The article fails to mention France which is managing the low children crisis better than most.
Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten).
Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.
I'm a parent of two young children, a 3 years old and a 6 months old. This is the hardest period of my life since high school.
I'm 34 and in our circles I'm the youngest dad. Most of other dads' are in their late 30s all the way to early 50s.
Yet I do feel I'm making a difference, especially considering that I'm Italian (high longevity + few children).
I've been also inspired by my choices of parenthood by the movie IDIOCRACY:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk
I was delighted when I red in the Elon Musk biography that he had also saw the movie and that was also one of the reasons for being a parent of multiple kids.
How about we increase wages so people can afford to work less? Because we are more productive than ever. No thanks on more government-run programs for daycare facilities. No thanks to making participation mandatory at 3 years old for compulsory education outside the home. I prefer they give direct cash to parents in the form of more generous direct payments like they were doing for the last year and a half during the pandemic, thereby empowering parents to make the best decision for their own households. Idgaf about Macron until he publicly gives an account for why France was degrading its nuclear plants prematurely and failing to build more in a timely fashion. And he should also talk about what France will contribute to NATO in the form of defense budget spending as a share of GDP, along with Germany and other western European countries that were slacking off for years. He can otherwise shut up about compulsive kindgarten at 3 rather than 6, because that is subversion of parental authority.
More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.
We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation. Now you advocate for them to have more control and say over education by recommending more of their services? Nah, way more efficient, empowering, and aligned with freedom & democracy if parents in a household just get direct cash every month rather than government-run facilities. No thanks. Way too many problems with more gov. Give cash instead, solve the problem. And foster good working environment so wages go up and people can choose to work less and still have a family.
AFAIK French policy was driven by mothers that want to continue working. Most jobs and careers just aren't possible to do with halved working hours even if it was paid well.
That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?
> Most jobs and careers just aren't possible to do with halved working hours even if it was paid well.
Nah. That’s what people used to say abou WFH too. All this is purely due to capricious employers and institutions, not because of some natural law. If companies had their way, we’d be working 80h/week. That’s true for both low paying and high paying jobs.
> Most jobs and careers just aren't possible to do with halved working hours
I just don't buy this; it feels like a lack of imagination. Sure, today, very few firms that traditionally employ full-time, salaried employees would even consider the idea of hiring twice as many half-time workers, but there's no inherent reason why it couldn't work.
Certainly, there are hurdles: some per-employee costs are fixed regardless of how many hours they work. But this is just an argument to fix them (because they're stupid in general), not to avoid the situation. Most part-time and contract workers in the US don't get benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. But this is an argument to fix those broken programs, not throw our hands up and claim the status quo is the only option.
Corporate profits and executive pay growth is generally far outstripping the wages paid to mid- and low-level employees. There's no reason why most companies can't pay their employees more equitably, and stop with all the pay inequality garbage.
> That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?
I'm not a parent, but childhood education these days seems more about pushing government propaganda and training kids to be obedient little employees (not to mention providing much-needed free day-care for parents), than about nurturing creativity and curiosity, and giving kids the tools they need to be productive, yet critical-thinking, independent people. I look at stories of 12-year-old kids getting arrested at school for asinine reasons[0] and wonder what the hell is happening.
I don't think people need "exclusive authority" over their children in general, but I do think the current state of public (and even private, in many cases) education could easily drive parents to not want their kids to be a part of it.
germany has made it a law that allows every employee to reduce their working hours to 20/week (with equivalent reduced pay), it's just a matter of people making use of it.
EDIT: apparently any kind of reduction is possible (even 2 hours per week) but the reduction needs to be sensible and the employer needs to agree. if they don't you can sue, and if the judges decide that your requested reduction is reasonable they must comply (i guess that means, you can ask for 2 hours a week and get it if the employer agrees, but if the employer doesn't agree you probably won't convince a judge either)
mothers wanting to send their children to kindergarten does not translate into needing to make it mandatory to do so. a better response would have been to make it a legal right (but not an obligation) combined with the necessary financial support or offer of government paid kindergarten spaces. the latter is lacking in germany for example.
