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Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

nytimes.com

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Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#31

Post by marktangotango »

danieltillett wrote: post #10
rayiner wrote: post #4

I never understood the idea that having mom (or dad) at home is the best thing for kids. When our daughter is at daycare, she's in a very stimulating environment staffed by energetic 22-year olds on 6 hour shifts. When she's at home with me my instinct is to bribe her with some ice cream and park her in front of her iPad. My wife has slightly more desire to engage with the kid, but no more energy for it--she's pretty…

I am curious why you think a 22 year old on near minimum wage cares more about engaging with your daughter than you and your wife?

Down voting because the op didn't saying anything about 'cares more about engaging' or 'cares about his daughter'. That's blatant misrepresentation of the what the op did write.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#32

Post by ChrisPebble »

roel_v wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #4

I never understood the idea that having mom (or dad) at home is the best thing for kids. When our daughter is at daycare, she's in a very stimulating environment staffed by energetic 22-year olds on 6 hour shifts. When she's at home with me my instinct is to bribe her with some ice cream and park her in front of her iPad. My wife has slightly more desire to engage with the kid, but no more energy for it--she's pretty…

I agree with you, and my children do many things at day care we'd not think about (or not have time to, or not feel like) doing with them at home. But there are (or rather, 'used to be', as in most places in the West the law doesn't allow it any more - I don't know about other places) also many 'child care' facilities where 2 overworked staffers on full-day shifts spend their day running around spoon feeding and chan…

This. There is a massive range in daycare from "your child will be alive when you come back" to "all our staff have degrees in childhood education" (and of course the associated price range).

The same is true of stay-at-home parents. Some get exhausted after a few hours and others thrive in constantly nurturing and teaching their children.

Comparing the two isn't terribly useful unless you break it down further.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#33

Post by facepalm »

Spearchucker wrote: post #21
300bps wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have three children aged 10, 9 and 6. I work and my wife stays home with the kids. I don't pretend to know what is right for everyone and their kids but I found your comment oddly disturbing. When I'm home with my three kids, my instinct is to think of the skills that will aid them later in life and work on that through various levels of play. Often that's sports - practicing basketball, baseball or whatever sport…

" ...working with them on crawling, walking, talking and... This amuses me. With things like that (crawling/walking/talking) I let my kid find his own way, in his own time. I have no intention of helping him with anything like it, or from school, ever - unless he asks . What I do do with my son is play. Building radio control cars. Jumping on car hoods/bonnets in a scrapyard. Lego. Jumping in puddles. Flying kites. M…

Almost every kid learns to walk and talk. But there are huge differences in how elaborate kids and adults can express themselves. And reading about super successful people, it seems they often started with their job as kids (writers, musicians, sports people, mathematicians...).

I like what you are doing with your son, though, I have similar goals for time with my kids.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#34

Post by fulafel »

danieltillett wrote: post #12
fulafel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a good argument for providing free or heavily subsidized daycare to children whose parents are unemployed or outside the workforce.

What argument?

This:

> [In day-care] the likelihood is that the kids are in a richer environment, materially and socially.

Think single parent suffering from mental health issues and unable to work, or other disadvantaged stimulus poor domestic environment.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#35

Post by meric »

rayiner wrote: post #20
ams6110 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody will care for or about a child more than that child's mother (barring psychological abnormalities in the mother). Father a close second. Even the best daycare is going to devote only a fraction of the instruction/attention to any individual child. If your approach as a parent is to give "the kid" ice cream and electronic distractions, I think you should seriously reevaluate your priorities.

Caring is a separate issue from having the aptitude and temperament for the labor of child care. I'd do anything for my daughter, but let's face it, she's boring . She's slightly smarter than a puppy, and while it's all magical a couple of hours a day, I can't imagine engaging with her day-in and day-out, any more than I can imagine being a factory worker who just does one movement all day long. I'd go crazy. The day…

While I agree with you I'm not sure that is a good use of "certainly"...It depends how many kids the worker is with and which one is her favourite, as well as the character of the daycare worker. There were plenty of strange* men volunteering to die in frozen waters to save women and children when the titanic went down, for example.

* in the stranger sense of the word.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#36

Post by rockdoe »

palmer_eldritch wrote: post #24
danieltillett wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is possible, but even taking out the near minimum wage clause I am still surprised that rainier thinks that a 22 year old paid to look after his daughter cares more about her than him and his wife.

