A radical idea to improve family life in America: babysit your neighbor’s kids | Hacker News Reader

A radical idea to improve family life in America: babysit your neighbor’s kids

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20 pointsjseliger14 comments

If you want parents to have more kids and not be so freaked out about the cost of child care, how about loosening the regulations instead of having people donate time to each other? My family is in the child care business. The reason prices are high is that the cost structure is entirely driven by the government and nearly fixed: minimum wage, teacher education requirements and the designated teacher-child ratio. Zero room for innovation.

Politicians find child care centers to be easy prey for seeming tough. They celebrate more regulation and reducing the ratios as 'protecting children' and then everyone seems shocked when prices rise. They add more and more detailed regulations but little funding for poorly-paid unaccountable local inspectors, who flip from threatening to yank your license on one visit to not even asking about the same thing on the next. Teachers are required to have a bachelors degree and separate education certificates to look after 1 year-olds.

Trust me, we do not want to charge so much, but our hands are literally tied. Salary is 50-60% of revenue and most teachers are already payed minimum wage in many cases. We offer fully free tuition to employee's kids which helps offset the low salary for someone with several children, but most centers aren't that generous and we give up revenue to do it because of the ratios.

What state are you in? A bachelor's degree for childcare seems like a pretty high requirement, Washington only requires high school or equivalent + experience or certification.

Florida

We found out that a neighbor we were friendly with for years had sexually abused their kids.

I would not advise anyone to trust someone because of where they chose to live / they wave when you're mowing your lawn.

What a bleak perspective.

What are the odds of being neighbors with a child predator? I'd bet they are incredibly small.

If a neighbor is nice, friendly, and you get to know them over a little bit of time, I'm betting problems arising from having them watch your kids is right around 0%.

The odds are > 0. I cant tell you what to do with your kids, but this was a true experience that could happen to anyone. Bleak as it may be, some people will take advantage of trust.

That's one interpretation.

What if you or other neighbors had been even friendlier, sooner. You may have found out about it sooner and been able to help stop it.

We were never unfriendly. And its not exactly like they were making it publicly visible.

Go on, I'd like to hear how you think this would have played out. Buddy up to 'em long enough, and they'll let the cat out of the bag? Because, as disturbing as it was, I gave this an honest effort as a thought experiment, and I haven't come up with anything I'd rely on. Of the situations for which I've had more than a casual familiarity, it consistently comes out only after the fact.

There are probably too many variables for us to speculate "what would have happened" in this situation.

My comment is this: Generally and overwhelmingly, when a group of people is more interconnected and those connections are stronger, "bad" behavior gets found out and stopped faster. I think that's true of any group of people.

Of course, "bad" = unacceptable to the group itself.

Someone telling you "I did this bad thing" is not the only way for you to find out. I think if a child knows there is a way out, that there other people who care enough to take effective action, they might be more likely to tell someone. But often there is no one who cares that much. Teachers, neighbors, other parents, they're all "nice" but they aren't invested.

What I'm talking about is a deep relationship, and that isn't a function of time spent together, or any other concrete fact. It's organic and emotional.

We can grow those relationships if we choose to. I feel this is the only way to actually solve a lot of social problems that have been going on for decades now. Shooters, internet trolling, bullying, abuse, molestation, those people who pop up every year or so who have been hiding 15 children in a basement..etc

Trying to make kids comforatable enough to come forward is an after the fact action.

There are people who are REALLY good at acting. As adults we get to choose what risks to take. Kids have that choice made for them. Also, kids who are too young might not even fully understand what's going on, so they might not be actively searching for a way out.

I like your mentality of growing relationships with people, but when it comes to protecting kids i feel you owe it to them to be sceptical of others. The risk just isnt worth the free babysitter.

Thank you for your reply. Though I think you’re being a bit idealistic, I do agree with the overall sentiment.

Here's another radical progressive idea, offer consumer grants to pay for childcare. Then maybe child care will "professionalize" and appropriately "commercialize". This it to not denigrating current child care arrangements or facilities but to provide long term stability to the market. We already know that early intervention and childhood education is a benefit (note education does not mean formal schooling but rather play based learning).

This is a huge pendulum swing from our present state of massive regulations. The writer forgets a number of things that should be taken into account.

People are much more transient and as such do not know their neighbors the way they did in years past.

With the media’s hyper focus on all things bad, people are much less likely to let their children stay with people other than super close friends or family.

Those who have chosen to not have children or who are waiting to have children until their careers are more est abolished often work very long hours. As such, they are far too tired to care for the children of others.

There are just a few reasons and there are many, many more.

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