No one has authority over the children beyond their parents and who their parents trust at church or mosque or synagogue or temple after many decades of trusting them in public and in the community and in interactions with each other. Trying to subvert this process by leveraging state-sponsored compulsory separation at 3 years old between babe and mother is nonsense. The more this small handful of wealthy sophists think they deserve authority over a child or have authority over a child's education, insofar as the parents are not guilty of deprivation or harm per reasonable & already universal controls that exist for these things, the more there will be significant backlash against these types of ideas.
Communities don't share the burden except to the extent that the parents need it and want it and share access to their household with members of their chosen communities and faiths. That is how it works in the entire massive United States and other Western Democracies, barring these irresponsible western European countries that seem to be possessed by increasingly idiotic ideas on how much control they want over our kids but how little responsibility they will show on serious urgent matters like nuclear reactor construction and adequate defense spending. The French should be absolutely ashamed and should repent.
When a state tries a state-sponsored approach to compulsively being responsible for teaching children with a monopoly on violence, especially contrary to what the parents may want to teach their child, that becomes a cause for jihad.
The state has some minor say over laws around children when tax money is being used to supplement the costs of raising a child.
Obviously at the end of the day most of a child's upbringing is the parents' prerogative but at the same time if people want to pull the "it takes a village" bs, as a gay man who will not have children (and not use any of the resources that tax dollars goes into) I believe that certain things like a child's education _should_ be managed by the government.
If the village does not have a say in village matters, then it makes me wonder why the hell everyone was allowed a say when it came to things like gay marriage, etc.
School teacher - easy; Lawyer - doable; Doctor - already done; Auto mechanic - no problem; Bank teller - easy; Construction worker...
Ok. I can't come up with any. I'm sure there must be some, but they don't come to mind. Most people work the number of hours it takes to earn the standard of living they accept. Work is never done. There's always more to do. That is never the question.
> That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?
I suspect you're trolling, but in case you're not:
As a European, I do have a lot of community centric philosophy - but given the government (local and country) incompetence in virtually all matters of education and the universally awful opinion all teachers I know hold of the government and their interference and policies regarding education and child care - I do not think that wanting the best for your kids that you love and wanting to be able to raise them yourself with individual attention and perspective is really that strange.
If there are good schools, I have no problem with my kids going to them, as long as it doesn't interfere with their growth and education.
> That's the European approach that children belong to whole community (...). I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?
> He can otherwise shut up about compulsive kindgarten at 3 rather than 6, because that is subversion of parental authority.
How does replacing one form of authoritarianism with another, perhaps preferable to some, form of authoritarianism make things better?
> More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.
As opposed to shitty private sector programs run by profiteers?
> We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation.
Because if Macron lacks wisdom for proper energy management of the people when people are in cold times and need reasonable electricity, and if he is unable to be disciplined on basic matters pertaining to defense spending and defense readiness, why on earth would anyone trust him to be wise oj compulsive state-sponsored kindgarten at 3 years old? Tearing a babe away from mother so soon to give them state-sponsored educational materials? Nah. He’s a control freak like any other bureaucrat. Otherwise it’d be straight cash to the household every month and more parental supervision. More parental choice, not less.
Direct cash infusions to households would not affect inflation. Giant bailouts for huge corporations and for huge corrupt political super pacs definitely does though. Read the book Utopia For Realists for the chapter on direct cash to households and the compiled evidence done over decades in the United States and even Canada.
Try repeating your shitpost in the light of the reality that right now, entire families are being blown apart by evil warfare between Ukraine and Russia.
So no, it's not such a simple reductionist shit-take like you're offering. Be more mature and serious or be banned. There's no more time for bullshit. We can measure the consequences of his actions and ideas by seeing the struggle of the nuclear reactors, which wouldn't have been a problem if France leadership including Macron was truly wise and privy to what the people need at a basic level - which is cheap and reliable electricity for fuck's sake.
And NATO defense spending should've been 2% of GDP for a long time, but they failed even in times of great relative peace by comparison in 2014 when they were below where they are supposed to be. No serious person, in the face of rockets obliterating their nation, could resort to such a shitty reductionist take like yours unless they were just looking to troll rather than to understand that YES, it's possible to say that someone is bad and why and how.
