I walked myself to preschool, not a word of a lie. It’s not so much a different world, it’s just more or less I’d like to think because of the betterment of my life thanks to a long term investment by my parents, that I’m able to make better decisions than they were able to and provide my kids with more opportunities. Like not having to walk themselves to school at 4. We are talking a couple blocks here, in a small town. Not that I’d ever have my kids do it but I’m not an 80s parent. I also don’t have to balance shift work like my parents did, and I have the luxury of balance and being able to work from home, again, thanks to the long game.
I’ve got a toddler and a 4.5 year old, so neither goes to school yet. They go to “school”, in that I’d go insane if they were both at home, so they go to daycare. They wouldn’t get the attention they deserve either. Something would have to give. I hear you on the after school programming costs, at 7 your kid should be able to entertain themselves for a couple hours. I guess that’s not so bad. It just really depends on the kid too though, I’ve seen it both ways. There was a guy at my last job they forced back into the office 5 days because he was always dealing with his kids, trying to skimp on the daycare, and it was abundantly clear nothing was getting done. They were closer to my kids age though, like where it’s not really acceptable.
MasterBlaster@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There’s no getting around day care for pre-kindergarten kids. My son usually plays all afternoon with a few other boys and girls in the neighborhood. I give him a walkie-talkie for simple communication.
There’s no excuse for how our society deals with childcare. It’s too expensive for most, yet the caretakers are extremely low paid. We need to at least consider something like the European approach.
Right now, if we can’t find service, we can’t work a well paying job, so we fall into poverty and need to get welfare. How is that better than the alternative?
GrindingGears@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
It really is quite the conundrum.
We live in Canada, and our son was recently involved in a really bad daycare outbreak of E.coli. Basically long story short, they fed them tainted meatloaf, about 300 or so kids got sick, some are still in the hospital months later. Thankfully none died, but there are some little lives that are forever altered. We were extremely lucky in that our son only got marginally sick, but we were without daycare for over a whole month waiting for him to test negative. My wife is still on mat leave so it wasn’t the biggest deal for us, but there are hundreds of families that are still scrambling. Like having to take long term leaves of absence and whatnot.
The kicker of this whole thing, was the cause was basically underpaid and undereducated laborers who were either too ignorant or woefully uneducated. Yet we pay thousands of dollars for this care. It’s infuriating. And we feel helpless, because of course we don’t want our kids going there anymore, but we don’t otherwise really have any appetizable choices. They have to go there or one of us has to quit our job and basically trash our careers just as they are finally in the good stages after 20 years of grinding. There already was a massive shortfall of daycare spaces around us, I’ve had a deposit and a spot on the waiting list for my daughter at this place before she was even born, and it’s obviously gotten even worse now. It’s definitely the most helpless I’ve felt as a parent. It’s such a fucked up situation. We definitely need to do better as a society, for our young families. You are right on that one.