and 6pm is already a big help.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#43

Post by waterfowl »

tomp wrote: post #19
cylinder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the biggest gap in western governments currently, and huge productivity boosts could be had if they solve this problem. Especially in the US. It's incomprehensible that a parent should have to pay thousands per month just to be able to have a child and work at the same time. Paid maternal leave is not the big issue! After six months of leave, the problem remains that a child needs to be looked after a…

> while the mother returns to work But why? I'm young and child-less, so I'm not speaking out of experience, but I really see no reasons why we should be encouraging people to be able to work while having kids . Instead, I think we should enable them to not work and have kids . 50 years ago, it was more than possible to sustain a family with only a single working parent. Nowadays, this doesn't seem even remotely poss…

This times a hundred. My sister stays home to care for her children and people in our area(DC) act like it's unbelievable. Edit: or worse, they assume she is barefoot and pregnant and chained to the stove.

I wouldn't have children with someone unless one of us was willing to take care of the children AT LEAST until school age. I don't think it's evil or sinful or anything to put your kids in daycare, but I am very very glad I grew up with a stay at home mother. Summer daycare(or day camp every single week all summer) just sounds way way too structured(insofar as it has to be, because it has to work around the structured adult schedules of working parents) for children.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#44

Post by DanBC »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #32
freehunter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's considered healthy these days for children to spend time away from their family in the care of others. It helps to develop a sense of individuality and independence from the parents at a younger age. Plus, from what I've heard, sometimes the parents and the children just need a break from each other. Yes, this can be done by taking the kid to a park or other social activities, but two working parents is…

I have friends and family who work in primary education and they all say it's immediately obvious which children have two working parents. The kids without a full time homemaker have far more developmental problems.

Any credible cites for this?

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#45

Post by Clanan »

freehunter wrote: post #25
tomp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while the mother returns to work But why? I'm young and child-less, so I'm not speaking out of experience, but I really see no reasons why we should be encouraging people to be able to work while having kids . Instead, I think we should enable them to not work and have kids . 50 years ago, it was more than possible to sustain a family with only a single working parent. Nowadays, this doesn't seem even remotely poss…

I think it's considered healthy these days for children to spend time away from their family in the care of others. It helps to develop a sense of individuality and independence from the parents at a younger age. Plus, from what I've heard, sometimes the parents and the children just need a break from each other. Yes, this can be done by taking the kid to a park or other social activities, but two working parents is…

> Daycare isn't unbeneficial to a child.

That's a very simplified observation of a complex reality. Not all daycares are created equal: The National Institute of Child Health Development[1] found that most daycare operations are "fair" or "poor". Only 10% are "high-quality". Obviously the details are what matter in each case: a caring parent at home is far better than a crowded day-care. Conversely, a great daycare can help with a bad home situation.

[1] https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/documents/seccyd...

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#46

Post by cheepin »

VLM wrote: post #14

"Yet, with hundreds of thousands of skilled jobs unfilled, some executives believe" I wonder if this is actually true or if its like the typical American sob story of we can't get PHD's to work for minimum wage so we need to outsource.

Well, if the jobs were worth filling, they would be filled, right?

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#47

Post by freehunter »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #32
freehunter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's considered healthy these days for children to spend time away from their family in the care of others. It helps to develop a sense of individuality and independence from the parents at a younger age. Plus, from what I've heard, sometimes the parents and the children just need a break from each other. Yes, this can be done by taking the kid to a park or other social activities, but two working parents is…

I have friends and family who work in primary education and they all say it's immediately obvious which children have two working parents. The kids without a full time homemaker have far more developmental problems.

Children with working parents is one group. Children with developmental problems is another group. There is surely some overlap, but that is far from saying that children with working parents will always have developmental problems. I can point to some people I know and say "they're an only child" based on the way they behave, but that's ignoring the millions of 'only child's who have no behavioral problems or the millions of people from multi-child households who still have difficulty functioning in normal society.

There is certainly more to a child's behavior than whether their parents were working or staying at home. There might be a strong correlation to households with two working parents and households with other developmentally-stunting factors like parental illiteracy or low education levels, low levels of parental involvement, etc, but I'm sure you would have a tough time proving to any level that, with all other factors remaining the same, two working parents cause more damage to a child than having a stay-at-home parent.

For what it's worth (as long as your anecdotal experience means something to you), my brother-in-law is a college administrator and my sister is a first grade teacher and they have two children who don't seem to have any developmental issues. But my sister has kids in her class with a stay-at-home parent who certainly do.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#48

Post by sii »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #32
freehunter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's considered healthy these days for children to spend time away from their family in the care of others. It helps to develop a sense of individuality and independence from the parents at a younger age. Plus, from what I've heard, sometimes the parents and the children just need a break from each other. Yes, this can be done by taking the kid to a park or other social activities, but two working parents is…

I have friends and family who work in primary education and they all say it's immediately obvious which children have two working parents. The kids without a full time homemaker have far more developmental problems.

What? As a father of (soon to be) three children this sounds really odd to me. My kids have always loved going to daycare and I've never heard of it causing any developmental problems. On the contrary my own experience is that daycare really accelerates kids development.

Most children in Sweden have two working parents and start daycare when they are around a year old. Daycare in Sweden is considered part of the school system and the teachers working there have (approximately) the same education as 'regular' school teachers.

Edit: Also, as a related fact in this discussion, in Sweden children that are behind in learning to speak (language development) can actually receive special permission to spend _more_ time in daycare to help speed up their language learning.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#49

Post by Clanan »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #32
freehunter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's considered healthy these days for children to spend time away from their family in the care of others. It helps to develop a sense of individuality and independence from the parents at a younger age. Plus, from what I've heard, sometimes the parents and the children just need a break from each other. Yes, this can be done by taking the kid to a park or other social activities, but two working parents is…

I have friends and family who work in primary education and they all say it's immediately obvious which children have two working parents. The kids without a full time homemaker have far more developmental problems.

From what I've read, research suggests that children from higher quality daycares had higher vocabulary scores, but worse social/behavioral problems (academic habits, more impulsiveness, risk-taking).

One relevant source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17381797

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#50

Post by aianus »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #33
sliverstorm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incomprehensible that a parent should have to pay thousands per month just to be able to have a child and work at the same time. Why is it incomprehensible? Watching a kid takes time, time costs money. Someone has to pay for it. Maybe you don't think it's right that the parent should be the one to pay for supervision of their kid, but I'm still lost as to how you arrived at "incomprehensible".

It's incomprehensible that it still works this way in a modern economy. The eventual financial benefit of the child goes to society, not the parents, therefore it follows that society should bear the initial financial cost.

There is no eventual financial benefit to having children for society. Our lives would be much better if the population of the Earth was smaller. The oil would last longer, food would be cheaper as we could farm only the most fertile easily-cultivated land, less competition for housing, etc, etc.
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