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Comment by joeyo | Hacker News Reader

  > Before Townsend and Clinton, the prevailing philosophy
  > around welfare was that single mothers needed it so they 
  > could afford to stay out of the workforce and raise 
  > their children.

I wonder if it might not make sense to return to those older ways (for those parents that wish it): childcare is expensive and paying one parent not to work (or to give them the security to work part-time) may have a greater societal benefit / societal cost savings than aiming for full employment.

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As someone who recently had to face this issue in my family (should one of us stay home with our daughter or should we do daycare?), I think I disagree.

Simply put, daycare is much more economically efficient than having one parent stay home with one child. In a daycare setting, one adult can care for up to 4 children. Most stay-at-home parents are NOT parenting 4 kids at once.

Like most things in the world, specialization has all sorts of advantages. Daycare is able to provide stimulation for our daughter that a parent at home would struggle to provide; when it is your full time job to take care of a number of kids, you can dedicate your time to creating stimulating and fun activities for them.

I also think there is benefit in the socialization aspects of daycare. Learning to be around other kids and be the social creatures we are is a good thing.

Now, I do believe that a dedicated stay-at-home parent can of course provide all of these things as well, it is just very difficult and inefficient... it is the same reason we all don't grow our own food and make our own clothes... division of labor and specialization are great things.

Economically efficency and childraising efficacy are not exactly the same thing... I think joeyo was alluding to the societal benefits of having one parent not work, in addition to more focused child-rearing.

Example: most teachers in this day and age pretend you (as a parent) have time to help your kids with some pretty rigorous homework, like 1-2h every evening (esp. if your kid is in the "gifted" track). Multiply by 2 or 3 and it becomes difficult to say the least. If you're a working parent, its literally impossible.

> we all don't grow our own food

I can make way better tomatoes in my backyard garden then anything you can buy at the most premium, organic farmer's market you can find. Part of the reason is that I can care for my tomatoes to an unreasonable level since I know that I am the one that's going to be eating them.

The other part of the reason is your natural tendency to believe your tomatoes are better, because you put in all that work. Bias is a funny thing

Agreed. There are plenty of studies that attest to the well-being of children who go to daycare.[1]

"Home grown tomatoes" may be best when grown by good gardeners (i.e. some people are just better with kids, including their own) and the ideal environment (parks, museums, grandparents nearby). But it's not a universal truth.

[1] http://www.cckm.ca/ChildCare/EvidenceQuestion1.htm

Exactly, the question is...how to pay for the daycare. My son went to daycare. When I went to grad school, it was half my salary. Literally half. Thankfully I had the US GI Bill, otherwise I'd have been hosed. Dealing with the churn in society, and lets not argue semantics, if you're on welfare it's likely the skills you have don't meet the market needs. We need an education system that enables people to learn to fish, while giving them fish to survive/take care of their families. Right now, that system is slightly borked. Online education is awesome at providing access to many people, the problem is getting employers to recognize the value of the degrees/certificates that result. Some do, many don't. I totally get it, the quality is all over the place. Then again, so is the quality of in-person institutions.

I agree, your bias is funny. Tomato taste is heavily influenced by a property called BRIX which can be objectively measured. The mass tomato farmer probably doesn't even own a BRIX meter while I can obsess over getting the perfect reading for my variety and picking the fruit at the exact right time.

A dedicated artisan can beat even an expert mass producer every time.

That's why I built my own car from bauxite and iron ore. And my own computer from sand, in my own silicon-refining furnace.

Yes, tomatoes.... But do you grow ALL you own food?

I certainly still do a lot of parenting for my daughter (I don't outsource all of it!), but I do use external daycare, just as I am sure you buy food from places besides your garden.

Can you grow your own food, raise your own children, educate them in all subjects, and build your own smartphones? All at the same time?

I am not a Sisyphean (someone aiming to create more work and 'full employment), but encouraging people to stay out of the labor force for 5 years has collateral impacts, such as depriving them of potentially valuable experience.

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