Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 325 posts

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

#21

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

morsch wrote: post #19
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

> When considering the implications for Western countries, the authors highlight that the provision of affordable high-quality childcare support, which goes beyond effective supervision, should be prioritized. > Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. There is now way you can pay for…

>> Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. > There is now way you can pay for these kind of ratios. As it turns out, 5:1 is the legal limit for pre-k (age https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betreuungsschl%C3%BCssel The government seemingly pays about 40 billion EUR per year for pre-school…

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.

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

#22

Post by conception »

The book Hunt, Gather, Parent touches on this a bit. It takes 3-4 humans, not necessarily adults but cousins and whatnot, to take care of a child. Two? 6-8. Since western societies broke up tight knit communities, the support system for this in the west has been lacking and jerry rigged with tired parents and nannies etc ever since.

The reason for the breakup is fun - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/roman-catholi...

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

#23

Post by EGreg »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #13
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

> When considering the implications for Western countries, the authors highlight that the provision of affordable high-quality childcare support, which goes beyond effective supervision, should be prioritized. > Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. There is now way you can pay for…

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

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

#24

Post by morsch »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #21
morsch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. > There is now way you can pay for these kind of ratios. As it turns out, 5:1 is the legal limit for pre-k (age https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betreuungsschl%C3%BCssel The government seemingly pays about 40 billion EUR per year for pre-school…

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.

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

#25

Post by ithkuil »

lettergram wrote: post #7
dave4420 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WEIRD = Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic

Imo it’s a derogatory term people in … alternative circles, like to use.

Is "alternative circles" also a derogatory term?

I

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

#26

Post by lotsofpulp »

conception wrote: post #22

The book Hunt, Gather, Parent touches on this a bit. It takes 3-4 humans, not necessarily adults but cousins and whatnot, to take care of a child. Two? 6-8. Since western societies broke up tight knit communities, the support system for this in the west has been lacking and jerry rigged with tired parents and nannies etc ever since. The reason for the breakup is fun - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/11/ro…

Interesting hypothesis, but I don’t know if I buy it.

Much of India had also long barred cousin marriages, probably long before the Roman Catholic Church, but the dependencies and village raising the kids dynamic still existed (until recently).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapinda

If I were to guess, the main causal factor is economic/security independence. If living in a tight knit village, sacrificing your freedoms is the best option you have, then that is what most people choose. If there exists an option for you retain your freedom and have financial independence and physical security, then people tend to choose that (e.g. getting an education and a well paying job, etc).

The latter basically destroys any chance of “village raising a child”, because no village bonds will exist, since everyone is moving around for their economic opportunities.

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

#27

Post by sklargh »

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…

This is a very high quality comment and I suspect will capture many parents’ feelings. Something that shocks me, even as an experienced parent, in caring for two small children is how physically and mentally tired I am at the end of the day without having done anything particularly challenging. The level of alertness required to track and monitor several mobile toddlers is quite draining.

Actual mental rest can be quite hard to come by and the need to get parents breaks that are not simply “being at work,” is real. I often get to the end of the day, particularly on weekends, and I realize that I have maybe an hour of downtime to eat and get to bed to achieve a reasonable amount of sleep.

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

#28

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#29

Post by Qem »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #13
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

> When considering the implications for Western countries, the authors highlight that the provision of affordable high-quality childcare support, which goes beyond effective supervision, should be prioritized. > Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. There is now way you can pay for…

Why does it have to be all women?

The whole pedophilia scare makes people suspicious by default of adult men in contact with non related small children. There's a great movie I recommend on that problem, The Hunt (2012): https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2106476/

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

#30

Post by robwwilliams »

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…

Interesting work but yes, trying to extrapolate to best courses of action for child care in technologically advanced cultures should not be the focus of the discussion.

Almost every epoch and population will have common and idiosyncratic features. Why not look back on child care 25, 50, 100, 200, 300, or 3000 years ago in any group/deme of humans? The variability will be striking even within any one population and will depend in large part on class structure, rank, and mean family size. Patterns of raising children will be all over physical, social, and behavioral maps.

The groups studied here are primarily forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers in the western Congo region—-what used to be referred to as Pygmy populations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_peoples).

Fascinating topic but not of much policy relevance.

Post reply on HN