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Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

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Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK is as expensive as it gets, but full time nursery(5 days a week) is "only" £800 a month for us. American costs seem to be completely absurd, despite much worse employment protections and benefits.

How many hours a week/day? And yes, it's likely subsidized; around here there's "free 4k" and some of the pre-4k daycares are subsidized in various ways.

9 hours a day, 7:30am till 4:30pm. It's a flat £200 a week.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#272
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK is as expensive as it gets, but full time nursery(5 days a week) is "only" £800 a month for us. American costs seem to be completely absurd, despite much worse employment protections and benefits.

government subsidized?

I don't get any money from the government for it. If it's subsidized then it's not on my end. They just charge £200/week, it's a standard price.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't sign predatory non-competes. If one is executive material, negotiation is a necessary skill :-) I was helping a friend buy a car the other day. The salesman kept coming back with a "final" offer and "we can't go lower than that", etc., etc. But I advised my friend to hold the line, and he did till the offer got into his price range.

Take it from a car salesman, this is often a tactic to slow down the negotiation and make you feel like your offer was a good deal for you. I have said those words many times when I could have gone lower than their offer, but if you just go back and accept it, a lot of "hard negotiators" get cold feet. Anyone that brings a friend to buy a car with them automatically broadcasts "I'm playing games and brought an extra…

Oh, I enjoy the game. I went along to make sure he wasn't rooked. He did notice that three times the numbers on the term sheet didn't add up, in the dealer's favor, and three times the salesman said he'd just made a mistake.

I knew about the term sheet ruse, it had been tried on me twice and on another friend of mine.

I also knew that I'd be up against a negotiator who does it all day every day, and so I expected game on.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between having children (which only women can do) and raising them (which both parents can do).

Research has consistently shown the value of breastfeeding for development. Part of that is the biological quality of the milk, but part is also the skin-to-skin contact and emotional bonding. So, until weaning, women have a unique biological ability that men cannot quite replicate. Obviously, pumping can address some of the biology and men can cuddle their infants. However, normal emotional attachment[1] of the moth…

As a man, I'd love to have a year to bond with my children. California is pretty good for the US at 8 weeks, and I'm thankful for that. Even here though, I know many men that wouldn't take more than 2 weeks because they worried about losing promotion opportunities.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't plan on making any of the mistakes that my own mother made. At age 5, I was driving my BMX around Montgomery Co, Alabama with a single shot Remington .410 bungee strapped to the handle bars. I was a latch key kid from the day I started kindergarten. I was cooking for myself and dressing myself starting then as well. I won't allow my own child to experience any of that.

Might depend on the kid. I had almost that much freedom, including unchecked access to firearms, and I absolutely fucking loved it and felt the freedom helped set me up for success as an adult. Other kids would be inside playing with mom and dad and I'd be "lets make a map of the whole fucking county by exploring everything." I feel like the future of my kid is mostly limited by ever more dystopian standards of CPS r…

Perhaps I lack perspective because my son is only 3.5 years old and it's hard to imagine him becoming that mature by 5. I'm lucky to be alive based on some of the dumb stuff I did as a kid.

At age 6 I wasn't quite strong enough to saddle our horses by myself so I would just hop on my quarter horse every afternoon after school and ride her bareback. She threw me once because of a snake and I spent ~3 hours hanging upside down with my leg tangled in a barbed wire fence because my ma wasn't at home. The horse was just standing there staring at me the entire time while our 3 dogs took turns licking me in the face as blood dripped from my leg.

I can't imagine my own son coming away from such a scenario unscathed, but maybe there is a good bit of development between 3.5 years and 6 years. I honestly don't know as this is our first child.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's apparently one big driver in the labor shortage. Childcare costs were so high that when everyone was home people realized the second job wasn't actually that useful and now there's one stay-at-home parent (seems weighted towards mothers[0]). [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/01/14/some-gender...