How is this working out for him and France now with energy costs skyrocketing and old pipelines and new pipelines from Russia no longer guaranteed because of immaturity across the board at all levels of leadership now culminating in barbarism in 2022 of all times? So yes, it's possible to prove that Macron made bad choices, because of what the consequences are.
Not at all personal. But these ideas are in a public square that influences young technologists who are impressionable and may take these ideas into their cliques and circles and sub-communities, which will then influence bad ideas further.
It's coming to an end by people advocating for the truth more aggressively in light of what's all over the news and readily accessible. You said something very immature to a serious topic and thus received a frank response. There was no personal attack though. I don't know you, so how can I attack you personally or as a person? I didn't attack you at all. Re-read the message. I told you to be more mature and to stop being immature. Because reductionist one-liners that disregard good-intentioned expositions for the sake of advocating for the truth...show immaturity. And that is much more of a personal attack, by the way, than anything I said. The entire context of the conversation was Macron and how his being a terrible leader means he should have no say in anything, let alone when a state can tear away a child from his or her parents. Ukraine was provided as an example of that, because it relates to France's defense spending as a share of GDP (which historically has not been adequate) and because of France's idiotic policies on nuclear reactors some recent years ago now coming to bite them in the ass because of, you guessed it, Macron and other "leaders" such as him. These things show awful leadership skills on their parent, and consequently are evidence for why they should not be trusted as leaders in general. Not just because his stance on education is wrong, boneheaded, and even evil. And these are urgent and important subjects on account of inaccessible energy and inadequate defense spending resulting in many lives being lost and society regressing if these things are not corrected swiftly.
Nothing personal intended friendo, it's the internet - but notice that I'm the one who in the last handful of messages has made arguments, whereas that other comment you made was not an argument. You did not contest or object to the logic.
> How about we increase wages so people can afford to work less?
If you want people generally to work less and earn more, how are you going to reduce the amount of work there is for them to do? Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford (inflation? What dat?) if less work is being done to provide them? Sounds fascinating.
Most of our gains in productivity have been captured by either housing pricing or massive government bureaucracies which serve just to “employ” people and have them duffle paper around. We don’t need to work nearly as much to produce this level of comfort
While I agree we could live more simply, I feel you'd need a lot more to justify your assertions. The fact is we have access to a lot more luxuries than we did in the past. Are they necessary? No by definition. Are they even worth it? Very debatable. But to act like our lives have not changed at all except for house prices going up is dishonest.
100%. Also worth noting from Sowell how house prices did go up, but by comparison the prices per square foot relative to how our parents and grandparents started out are not too bad tbh. (They were all humble and started out in much more meager real estate than many people have now, for example 600 or 1000 or 1200 square foot living conditions vs 2500+ average now per home).
The point is people can afford houses if they are willing to compromise on size, in the way previous generations did. A lot are choosing to rent instead. That’s a choice.
This whole conversation has nothing to with what I said. I’m mostly talking about massive taxes and light fiscal policies that are basically transferring wealth to people with access to capital
Your comment said most of the gains in productivity have been captured by housing or government bureaucracies. This is not true. The quality of everything has gone up substantially from the coffee we drink, to the fresh produce around the calendar, to the conveniences at home. We live in a luxury society where a fresh avocado in the middle of winter is less than $1. Where we can order just about anything we need at the click of a button from around the globe. This is where our productivity has gone.
I hate it when people jingle a few trinkets and say look how good everything is. Who cares about avocado? Can you take a few months off to relax? Can you take 2 years off to change careers? Can a woman stay home to take care of her kids for a few years? Can you buy a house without paying for 30 years for it? My friends in the US pay USD3900 for daycare for 1 child.
> Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford
We could start manufacturing those more expensive but better quality goods, which most of people could not afford. There is no problem with manufacturing enough goods. There is problem that many people only have money for the cheapest shit which breaks easily and needs to be replaced soon which costs even more money and destroys environment.