Probably because neither him nor his wife is getting paid to do it...

You worded that a bit strangely but it's fair to say the daycare worker made a willing career choice that involved taking care of kids all day everyday and is likely to enjoy it a lot and consider him/herself to be fairly skilled at it.

Potentially more so than a tired daddy and mommy, yes.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#37

Post by roel_v »

ams6110 wrote: post #9
rayiner wrote: post #4

I never understood the idea that having mom (or dad) at home is the best thing for kids. When our daughter is at daycare, she's in a very stimulating environment staffed by energetic 22-year olds on 6 hour shifts. When she's at home with me my instinct is to bribe her with some ice cream and park her in front of her iPad. My wife has slightly more desire to engage with the kid, but no more energy for it--she's pretty…

Nobody will care for or about a child more than that child's mother (barring psychological abnormalities in the mother). Father a close second. Even the best daycare is going to devote only a fraction of the instruction/attention to any individual child. If your approach as a parent is to give "the kid" ice cream and electronic distractions, I think you should seriously reevaluate your priorities.

"Nobody will care for or about a child more than that child's mother (barring psychological abnormalities in the mother)."

Well, technically I guess I can't disagree with you because you said 'care... more', but I assume you meant that to also mean 'care... better', which is about as wrong as it gets. Why would anyone instinctively know what's 'best' for a child's development, let alone better than trained professionals in a professionally build environment? There are tens (hundreds, more likely) of thousands of people working every day to understand how children develop best, and convert that into actual practice. It doesn't stand the smell test to say that all that is nonsense because parents somehow know better.

The other aspect is how much love children get, and yes of course nobody loves children like their parents. But again there is no reason to think that just 'being loved in close proximity', say, 4 hours a day + weekends is worse than having a parent around 24/7. Nor does 'love' equate 'stimulate good development'. If you are going to claim that in the 'good old days' when children were at home all day with mom they would be doing crafts and nature education and going to playgrounds with equipment designed to stimulate activity in a safe environment, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale that you might be interested in.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#38

Post by danieltillett »

marktangotango wrote: post #31
danieltillett wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious why you think a 22 year old on near minimum wage cares more about engaging with your daughter than you and your wife?

Down voting because the op didn't saying anything about 'cares more about engaging' or 'cares about his daughter'. That's blatant misrepresentation of the what the op did write.

No it is not. I asked a question on how the op thinks a 22 year old paid to look after his daughter is more engaged with her than either him or his wife.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#39

Post by arethuza »

kubiiii wrote: post #25
danieltillett wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious why you think a 22 year old on near minimum wage cares more about engaging with your daughter than you and your wife?

The average nurse cares more than her wage pays for. I guess it's the same with the average daycare worker. At least it's my own experience (against all odds daycare workers have pretty low wages here in France)

That's certainly my experience in the UK - the workers in the nursery my son went to from 6 months were absolute saints and had a lot of passion for their work - they loved working with kids.

Re: Evidence of Advantages for Children of Working Mothers

#40

Post by mr_luc »

rayiner wrote: post #20
ams6110 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody will care for or about a child more than that child's mother (barring psychological abnormalities in the mother). Father a close second. Even the best daycare is going to devote only a fraction of the instruction/attention to any individual child. If your approach as a parent is to give "the kid" ice cream and electronic distractions, I think you should seriously reevaluate your priorities.

Caring is a separate issue from having the aptitude and temperament for the labor of child care. I'd do anything for my daughter, but let's face it, she's boring . She's slightly smarter than a puppy, and while it's all magical a couple of hours a day, I can't imagine engaging with her day-in and day-out, any more than I can imagine being a factory worker who just does one movement all day long. I'd go crazy. The day…

Have you taken a look at the study this article is written about?

I'd agree that it makes intuitive sense that childcare could do better than exhausted working parents, and possibly even emotionally drained stay-at-home parents, but another poster pointed out that this study seems to say "people who can afford daily childcare have children with better outcomes" -- which might correlate pretty closely with "wealthier people's kids have better outcomes", which the research already told us.

As an aside, these kinds of discussions (where HN talks about the world's social problems) are the second reason I come to HN. I'll get exposed to great worldviews, from generally smart people, expressed by people who speak my language.

And child care, together with the possibly related problem of currently worse outcomes for children of single-parent families, are social problems that are potentially immensely valuable for society to solve.

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