Why Child Care Is So Expensive • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#461

Post by pnutjam » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #10

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #2

Women's introduction to the workforce was the right thing to happen but it fundamentally hurt labor and the "middle class". You can't double the supply without changing anything in the system and inflationary effects of dual income are ridiculous.

See this Liz Warren book: https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-... Henry Ford realized that the automobile was not going to change the world unless auto workers were so productive that they could easily afford the cars they made. That kind of productivity increase is not possible w/ Childcare. I remember a Z Magazine cartoon more than 20 years ago where two women were pondering the mystery of w…

Your acting like this is new, the poor have always been crapped on. It was common for wet nurses babies to die in the 18th and 19th century. A mother can make enough milk for 2 babies, but the wealthy who hired wet nurses didn't want poor babies around their precious rich babies.

Heartbreaking: https://daily.jstor.org/lifesaving-horrifying-history-wet-nu...

edit (typo)

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#462

Post by noetic_techy » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

It seems to me this is another case of government interference causing vast increases in cost, especially the caretaker to child ratio: 1:3 = $15,000 1:5 = $5,000. And what does the author advocate? More government meddling! Higher standards! Good intention policies with bad economic outcomes / unintended consequences needs to stop. Yes we know if every child had 1:1 care from someone with a Ivy league child psych degree we would all be better off. Unfortunately that's not the society we can afford even in the affluent west. Save it for the elite who have the cash to burn. Don't force lower income folk into your preferred world view. You cripple them economically and then cry for more intervention because you crippled them. Sure, its one thing to enforce safety standards, its another thing entirely to enforce that every 3 children has a surrogate "parent" of the highest standard. Imagine if they imposed this ratio on grade school education. And no I'm not saying 1:100 is fine. Obviously not. But I knew people who watched 1:10 kids growing up in their own home, a mix of low income and middle class. While not ideal they all lived normal lives and everything turned out just fine for those children in the end.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#463

Post by tomatocracy » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

crashedsnow wrote: post #416

HBKXNCUO wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While it's not impossible to recover from that, it's extremely difficult On the other hand, it's impossible for your children to get back the time they could have spent in their most formative and vulnerable years around people that love them, rather than minimum wage daycare workers.

It's extremely difficult to correlate this to long-term happiness or well-being. If parents can accelerate their time to retirement they get to spend more time with children as teenagers or young adults. Is that better or worse? More or less memorable? I don't remember much before I was 5-ish. Do we really know that having stay-at-home parents during that time alters a lot? Does having the extra money for "better" co…

Whilst none of those points are necessarily wrong, I think you have implicitly ignored the happiness of the parents in your arguments. Many parents who feel they have to work and then pay for childcare and not see their children in order to make ends meet are definitely not happy about that at all. That shouldn't be forgotten.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#464

Post by jriot » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 3:46 PM UTC

tristanstcyr wrote: post #299

cjmcqueen wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child rearing produces children that are adults and had the attention of a fully invested parent. Are you sure you're measuring the right thing?

The reality is that the atomic family model is antiquated. In our society, the individual is the unit We must therefore make the individual strong, meaning that we need to support both parents independent all the while having children. We can observe that the old model was better in terms of a certain metric, but that's not going to help. We need to invest in making child rearing effective in today's world.

The atomic family model is not antiquated. The majority of the country follows that model with research demonstrating that is the best path for success.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#465

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

silveroriole wrote: post #444

jdbernard wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a dismissive comment and misses the main point. The main point is that these are presumably upper-middle class families. You would expect that with their higher-than-average incomes they would have greater amounts of discretionary income that they would be spending and that their expenses would be spread out across more of the economy, supporting many other businesses and services. Instead the high salar…

I don’t care about that. My point is that when I hear about someone who can only afford living, I think they mean they have to choose whether they can afford heating this month, or whether they can afford proper meals, or new school clothes for their kids. Not whether they can afford to go to fucking Disneyland multiple times a year. This commenter is feeling very sorry for themselves over a standard of living that,…

[deleted]

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#466

Post by strenholme » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #291

> Most of the achievement gap between black and white American students is in place by kindergarten. Meanwhile, dozens of studies of preschool programs since the 1960s have shown that early-childhood education can slash the black-white kindergarten achievement gap in half. The common orthodoxy is that the achievement gap is caused by and solvable through the schools, but the reality is much different. Interestingly,…

I encourage healthy debate about controversial issues like this. When I opened up my New York Times today, I found this article, which questions how important two-parent households are for childhood success, especially among Afro-American youth:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/two-parent-family...

