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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

Good luck with that in the US, where school is often used as an alternative to childcare.

I'd argue that US parents are so keen on schools staying open because often their jobs depend on it. I expect it would be similar in Japan as well.

Maybe it seems like daycare because, in a sense, it does serve the function of allowing parents to work. That doesn't mean it's an alternative to daycare. The parents want their kids to have an education, but they also count on school to be able to work.

Even here in Canada, if a school has a snow day and an employer doesn't, it can be a little tense if you don't have anywhere to put your kids. People with relaxed employers and good leave options are fine, but many people don't have that.

>I'd argue that US parents are so keen on schools staying open because often their jobs depend on it. I expect it would be similar in Japan as well.

Why would it be similar in Japan? In Japan, children walk themselves to school (using public transit if necessary) as young as 6 years old. It's not like the US where parents can be thrown in jail for "child neglect" if their children don't have 24/7 adult supervision. I imagine that Japanese schoolkids can just stay at home if the schools are closed.

This is not the case everywhere in the US. E.g. in Montana there is no minimum age to leave a child unsupervised. In our town young kids walk and bike to school. Probably not aged 6 but certainly by 8-10.

Not everywhere, but Montana has a tiny, tiny fraction of the total population, and no large cities at all. In much of the country, for most of the population (which mostly lives in urban/suburban areas), it is as I described.

This is so funny because, as any US parent knows, US schools love to close for any possible, however remote, reason.

And today Seattle area high school is already closed due to suspicion of coronavirus:

https://www.foxnews.com/health/washington-high-school-closed...

I expect if schools get called off most business will tell their people to stay home. They will watch their kids while working.

Of course the poorest will be least likely to be told to stay home (grocery stores will still need to be open - and probably need extra staff for sanitation)

In the US public schools also commonly only the only way a large portion of school aged children get breakfast and lunch.

Without schools providing breakfast and lunch many kids will not get enough nutritional meals a day.

When the Chicago public schools "closed" during the teacher strike, the non-union staff were still working to keeps the schools open just to provide meals and a safe place for kids to go during the day.

often? alternative?

I expect that our School ALWAYS care for my child. :P

Childcare meaning daycare or babysitter, as an alternative to parents watching the children. Parents often can’t take time off work to watch their children.

I pay for pre and post school childcare at my kids school, provide by my municipality. I also think School is a kind of childcare.

The care of the kids has always been the priority of great teachers in my experience

What a strange way to phrase it. It sounds like you're suggesting the reason students go to school is because parents don't want to deal with childcare.

How is school "used" in other countries, then?

It's not that parents don't want to handle childcare. It's that American work culture and lack of social support makes childcare impossible for parents who don't have a stay-at-home partner/employee to rear the children.

In other countries is it still expected that one parent gives up their career in order to raise children? In America that went out of fashion after WW2.

I think some US employers still took the attitude that women who took significant time off to have a baby were not wanted back as late as the late 70s/early 80s. Like, I was told, the State of New York.

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