I’m not saying you are wrong, but everyone working less and being richer is an outcome, not a policy. How do you think we should achieve that? Making higher quality goods sounds like it would take more work, not less.
It’s all very well saying “we could just”, but how would you bring about this change? How do you persuade people to want different things and make different choices? That’s the interesting question.
Whole discussion was started because your question "how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford" seems nonsensical. How? With increased production. Increasing production is not a problem.
With automation or employing more people. We are not at a full production capacity now, we could produce more, but we don't because there is no demand currently for more.
The US had close to full employment. Two thirds of the unemployed find a job within 6 months, they’re not really unemployed just between jobs. Of course there are spots of higher unemployment due structural reasons that need addressing, but at the macro scale their just not going to to make an even fractional change. Not the mass scale global transformation your talking about. China is running out of in tapped labour too.
Production is expanding elsewhere in SE Asia but those countries are much smaller and taking time and a lot of capital to ramp up.
Where are all these new workers going to come from, and if they could work productively already why aren’t they?
> Where are all these new workers going to come from, and if they could work productively already why aren’t they?
Why would they work more productively if that is not needed? They would have to make more things, which people wouldn't buy because there is overproduction. If you have order for 1000 items every week, you make 1000 items every week, even when you could make 5000 items every week. You can slow your production line, this way workers are more relaxed and you have time for maintenance. It's not like every employee out there is used at 100% utilisation, that would not be sustainable. Many times you employ as many people as you can just because it's cheaper than using more automation. If you need to produce more and can't find employes, you can pay them more. If you can't find enough employes at all, that means price per employee is so high that you can now employ some robots. Yeah, it takes time, but global change in time of employment is also not going to happen overnight.
> Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford
So, we provided more products to people who now have money. And now you are asking "Who will pay". Well, the people who now have the money to pay for it? That was the reason for increased production in the first place?
If this is done to guarantee a nice ubi and access to rigorous education opportunities based on proven merit and results year over year, sounds good to me. Great safety net, can be funded efficiently in a way that respects individuals, the Constitution, Democracy. Sounds great!!!
There are a number of issues mixed together here so it is easy to attack. However, the main argument: direct cash with increased privatization vs public services is valid and should not be rejected out of hand. This approach could work better - at least it is not guaranteed to be worse.
You aren't...attacking anything. :) That's my view too! Allow households and taxpayers and consumers to make their best choices on which services they like, even if it's private. Let the best teams win!
Preschool in my district is 4 days a week, 2.5hrs / day.
That's a JOKE. Meant only for people who don't work.
But they also got another levy on taxes for "technology" and "new buildings".
They don't need more money, they just need to better spend the money they have.
Private daycare costs around $2000/month. That's more than tuition on the university ($1000/month or so).
So I just wish that once kids are in preschool age the preschool offered something reasonable
Also, have i mentioned that public preschool is not free? On top of taxes, we pay $400/month or so for 4 days a week, 2.5hrs/day preschool. It's nuts.
Oh, and they insert a random "teacher development days" where preschool is closed. Can't they do development in summer, when the school is closed anyway?
Yep. When every person who wants kids has to make these economic decisions their aggregate choices are reflected in population dynamics. "Just choose not to have kids then" en mass results in socio-economic states present systems are not robust against. Incentive engineering is basic economics, and no amount of rhetoric around "just have more kids" is going to change the material realities would be parents face.
The cost of living has increased proportionally, not exactly leaving a lot of room for additional retirement savings.
Plus, proper retirement saving is hard. Saving 10% in a method that negates inflation only nets you 4.5 years of income at retirement age. You’ll need to drop your living costs by over 3x to live to a median age, unless you don’t retire in the traditional sense.
I am responsible for a household. Stop trying to invalidate an idea or a set of of propositions based on this variety of cheap ad-hominy bs. You’re trying to read between the lines of the post to see if you can neatly categorize a challenge as being part of some bucket you sneer at. That comes across as being dishonest or intellectually lazy.
Direct cash to households with kids during almost two years of pandemi has lifted many children out of poverty and given parents more freedom and flexibility. Plenty of evidence of this.