Some quotes:

“living in a two-parent family does not increase the chances of finishing high school as much for black students as for their white peers”

“Greater involvement in extended family networks may protect against some of the negative effects associated with parental absence from the home”

The conclusion of this New York Times opinion piece is that structural racism has more impact on the success of young Afro-American kids than single parent households.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#467

Post by danteembermage » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

strenholme wrote: post #466

briandear wrote: post #291

> Most of the achievement gap between black and white American students is in place by kindergarten. Meanwhile, dozens of studies of preschool programs since the 1960s have shown that early-childhood education can slash the black-white kindergarten achievement gap in half. The common orthodoxy is that the achievement gap is caused by and solvable through the schools, but the reality is much different. Interestingly,…

I encourage healthy debate about controversial issues like this. When I opened up my New York Times today, I found this article, which questions how important two-parent households are for childhood success, especially among Afro-American youth: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/two-parent-family... Some quotes: “living in a two-parent family does not increase the chances of finishing high school as much for…

If you follow Raj Chetty's work on income mobility it appears that single parents in the neighborhood matter a lot more than single parents themselves. Since single parenthood is much more common for black families and our cities tend to be segregated, black kids tend to grow up around single parented kids which is a disadvantage. Basically having two awesome parents doesn't make up for having your entire world be not that. And having a single parent doesn't ruin an upbringing surrounded by people with two parent families. I think it's as much about shared culture as anything, the social norms get established by majority rule basically.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#468

Post by ativzzz » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #147

ativzzz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess you didn't read the original article, because it mentions the exact program you linked towards the bottom about Quebec. One negative found was > But young Canadians who were eligible for the program experienced, as teenagers, “a significant worsening in self-reported health and in life satisfaction” relative to Canadians from other provinces. So a success for parents and for the economy, but not for the well be…

" Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You're right, the way I structured that takes away from what I was trying to say. Thanks for your hard work.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#469

Post by nilkn » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #459

scruple wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a house I have a mortgage, insurance, and taxes. > multiple cars I'm really tearing up the road in my 2004 Scion (that I got used in 2010) and my 2014 Honda. I also have exorbitant childcare costs that are leading my wife and I to question the value of my wife or I continuing to work and live in this place. I'm not rich. I don't live in Ladera Ranch. I don't own a Tesla and a Range Rover. But fuck me for t…

His point stands. The average family income in America less then $64k. I'm going to assume you make more then that, probably alot. Yes, we know you have a high cost of living. Plenty of people would love to live in CA, and make enough to stay there. I'm also going to bet you are fully funding your retirement, it's a lower percentage of your income to max out your 401k. I understand you don't feel rich, but be gratefu…

What's his point, though? Is the point to randomly shame someone? I fail to see how this advances the conversation in any meaningful way.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#470

Post by scruple » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #459

scruple wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have a house I have a mortgage, insurance, and taxes. > multiple cars I'm really tearing up the road in my 2004 Scion (that I got used in 2010) and my 2014 Honda. I also have exorbitant childcare costs that are leading my wife and I to question the value of my wife or I continuing to work and live in this place. I'm not rich. I don't live in Ladera Ranch. I don't own a Tesla and a Range Rover. But fuck me for t…

His point stands. The average family income in America less then $64k. I'm going to assume you make more then that, probably alot. Yes, we know you have a high cost of living. Plenty of people would love to live in CA, and make enough to stay there. I'm also going to bet you are fully funding your retirement, it's a lower percentage of your income to max out your 401k. I understand you don't feel rich, but be gratefu…

What point are they making, exactly? If you look at what they actually said, they're mischaracterizing what I've said to rant about (my apparent / perceived lack of) class consciousness.

If you can follow a plot line, you'd intuit that I came to this state poor. I'm very well aware of what the lesser fortunate and folks in poverty are dealing with; I've been there myself. Thankfully without children, but I can certainly imagine what it's like to be homeless with children, having been homeless for a brief period myself and now having children of my own.

And that was the entire point of my comment. If I'm sitting here today, given my current economic status, without the ability to direct my discretionary income in a way that would benefit the local economy (Disney and the SD Zoo are just two relatable examples, they're being cherry-picked to support that persons rant) then what hope do those in the lower-middle class or below have?

I've watched my economic output get sucked into a vortex by landlords and banks and government and now I can add on the insane costs of childcare. This was true when I was poor and it's still true today when I am not.

Where in anything that the other commentor has said are they making a point about what I am saying?