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Yes, if everyone has kids in their 20's so grandma is in her 40's when the first grandchild comes. My mother had me at 29 and I had my kids in my 30's. She was retirement and too old for childcare for my kiddos.
Ruth, I wish I had a multi-generational family next door like my mother's generation! There was a study once which predicted the number of children a woman had based on her distance to her mom. The closer the mother, the more likely the daughter would have more than two children. Grandparents count!
Yeah, we moved half a country away so my mother's age didn't even matter!
I calling b*llsh*t on this.
Abilities are innate. Funny in sports, everyone acknowledges that abilities are innate. There is no social achievement in sports - you can play beside Tom Brady for decades and still stink at football. So, not everyone can pitch a baseball with speed or win the US Open tennis match. We all know sports abilities are largely determined by biology.
Why wouldn't intellectual abilities be innate as well? We know that learning disabilities and mental illnesses run in families. So would the opposite be true, that intellectual achievement runs in families? I look at my kiddos and see what parent gave which intellectual genes and traits.
I raised my kiddos as a stay-at-home mom without any fancy preschool stuff. All my kids have their masters degrees and are rising stars at work.
You what matters most? Family dinners! Sure, my kiddos learned to play instruments, attended classical music concerts, visited museums and we talked about literature and history in detail with them. However, it was their innate/biological talents which matter along with a stable family.
Learning to count to 10 in countless languages doesn't matter. People can not be enabling to master ANYTHING in the future with speed and ease. Everyone has their own set of talents and skill sets which limits them.
I've been around long enough to see trends in childcare, go into and out of fashion like women's hemlines. Your post is based a what's in fashion now - affirmative action's everyone is equal nonsense. You should read Animal Farm by Orwell because it's same type of language.
Abilities come from a combination of innate talents and nurturing. How much nurturing is necessary to reach a peak, depends on the type of talent.
Abilities come from a combination of innate talents and nurturing. How much nurturing is necessary to reach a peak, depends on the type of talent.
Totally agree! A music genius without exposure to music or instruments will have a hard time. However, music talent seems to be one of those inherited ability.
Luwig Van Beethoven's father Johann van Beethoven was a court musician.
Johannes Brahms' father Jakob Brahms was a horn and double bass player.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father Leopold Mozart was a minor composer, an experienced teacher and a violinist.
Johann Sebastian Bach's father Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians. His uncles were all professional musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians, and composers. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, and an older second cousin, Johann Ludwig Bach, was a well-known composer and violinist.
You could argue coming from a musical family helped with having connections to the right people. However, the bigger question of innate talents vs nurturing, IMHO innate genetic talents helped more. My kiddos were taught the violin by a member of the Boston Symphony, but they were never going to be musical geniuses!
"If we view human psychological development as a social achievement rather than an individual one. Then young children’s abilities are not innate, or simply determined by biology." Then, it would be easy to "fix" autism or any learning disability with the "right" social setting. Sure, disabled people learn coping skills, but as a biological fact, it can't be cured.
-------------------Back to the Topic!
I stayed home with my children and we gave up a lot to do this. Our first coop was a one bedroom in crappy NYC area. Baby's bedroom/crib was our living room. From there, we traded up to a two bedroom/one bathroom house. Finally, 15 years later, we had a three bedroom/two bath house. However, I still think we were lucky. While I had student loans (paid off before marriage), we graduated college before prices inflated. The biggest lucky thing was no social media with pressure to spend money to present the perfect lives.
I took these chances because I believed that I had insights my children's genetic talents/ability and their weakness better than anyone else. We bet that my husband's career and our marriage was stable. Sometimes, it felt like a roll of the dice. It worked for me, but I know it doesn't work for everyone. Many of my kiddos' peers come from divorced families and their mothers are significantly poor than their ex-husbands. It's a sad comment on our society!
It’s not the learning of different languages that’s the point, it’s that children can learn and retain knowledge at at preschool age level. Another poster said that preschool education didn’t matter because she’d read studies that said that learning in preschool really didn’t help kids later in life. I was simply stating that I’d also read studies ( and posted citation) saying that
a preschool education can in fact be quite beneficial according to some experts.
I am not trying to come off as some kind of expert calling BS on things, nor am I saying that kids need to get some fancy preschool education in order to be productive later. Having innate
Abilities doesn’t mean that one will excel ( using your football and baseball analogy), but rather giving the ability to grasp the idea and play. Not everyone in the NFL is a Tom Brady, nor is everyone that plays in MLB a Clayton Kershaw, but they still have the innate ability to learn, understand and play the game. Not every child speaks multiple languages, but they’re born with the innate ability to do so. Some kids have natural talent while others have to work harder, but they do have the innate ability to be taught and learn.