When you’re getting direct cash and wages are good and bureaucrats aren’t inflating their way to Power, you can even afford to work less so one of the parents is always around if they want. That’s how it should be and can be and will be.
> Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten).
There’s a bit more to the story than you may think here... you also aren’t allowed to be homeschooled. It’s illegal. They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).
Also giving you children to the state to be taught is somewhat disturbing.
EDIT: By deferring to others to teach your children, they won’t learn your culture, traditions and will (statistically) be worse off than if you teach them yourself.
My wife and I settled on making less money (still more than enough), but raising our kids ourselves. It’s hard, but easily the most rewarding thing. Plus our kids are WAY ahead in most areas. Imagine, your children are learning from other children all day at school... is that better than learning from adults all day? No.
When they get older we will probably consider a “pod” or one teacher for 6-8 kids with a family we know. You can pay the teacher far more and the parents can be more involved (we can effectively dictate the curriculum). I’m also planning on having my kids help me with work by 8-10. They can learn to participate and be productive far earlier.
> There’s a bit more to the story than you may think here... you also aren’t allowed to be homeschooled. It’s illegal.
I believe this isn't correct. Homeschooling is legal in France, although restricted. You need to be able to prove your kids are receiving a proper education.
> They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).
I also think this is incorrect. Religious signs are forbidden in public school for students and teachers alike (as France is a secular country), but there's no law preventing minors practicing religion.
Ah fair. perhaps I was thinking Germany (where your child can be removed). France still has regular inspections, can be denied and you have a curriculum you must adhere to (at least tests / categories).
>Religious signs are forbidden in public school for students and teachers alike (as France is a secular country), but there's no law preventing minors practicing religion.
If you call a religiously important piece of clothing a "religious sign" then technically that's true, but not really
French view is that religion has no place in school or public administration. There's a clear separation between religion and state, including public schools. That being said, the government has no matter to forcing spiritual beliefs or clothes in private space.
We have plenty of evidence supporting the fewer kids per teacher the better the scores.
I also suspect the more a teacher cares the better the scores.
As mentioned, from the evidence, there’s already a solid correlation.
I think with the additional details the causation is likely also there (less students per teacher, highly motivated and engaged teacher). Anyone debating that point IMO is intentionally misleading. There is a clear causation between homeschooling and better outcomes. The only “question” I’ve seen in articles (none in reality) has to do with socioeconomic status. However, if you control for that, you’ll still see better outcomes (aka homeschooled kids in socioeconomic category Y will still out perform public school kids in socioeconomic category Y)
> Anyone debating that point IMO is intentionally misleading.
No need to poison the well with unfounded accusations of bad faith.
> There is a clear causation between homeschooling and better outcomes.
As I've said, causality has not been established. Even if we stipulate that smaller class sizes have a causal positive effect, it's nowhere near enough to account for the improvement in scores when home schooling. Selection effects are most likely to dominate, as they do in almost all education research.
Home-schooling isn't solely positive, it is also associated with worse outcomes in STEM. This is not surprising as most home schoolers don't got enough STEM knowledge to properly teach the subject. The net benefit you tend to see comes when you average all grades, since STEM is a fairly small portion the net is still positive, but you still see a significant decrease in STEM ability in home-schooled kids
Homeschooling is a super american thing and tbh, should not be allowed. If you're so scared of your children ever interacting with anyone apart from you, you probably shouldn't be a parent.
The Americans value freedom more. As far as I know, only western Europe considers children as belonging to the state, not the parents.
Many Romanians who moved to places like Norway were shocked to see how children are treated there. In Sweden they have banks of the blood of all the babies since 1975 in storage forever ( https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKU-registret ). Scary stuff.
The PKU-registry article you linked explains how one can opt out of having one's sample stored after the genetic screening:
> Den enskilde kan begära att begränsa hur provet får användas eller få sitt blodprov kasserat. Kassering innebär enligt biobankslagen att provet kastas eller anonymiseras
> The individual can ask to restrict how the sample may be used or have it discarded. According to the biobank law, discarding a sample involves either destroying or anonymizing it.
