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New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

governor.state.nm.us

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Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#311

Post by declan_roberts »

yardstick wrote: post #182
smeeth wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to break it to you, but many kids actually do better away from their parents than with them. It's extremely sad, but a consistent finding in early childhood education is that the children who thrive most in daycares tend to come from the least advantaged backgrounds. So a policy of paying parents to stay home would mostly benefit kids who are already well off.

Kids are social and like playing and learning from other kids. Daycare lets them do just that. It’s a great thing and every toddler I’ve met who wasn’t in daycare was behind in something. Especially verbal skills. Plus daycare allows women to continue their career progression. It’s soo important. Not every woman wants to end their career as a mother to a young kid. Daycare enables successful women to thrive and still…

"Why do you want a thriving career?"

"So I can provide for my family"

"Why do you want to provide for your family?"

"So my children can have happy and fulfilling lives"

"What makes your young children feel happy?"

"Spending time with me"

A strong parent-child relationship is the biggest determination of life-long child happiness even into old age.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4784487/

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#312

Post by arduanika »

zackmorris wrote: post #143

I just want to +1 this post before it gets flagged for being "political" or whatever. I grew up in the 1980s and have watched America slide from being a civilization that was the envy of the world into something resembling empire or feudalism or I-don't-know-what. The US literally declared its independence from England to shrug off authoritarianism/aristocracy. Yet we've reproduced that wealth inequality here. We're…

I don't think that's an accurate recounting of the reasons for the American Revolution. That '/' is doing a lot of work, and "wealth inequality" was not a topical notion at the time.

That said, this is a fine thing for a state to experiment with. From other comments, it sounds like NM's ability to try this out is related to a recent oil and gas boom. We'll see how it goes.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#313

Post by undersuit »

ambicapter wrote: post #162
chongli wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your optimism but I’m skeptical. I dated someone who worked in child care (with a degree in ECE). She was quite miserable caring for a dozen screaming babies all day. I think the burnout and turnover for such a job (which requires a degree but still paid minimum wage) is likely to be extremely high. The other thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the economics of it. The pay for the staff is very low bu…

Maybe babies aren't meant to be cared for a dozen at a time? But no, we have to "scale" child-rearing, just like we have to scale everything for greater growth numbers. \s

I would expect larger groups of young children to require more even ratios of care takers. I don't know if 3 care takers per 12 children is enough for instance, but I've got a feeling 9 care takers for 36 children is not enough.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#314

Post by mc32 »

_mu wrote: post #239
non_aligned wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But doing so would not only increase the costs dramatically (by a multiple) it would give money to many parents who didn’t need it for child care. And while no-strings-attached payouts appeal to rational geeks, they usually lead to public perception problems. If you give a voucher for childcare to a parent struggling with addiction or a gambling habit, they will probably send the kid to childcare. If you give them…

> rational geeks Geeks are as emotional and irrational as everybody else. They are even worse in fact because they can rationalize their behavior even harder.

It’s referencing rational geeks and not all geeks or geeks who believe they are rational but just actual rational geeks.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#315

Post by SilverElfin »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #304
mothballed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.

> Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. They are strictly less efficient than commercial daycare because the adult-child ratio is much higher. How many women would be of out of the work for if they were taking care of children? Also, it prevents trickle down and the lifting of the poorest in society.

Less efficient? No they aren’t strictly less efficient because they provide MUCH better quality of care.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#316

Post by SilverElfin »

jjk166 wrote: post #261
bluGill wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons to care for your own kids is you can give them individual attention. Unless you have so many kids that you are only caring for your own anyway your plan diverts their attention away to other kids (or those other kids get less attention)

The argument is that stay at home parents should get the same credit as childcare providers because they perform the same service to society. If you're only caring for your own kids, you are providing significantly less to society than those caring for many kids. You want to focus on raising your own kids, that's fine, but do it on your dime.

> If you're only caring for your own kids, you are providing significantly less to society than those caring for many kids.

I disagree with this. Perhaps caring for your own kids produces much better kids (and eventually, adults). And that may be more of a benefit to society than a large number of people being incentivized to create large number of kids whose care is just outsourced to childcare centers where they receive less attention.

> You want to focus on raising your own kids, that's fine, but do it on your dime.

Is this really an argument for anything? One could just say “if you want to raise kids you can’t afford, do it on your own dime” and undermine your perspective.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#317

Post by jimbo808 »

mothballed wrote: post #16
dzink wrote: post #12

This is fantastic! I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential. Families who were previously in poverty because the mom would struggle to pay for childcare to work can now have assurance kids are ok while the mom can pursue jobs, start her own small business (huge chunk of businesses are small busin…

Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.

While true, social policies do not need to provide an equal benefit to everyone. People who can afford to stay home with the kids are not the ones who need this sort of policy.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#318

Post by jandrewrogers »

rgbrgb wrote: post #201

> Programs that commit to paying entry-level staff a minimum of $18 per hour and offer 10 hours of care per day, five days a week, will receive an incentive rate. New Mexico estimates an additional 5,000 early childhood professionals are needed to fully achieve a universal system. Is this a reasonable wage in New Mexico? Here in Southern California you could not find qualified candidates for that but I know general c…

That's really good pay for most parts of New Mexico.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#319

Post by orthoxerox »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #304
mothballed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.

> Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. They are strictly less efficient than commercial daycare because the adult-child ratio is much higher. How many women would be of out of the work for if they were taking care of children? Also, it prevents trickle down and the lifting of the poorest in society.

However, they provide superior level of childcare.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#320

Post by Avshalom »

mrits wrote: post #173
Avshalom wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just for babies. My coworker's 12yo is covered by this because he's got cancer and is too immunocompromised to go to school.

I'm not sure we want to treat this as a related issue unless you want this kid to be sent to their death at 18

Yeah not to be a downer here but if he's still on chemo in 6 years I don't think it's the lack of a baby sitter that's gonna kill him.
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