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Epimenides's avatar

“daycare likely damages cognitive skills"

Just like younger siblings are often slightly dumber?

Because they get ill more often at crucial developmental stages.

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And's avatar

Right on, it’s laughable the expectations people have of daycare “education.” It takes one on one attention to teach at that age, which can’t be achieved in a daycare setting. Most teachers are either young women who move on quickly or checked out older women, but it would be hard to ever pay enough to workers who face constant infections and a monotonous routine.

My kids may be outliers but they loved daycare until they were school aged (although I do feel really bad about some of the places they were at when they were young). But even when they loved it, its exhausting for kids to have a commute, (basically) a day job, and only a few hours of family time in a day. The idea that we should subsidize this practice instead of just giving money to mothers makes little sense.

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Mind Matter's avatar

Surely then you are in favour of mandatory maternity leave for mothers then? Right? Seems an easy fix

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Kitten's avatar

I'm in favor of a year of state-subsidized maternity leave, yes.

But I don't think it's a magic bullet. Dropping a 14 month off at daycare is not as bad as dropping a 6-week off, but it's still not great.

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Mind Matter's avatar

Perhaps not, but making motherhood about semi-permanently staying at home is only going to depress birth rates even more I’m afraid, which is a more serious issue

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Thomas W. Dinsmore's avatar

My mom made great mac and cheese

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