You said that learning multiple languages means nothing, yet you tout things like teaching your kids how to play musical instruments. How great an achievement is this unless they’re planning on being professional musicians?
This being said I am also a SAHM and don’t have to utilize our preschool daycare nor am I a fan. It’s not because I don’t think early education is important, nor agree with the curriculum being taught, but rather because I don’t want strangers raising our kids. I want to be the one who educate them and instill our values. Especially in these times with “woke” educators filling children’s heads with nonsense and trying to install their personal values while going against
The teaching and values of the child’s parents behind their backs.
While not being an actual fan of sending kids to daycare I still believe that beginning to educate children at an early age whether it be at home or in preschool has some merit. Despite some of the cons associated with outside childcare or the nay sayers who feel that teaching a toddler will make no difference in the long run. YMMV!
It’s not the learning of different languages that’s the point, it’s that children can learn and retain knowledge at at preschool age level. Another poster said that preschool education didn’t matter because she’d read studies that said that learning in preschool really didn’t help kids later in life. I was simply stating that I’d also read studies ( and posted citation) saying that a preschool education can in fact be quite beneficial according to some experts.
I am not trying to come off as some kind of expert calling BS on things, nor am I saying that kids need to get some fancy preschool education in order to be productive later. Having innate abilities doesn’t mean that one will excel ( using your football and baseball analogy), but rather giving the ability to grasp the idea and play.
Not everyone in the NFL is a Tom Brady, nor is everyone that plays in MLB a Clayton Kershaw, but they still have the innate ability to learn, understand and play the game. Not every child speaks multiple languages, but they’re born with the innate ability to do so. Some kids have natural talent while others have to work harder, but they do have the innate ability to be taught and learn.
You said that learning multiple languages means nothing, yet you tout things like teaching your kids how to play musical instruments. How great an achievement is this unless they’re planning on being professional musicians?
I think we are working with two different definitions of innate ability. I'm using:
Quote:
Innate ability is a natural talent or skill that has been with a living thing from its inception. It is not a learnt habit but an internal feature of the organism. For example, intelligence can be an inborn trait that students possess from their genetic makeup/composition.
So if a child has an innate ability or an inborn trait, he/she is likely to be successful in that area.
Sure, most children can be taught the rules of a sport. However, the is a difference between knowing the rules and successfully passing a football across the field. The successfully passing the ball is an innate ability/inborn trait.
Language skills are another innate ability/inborn trait. Children with an innate ability/inborn will learn and retain a foreign language. I've know two people who speak three or four languages fluently. Without this innate ability, children will never be as advance language/translations skills.
My example of my kiddos playing violin showed that exposure and connections do not make a music genius. It's the innate ability/inborn traits which makes a music genius.
Quote:
Head Start is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and families. The program's services and resources are designed to foster stable family relationships, enhance children's physical and emotional well-being, and establish an environment to develop strong cognitive skills.
Launched in 1965 by its creator and first director Jule Sugarman and Bernice H. Fleiss, Head Start was originally conceived as a catch-up summer school program that would teach low-income children in a few weeks what they needed to know to start elementary school. The Head Start Act of 1981 expanded the program. The program was revised and reauthorized in December 2007. As of late 2005, more than 22 million children had participated.
In 1998, Congress mandated an intensive study of the effectiveness of Head Start, the "Head Start Impact Study," which studied a target population of 5,000 3- and 4-year-old children. The study measured Head Start's effectiveness as compared to other forms of community support and educational intervention, as opposed to comparing Head Start to a nonintervention alternative.
Head Start Impact Study First Year Findings were released in June 2005. Study participants were assigned to either Head Start or other parent–selected community resources for one year. 60% of the children in the control group were placed in other preschools. The first report showed consistent small to moderate advantages to 3-year-old children including pre-reading, pre-vocabulary and parent reports of children's literacy skills. No significant impacts were found for oral comprehension, phonological awareness, or early mathematics skills for either age group. Fewer positive benefits were found for 4-year-olds.
In 1976, Datta summarized 31 studies, concluding that the program showed immediate improvement in IQ scores of participating children, though nonparticipants narrowed the difference over time.
"Head Start Fade", in which significant initial impacts quickly fade, has often been observed, as early as second and third grade. Fryer and Levitt found no evidence that Head Start participation had lasting effect on test scores in the early years of school.
The HSIS study concludes, "Head Start has benefits for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain. However, the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole. For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits, although access to the program may lead to improved parent-child relationships through 1st grade."
I was a single parent with one child. Seldom got any assistance or support. Finding quality childcare and being able to afford it was horrific. I did not use day cares, always in-home care by moms with their own kids who took in a few others for extra money. Child day cares are filth pits.
