> Why would you be OK with any kind of disincentive to parents staying home with their children?
I'm just recognizing the realities of incentivizing anything. There's a difference between a work requirement for both parents and attendance requirement for children and maybe, in some cases, a portion of your income tax would go to a program you don't take advantage of.
> You don't have to dump your children off to be raised by minimum wage daycare workers in order to put them in a group setting.
Where did I say this should be mandatory or that full-time childcare was the best and only option? You're grossly mischaracterizing my position here and the realities of daycare. Part of the reason daycare is expensive, as mentioned in the article, is because of the regulations in place around the environment and staff. I've found group daycare staff are often more qualified than individual nannies.
I would love to see studies because the issues I've seen caught and missed are all anecdotal and do involve tight-knit communities--which not everybody has. The situations I've seen caught did not "rely on the judgment and interest of minimum wage daycare workers" but were done through communication. After discussing an issue between the daycare and parent it would be presented to a pediatrician or other specialist to see if intervention was needed.
> you and your friends and family members can observe the behavior yourselves
Kids act very differently when around primary caretakers and others. Like I said, part of something like daycare would be communicating what you've observed and what they've observed. A select few motivated parents read books and seek out information (often only for their first child), I see a lot of "bad advice" from previous generations. One thing I've seen come up a lot is older generations either don't know, or dismiss, "back to sleep" as a way to minimize SIDS. I also notice that knowledge about children atrophies very quickly. I constantly have to give milestones for my kid; birth weight, when they rolled over, crawled, walked, first word, first sentence. As years pass I have a rougher idea about what's normal and completely forgot about more minor milestones like; parallel play, object permanence, when pronouns should be understood, etc. even when I'm close to other families kids hitting those milestones.
Nowhere, just like where I suggested you said it should be.
>was the best and only option?
You said it was an advantage of daycare. My point is that there are better ways to get that advantage.
>I've found group daycare staff are often more qualified than individual nannies.
Minimum wage vs minimum wage.
>The situations I've seen caught did not "rely on the judgment and interest of minimum wage daycare workers" but were done through communication.
If you're relying on daycare workers to communicate to you that there is a potential issue, you are relying on them to be interested enough to make the observation.
>One thing I've seen come up a lot is older generations either don't know, or dismiss, "back to sleep" as a way to minimize SIDS.
And you're going to take the lady at daycare who has a high school diploma's word for it?
>I constantly have to give milestones for my kid; birth weight, when they rolled over, crawled, walked, first word, first sentence. As years pass I have a rougher idea about what's normal and completely forgot about more minor milestones like; parallel play, object permanence, when pronouns should be understood, etc. even when I'm close to other families kids hitting those milestones.
Some parents will be less likely to notice missed milestones than minimum wage daycare workers, I guess. Most children won't miss the milestones, but they will miss the time with their parents, whether they realize it or not.
I'm just recognizing the realities of incentivizing anything. There's a difference between a work requirement for both parents and attendance requirement for children and maybe, in some cases, a portion of your income tax would go to a program you don't take advantage of.
> You don't have to dump your children off to be raised by minimum wage daycare workers in order to put them in a group setting.
Where did I say this should be mandatory or that full-time childcare was the best and only option? You're grossly mischaracterizing my position here and the realities of daycare. Part of the reason daycare is expensive, as mentioned in the article, is because of the regulations in place around the environment and staff. I've found group daycare staff are often more qualified than individual nannies.
I would love to see studies because the issues I've seen caught and missed are all anecdotal and do involve tight-knit communities--which not everybody has. The situations I've seen caught did not "rely on the judgment and interest of minimum wage daycare workers" but were done through communication. After discussing an issue between the daycare and parent it would be presented to a pediatrician or other specialist to see if intervention was needed.
> you and your friends and family members can observe the behavior yourselves
Kids act very differently when around primary caretakers and others. Like I said, part of something like daycare would be communicating what you've observed and what they've observed. A select few motivated parents read books and seek out information (often only for their first child), I see a lot of "bad advice" from previous generations. One thing I've seen come up a lot is older generations either don't know, or dismiss, "back to sleep" as a way to minimize SIDS. I also notice that knowledge about children atrophies very quickly. I constantly have to give milestones for my kid; birth weight, when they rolled over, crawled, walked, first word, first sentence. As years pass I have a rougher idea about what's normal and completely forgot about more minor milestones like; parallel play, object permanence, when pronouns should be understood, etc. even when I'm close to other families kids hitting those milestones.