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Comment by rob | Hacker News Reader

This is so sad, especially the part in the beginning about hiring a nanny to watch their kids as they grow up. You can't get those memories and time back.

But hey, you have a WiFi coffee maker and Roomba.

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What's with the current cultural obsession with spending every single moment with ones children? How can this possibly be healthy for the children (never mind the parents)?

I was going to make a comment along the lines you have here, but I held off because I think you are mistaking his argument. He just is talking about the memories and time you, the parent, can't get back, not any deleterious effects on the child. You're right that people in general way overrate the importance of high interaction parenting on a child's development, but I don't think you're right if you're saying the parents don't enjoy it and won't be glad they did it later.

What's wrong with having memories and time that have nothing to do with child raising? Having a balance between child raising activities and non-child raising activities?

Some people want to work outside the home.

You aren't handing off your children to a stranger never to see them again.

I went to a babysitter during the workday for a few years. I bonded with her very strongly and it was nothing but a positive experience.

We send our daughter to daycare [1] and I spend every minute I can outside of work bonding with her. There is some truth to it, they only stay babies so long and parents should enjoy it. Spending time with them is one of the magical things that makes it worth it. Without that, what's the point?

[1] No nanny for us... I'm a CTO in a duel-income house and I can't afford that no idea how this character would.

Per your footnote, in SV professional households, combined salaries north of $300k/year are not uncommon. A nanny costing $40k to $50k is not trivial, but it's manageable.

In fact, a nanny is generally cheaper than sending two children to daycare. (point of reference: the closest daycare to me charges $30k/year)

The median household income for SF is $83k a year. I wouldn't say that $300k /year is common.

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/california/san-francisco...

I'm referring to common in professional circles; professionals already represent a small number of people. SF has high income inequality, so median says little about what the top 20% actually make.

See details here: http://www.city-data.com/income/income-San-Francisco-Califor...

Note that for 2 earner households, median income soars to $131k/year.

31% of married households pull over $200k, which is the highest tier the data has.

My wife and I made a decision not to move to SV because we figured the boost in salary wouldn't justify the higher cost of living (I'm in the greater Boston area). But based on this statement I'm not sure I made the right call. My wife and I make barely more than half that even though I'm senior and she has a master's degree in engineering.

But per your point of reference, daycare here "only" costs $18k a year.

I suspect moves to a lower COL generally only work if one of the following are true:

A. Your income is below X percentile in your current area. (not sure what X is. Maybe 75th?)

B. You value having a large home more than the average person in your current area.

There's also a shortage of professional daycare providers in the Bay Area.

Two of my co-workers hired a nanny because of the >1 year waitlists for infant daycare around here. It's really tough to find a daycare if you don't sign up in the first trimester.

> There's also a shortage of professional daycare providers in the Bay Area.

> Two of my co-workers hired a nanny because of the >1 year waitlists for infant daycare around here.

Given real estate costs in the Bay Area, I'm not surprised that the economics favor in-home nannies (where the day care facility is the home of the family receiving service) over day care centers, compared to areas with more affordable real estate.

Yup. Many day cares are also small 3 child ones run out of the providers' home.

I'm pretty sure that having both parents work and raising your child via nanny is the current obsession and having a stay at home parent was normal human operating behavior for ~200,000 years.

No, it's not the current obsession. The current cultural obsession is over-parenting and massive anxiety and guilt about not "spending enough time" with children no matter how much time is actually spent with children. The comment I replied to is reflective of the current cultural attitude that its "so sad" that kids get a break from their parents for 40 hours a week. Time spent on childcare has actually increased since the 1960s[1] which reflects the increased amount of emphasis on childrearing. There also seems to be little to no questioning of what is healthy for children and parents, it's just seen as "natural" and "obvious" and certainly ideal if possible.

The people with this "so sad... you can't get those memories back" attitude never explain why its ok for the working parent to miss out on "memories" while they are at work whereas its absolutely essential that the nonworking parent gets in the maximum amount of "memories" possible. Or why its ok to ever send a child to a public school because "memories" certainly happen during the school day and you're going to miss out! Or why its so terrible for children to bond to several caregivers rather than one or two?

[1] http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2007/DoParentsSpend...

>Time diaries indicate that married fathers spent an average 6.5 hours a week caring for their children in 2000, a 153 percent increase since 1965. Married mothers spent 12.9 hours, a 21 percent increase. Single mothers spent 11.8 hours, a 57 percent increase.

>These increases are powerful because the figures are for "primary care" where the child is the main focus of attention, not for time spent with the child while doing other things. Time-diary numbers, however, do not say whether mothers are as accessible to their children at home during as many hours as they were in the past.

> The current cultural obsession is over-parenting and massive anxiety and guilt about not "spending enough time" with children no matter how much time is actually spent with children.

More time spent with children != over-parenting. That's your own personal opinion.

The OP also was explicitly stating that they don't have time with their child and that they pay for a full time nanny (a situation not mentioned in your linked report).

Dual income households have indeed increased massively since the 1960s: http://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-20...

The word "parenting" was coined in the 1950s.

Prior to modern times, groups of people (maybe related, maybe just neighbours) shared childrearing responsibilities. It's unlikely anybody was a dedicated caregiver in the same sense as modern parenting.

More often than not the mother was highly involved. Almost never was a nanny the primary caregiver.

Maybe for the lower classes, but the upper class has always had nannies raise their children.

Correct, but the OP was about middle class people where both parents work. That's new.

PG's article on this one was great.

You only get ~8 Christmases where the "magic" is still there for kids... from roughly 2-10 and then it's just another day of gifts and (potentially) envy.

I'm traveling a ton right now with an 18 month old and dying to get back there.

Edit: PG said it here: http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html

Can you elaborate on the Christmas thing? I have a very different view than you on Christmas "magic" than you, I believe.

FYI this is satire. He doesn't live in Silicon Valley. Everything he is describing is a negative that he wants avoid by not moving. Its all bad -- not just the nanny bit.

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