Not having kids I didn't realize how insane childcare costs had gotten. Someone posted an article to a local reddit that says people are pre-registering unborn children for childcare because there are so few slots available. Others responses indicated that it's running around $1500 to $2000/month for childcare. Add in housing costs and no wonder people are hesitant to have kids now.

our (employer administered no less) daycare has ~24mo wait list and a costs ~2400usd/mo per kid. It's legitimately insane; expensive-private-school pricing.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't sign predatory non-competes. If one is executive material, negotiation is a necessary skill :-) I was helping a friend buy a car the other day. The salesman kept coming back with a "final" offer and "we can't go lower than that", etc., etc. But I advised my friend to hold the line, and he did till the offer got into his price range.

Take it from a car salesman, this is often a tactic to slow down the negotiation and make you feel like your offer was a good deal for you. I have said those words many times when I could have gone lower than their offer, but if you just go back and accept it, a lot of "hard negotiators" get cold feet. Anyone that brings a friend to buy a car with them automatically broadcasts "I'm playing games and brought an extra…

Jesus this alone is enough to make me want to buy a Tesla.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#278
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We breastfed our daughter. Her mother pumped to cover times when she was working, and I fed our daughter. The only time this was an issue was when her mother left for a week-long conference. Accumulating supply for that period (and her dealing with the unused supply while away) was mildly challenging but we managed just fine. I then went on to quit work and stayed home to raise our daughter (she's now nearing 28 year…

We could go even further: You don't need the mother at all; you can always just raise the baby on formula. But that doesn't change that the mother-child bond is a unique and special thing, and that there are real benefits to breast-feeding, straight from the breast. And beyond, the simple fact is that many women really want to be with their babies. It's misguided to pretend that there aren't biological realities unde…

The benefits of both breast milk and breast feeding are nonzero but are often overstated. Many of the studies are not very good.

The book “Lactivism” provides an entertaining account of recent history: https://www.amazon.com/Lactivism-Fundamentalists-Physicians-...

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#279
post #77

"If the lights and the T.V. are out, it kind of sets the table for romance . . . But, if you're running for your life, you can't make babies." - https://www.cargenerator.com/blogs/news/is-the-blackout-baby... Baby booms have previously been positively correlated with blackouts, snowstorms, hurricanes and power outages. Now, remote work is a covariate as well. We're heading into a prolonged 2023 recession, coupled wit…

Agree with that but have a question...you'd think logically with children being a major expense that economic downturns != more babies. Is that not the case?

That is true. It is pointed out prominently in the article that this is a rare instance of a baby boom in an economic downturn.

Re: Remote work may have fueled a baby boom among U.S. women

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s genuinely not legislation. Labor is expensive, which combined with the reality that anything beyond a 4:1 child-caretaker ratio is pretty bad for children pretty much guarantees that child care can never be cheap in a rich country with rich country labor costs. EDIT: I should've said "infants" and not "children" here, where the necessity of a 4:1 ratio really applies. As children get older this ratio can get hig…

UK is as expensive as it gets, but full time nursery(5 days a week) is "only" £800 a month for us. American costs seem to be completely absurd, despite much worse employment protections and benefits.

I pay "only" 10% more than the exchange rate adjusted amount you're paying. Top 5 US city. Don't take too much stock in the ridiculous numbers you hear. I've lived in podunc land, the suburbs, and major city and I always paid within 10% of what you're paying.

£1200 in my top 5 city would get you a newly built daycare, with all the modern gizmos, a kitchen built "especially for young children", a teacher with 10+ yr experience, and peer children who are the son/daughters of doctors and lawyers. ~£800 gets you an average daycare that is fully up to license / code and generally does a decent job. ~£600 will get you a caring but gray market (usually bilingual or limited english) stay at home mom with a home daycare business.

I would wager the vast vast majority are paying close to ~£800, either through the black/gray market with unlicensed caregivers or in licensed facilities in the vast majority of lower cost of living portions of America.

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