What about the freedom you're denying your child by excluding them from social interactions due to your mistaken puritanical attempts to 'protect' them by home schooling?
I mean, there is no justification. You're actually harming your child. Sure, maybe you're a better maths teacher than the one in the school, but school isn't really about learning such nonsense..
Non-homeschooling is probably one of the more recent developments in education in modern times, but yes, it must be this "super american thing" that can't be allowed. God forbid parents have a say in how their children are being raised.
Society tends towards least common denominator in the American political system, so one means of resisting the damage from that context is more parental choice.
It’s interesting that you say this because, and this doesn’t change my opinion about its value, education is strongly correlated with a decrease in birth rates in developing and developed countries. There’s also a strong correlation between high marks at a young age and high degrees of success later in life, regardless of grades or performance in between. Taken together, Macron’s policy could actuallly harm the birth rate.
I completely agree that families should get more support. I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily that straightforward.
My own intuition is that the norm of both parents working is hard on fertility. I can't imagine what it would be like without a dedicated full-time parent.
> I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily that straightforward.
Not to sound snide, but I also don't think it's as straightforward as linking two correlative effects. High grades in school is also often predictive of economic background, race, gender etc... that themselves are correlated to birth rates. I don't see here much reason to believe that providing early childhood care would decrease birth rates.
You don’t. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, of course. My point was that GPs solution might not be enough, not that it was unviable. I tried to demonstrate that by showing that in the worst case it could potentially backfire, not that it necessarily will. I was painting in pretty broad strokes though, mostly because I don’t have any better ideas, so I could see how it just comes across as FUD.
Before this new law, in France kindergarden already existed and 98% of children were already attending kindergarten. (It has always been free as well) I don't think this has been done to tackle the low fertility problem in France, but more to enforce a standardization of the education of young children.
>Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.
As a new parent of a 14 month year old boy - kindergartens have very low impact on our decision to have more children. We're lucky enough that we can afford to rent an apartment for my in-laws and that they are retired so they can take care of our son. Putting him in to kindergarten at this age would be traumatic to him and to us (parents) - he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel. Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).
The thing that would actually impact our decision to have more children (early-mid 30s) :
- fully paid maternity leave - right now it's 100% for first 6 months and after that it's capped at national average - which is >70% pay cut for both of us
- despite both of us earning significantly above average - there's 0 decent opportunities to buy a family home right now - everything that's worth something is long gone off the market, and if something comes up people with cash to buy upfront show up faster than you can dial the ad
The rest is outside of governments control, biggest thing being wife has to give up career for a non-trivial ammount of time (even if I took out some maternity leave realistically she has to take at least 6 months off).
I suspect that retirement age plays a non-trivial part in this as well - having retired parents to fall back on as support when having multiple children while having active careers is very valuable.
>We're lucky enough that we can afford to rent an apartment for my in-laws and that they are retired so they can take care of our son. Putting him in to kindergarten at this age would be traumatic to him and to us (parents) -
So you agree that having someone extra to watch over your kids is something that's needed? For most people, that is kindergarten.
>he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel.
Almost every kid does this. I have, so have all other kids. It's really not that bad, your kid needs to learn to socialize eventually. It's a bit insulting to call it 'cruel' to bring your kid to kindergarten.
>Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).
Yes, that's how the human immune system is supposed to work.
>Macron moved down the compulsory school age start from 6 (primary school) down to 3 (kindergarten). Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens.
That makes sense. Such a system would also have to include transportation, food, etc. It's probably a good move if the funding is there. France is wealthy enough I think.
I'm guessing what they mean is that it removes some of the financial barriers to parents during early childhood: they can return to work because their child is in school/daycare for most of the day, at limited to no cost to them.
Even if they aren't both working, it allows the home partner to return to being a full time homemaker, and all that that entails: pursuing hobbies or volunteer opportunities, managing the family social life, planning parties and outings, etc. All of these things are potentially much more fulfilling and life giving than spending up to a decade burning yourself to the ground waiting for multiple kids to finally be in full time school so you can have your days back.
Because now government know exactly how many kids it has to fund daycare for and where the facilities should be.