Couples with children should be grateful they have one another to raise the children. Time to buck up and stop competing with that family named Jones. One primary breadwinner households can be achieved, with sacrifices.
Other cultures value their elders to help care for children. We seem to want to do it the hard way.
I hear you. I was a single parent with 3 kids. I did receive a stipend for them with Ss survivor benefits but it wasnt a huge amount but I also worked long hours for many years. My youngest I had to leave in some very unsavory places. One in home provider kept her locked in a room all day, withheld food and often slapped her and the providers mother knew about this, I found out later. Another one took her in some really bad places during the day. I had no choice, I thought, at the time. I could have quit and tried to get on some kind of assistance, maybe....... I really had no one to help me. My parents were elderly and my ex husband was dead. His family were not helpful, at all.
It was hard on everybody but especially on my youngest. She struggles at 50 yrs old today with things I think stem from those early years.
It all comes down to priorities. It is just that simple. Start paring down the budget to allow either affording the childcare or one parent working, or as has been suggested, work different shifts (we did when we adopted a baby with special needs and learned no one would accept him in their care). Later, we pared down the budget, and I was able to work part-time and/or call-in work while spending more time with both kids. I really like my kids, not just love them, and I really know them. We don't mind fixer-uppers, used cars and I was born genetically thrifty.
Children are a privilege, and it is the responsibility for the parents to plan wisely on how it will all come together. Far too many would not choose to be stay-at-home parents even if it was affordable. The amazing thing I learned long ago was that if there is a cost to something that one really feels justified in making, there is a way to get it done. The refrigerator broke years ago, $700 which was a lot of money. We got it, and I thought, if we could do that out of the blue, we could afford a Disney trip. Ten Disney World trips later, that was the right decision too. Tighten your belts, grit your teeth and figure it out!
The question is whether there is a societal benefit for people to have children and, if so, provide government financial support.
1. That already happens via deductions on IRS 1040s for dependents.
2. Beyond that, it is not the job of the government to provide child care services or to subsidize childcare services. Not. The. Job.
There is a role for government in society, of course. Beyond appropriate regulation, it can be a legitimate job for the government to provide for public goods. Childcare services clearly do not fall in that domain, as childcare services are clearly private goods.
1. That already happens via deductions on IRS 1040s for dependents.
2. Beyond that, it is not the job of the government to provide child care services or to subsidize childcare services. Not. The. Job.
There is a role for government in society, of course. Beyond appropriate regulation, it can be a legitimate job for the government to provide for public goods. Childcare services clearly do not fall in that domain, as childcare services are clearly private goods.
Determining what is the "government job" is a another debate, and one that is bound to come down to one's own particular ideology. Based upon your post I'm assuming you're applying the classic libertarian definition on the role of government.
Governments have always provided incentives to encourage behavior it deems beneficial to the society, even though those incentives ended up in private hands. If the predictions of a society with fewer children ring true, we are in for a rough patch, so why not provide incentives to avoid that outcome. The alternative (and one that many people push on here) is immigrate our way out the problem, though that typically comes with a host of other problems. Whether those incentives work in end, no ones knows. Thus far such incentives haven't move the needle much if any. In this particular case, if providing affordable daycare encourage people to have more children, then why not. I live in an area where daycare averages $14K a year per child. It's major detriment to the number of kids people choose to have.
We are a dual income household and have always been. My mom was a single mom and worked during my childhood.
My husband's parents worked. It was instilled in us that both parents are not only breadwinners but also parents. It never occurred to either of us not to work.
We didn't lack anything and neither do our children.
With hybrid schedules available, working parents are able to spend even more time.
When will people realize that it's not able quantity of time it's quality? When you have the time, make it count. Additionally, day care ends at 6. There's still parenting that needs to be done, projects that need completion, homework help, all of that goes beyond the day care hours.
And we're not sorry for the things that come along with having a dual income either. It sure helped with the pandemic, when both of our salaries were cut.
We are a dual income household and have always been. My mom was a single mom and worked during my childhood.
My husband's parents worked. It was instilled in us that both parents are not only breadwinners but also parents. It never occurred to either of us not to work.
We didn't lack anything and neither do our children.
With hybrid schedules available, working parents are able to spend even more time.
When will people realize that it's not able quantity of time it's quality? When you have the time, make it count. Additionally, day care ends at 6. There's still parenting that needs to be done, projects that need completion, homework help, all of that goes beyond the day care hours.
And we're not sorry for the things that come along with having a dual income either. It sure helped with the pandemic, when both of our salaries were cut.
I agree with the quality aspect. If the child is just going to stay home and watch TV all the day, it's better for them to be in a daycare. At the end of the day the type of arraignment is going to come down the personalities, needs, and abilities.
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