I’d even go as far as parental leave should be completely covered until there is government provided daycare, so as the decision to have kids doesn’t carry too much of an economic burden.
If you prefer to not send your kid to daycare or to continue to work while you have the option of caring for your kid, that's up to you. Where did I praised removal of options? What option is being removed here?
compulsory education is hardly an incentive to child bearing. if anything those who have kids wish to decide what is best for kids without state compulsions
A lot of places have bizarre over-parenting practices that add social pressures on anyone who has children. I would have been much more inclined to have children in a place that either doesn't freak out about free range children like when I grew up or has a set public system over one that makes you feel guilty for not being bio enough, not choosing the right
private schools, not getting private tutors, etc, etc.
It is interesting to watch parents burn out and get divorced so their children can have a better life than the one social pressures dictate.
What is funny to me is that some people who are all about the free market fail to recognize incentives when it comes to children. Sure, there are non-monetary considerations (big ones!) but the economic costs of having children (both out of pocket and opportunity) are continuing to rise.
If you want more of something, subsidize it, either explicitly or by reducing its relative costs. Here's an off the cuff list of suggestions which would reduce the cost of children:
* Accessible free or low cost daycare/childcare
* Accessible low cost health care
* Cheaper housing near job centers
I'm sure there are more.
But how are we going to pay for all that? Consider it an investment allowing a country to continue to have a growing tax base.
Whatever verbal logic is given to justify compulsory earlier access it will be just talk until it's actually proven that it has the effect of increasing the birthrate.
It may have the opposite effect and then we'll come up with a different verbal logic to justify why it decreased the birth rate.
Verbal logic was given to justify the war against poverty in the sixties and sixty years and trillions of dollars later USA has a higher poverty rate than then. I'm not saying it was a bad idea, just that forecasters were wrong en masse.
So this may work or not, but honestly nobody knows, and those giving verbal logic for why it will succeed are purely speculating.
I don't have children but find it interesting that one way you propose that government can make it easier for families to have children is to create services that involve the children spending even less of their childhood with their family.
I agree education of a child is very important. Not necessarily public education, although that can be quite good in some respects.
But if a government wants to make it easier to have children wouldn't it make more sense to come up with policies that allow a couple to afford to raise children on a single income? That way, one parent is always able to spend time with the children when needed.
Having kids for the economy and what else is selfish. Kids should not be brought to fix things screwed up by their parents and grandparents. These kids are used like the fuel cells like in The Matrix, not because there is some benefit to them, there is none btw.
Life itself is pretty hard for most people, most just don't accept truth and make up a reason to cope. Copium. It's heartbreaking seeing children fleeing their home, losing everyone they know like in Syrian and now Ukraine just in last decade.
Then there is climate change, which will be devastating in near future. Even IPCC report is manipulated by lobbying.
Are you seriously going to tell me that starting PayPal, having two divorces, 8 kids, and rolling that into Tesla and SpaceX makes someone the smartest entrepreneur? I thought entrepreneur included all parts of life. Elon is not a savior, he's smart, but he got lucky too.
No it wasn't a joke but also you are also blowing out of proportion my reasoning for having children. There have been dozens of reasons why I had kids. One of them, very small compared to the others, is the Idiocracy movie.
The idea that smart people have less kids is dangerous for society and I wanted to "be the change that you want to see in the world".
Now if you want to take that and blow it out of proportion and say THE ONLY REASON WHY YOU HAD KIDS IS WATCHING THE IDIOCRACY movie you are using Reductio ad Absurdum, you are enlarging my claims until they are absurd.
Try instead to watch the movie and then comment on whether Idiocracy is applicable to real world or not.
Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.
I'm a parent of two young children, a 3 years old and a 6 months old. This is the hardest period of my life since high school. I'm 34 and in our circles I'm the youngest dad. Most of other dads' are in their late 30s all the way to early 50s.
Yet I do feel I'm making a difference, especially considering that I'm Italian (high longevity + few children). I've been also inspired by my choices of parenthood by the movie IDIOCRACY:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk I was delighted when I red in the Elon Musk biography that he had also saw the movie and that was also one of the reasons for being a parent of multiple kids.