Two of my siblings are primary school teachers (that is, for kids who come right out of kindergarten; not sure how this is called in the US/elsewhere), and from the stories I've heard from them, they'd argue heavily against your points.
I think you're underestimating how many families are completely dysfunctional, or where the parents are overwhelmed with taking care of their children, even under normal situations, let alone during the current pandemic. For example; where I live, it's unfortunately still often the case that schools do not take care of lunch for the kids (they are supposed to go home during lunch breaks) and the amount of times where teachers have to wonder whether the kids had anything to eat at all for lunch (sometimes because nobody is at home and they didn't feel hungry at the time or had only junk available) is astounding.
Childcare workers are trained and certified for their job (that's at least the case in my country); and yes, while they have many kids around and thus might not have as much interest in an individual kid as a parent might have, they at least have to uphold a certain level of competence in order to keep their jobs (essentially, like the rest of us - be good enough at your job or search something else), while a parent stays a parent, no matter how bad they are at it.
But likewise my experience in Iceland has been phenomenal. Experienced, educated teachers who specialise in pre-school education backed up by really caring support staff. And the schools are packed full of fun things to do and healthy food.
The day these day care facilities reopened (May 11th) was a good day.
I don't doubt the professionalism of the people who work there, in fact I have a high opinion of them, but I think it's simply physically impossible to provide the kids with the care and stimulation they need with that kind of adult-to-child ratio. My kid demands an amount of attention that just couldn't be provided by 1/8th of a person before 1 year old or 1/13th of a person now that he's 1.
I suppose the solution ends up being strapping them to some bouncy seat or hypnotizing them with screens. And when it's meal time, just try to give them the food for 5-10 minutes and if they didn't eat much, bad luck. I can't blame the professionals because what can you do if you are alone with that amount of babies/kids? But that's something I don't want for him, I definitely think he's better at home where he can get more attention.
I suppose in Sweden the ratios will be much better, which of course changes everything.
under 1: max 3 per adult
1–2: 5 per adult
2–4: 8 per adultWhen I have my kids full-time, time with them is a balancing act between being actively engaged and trying to enrich their lives and just trying to keep them alive while I knock out other stuff that has to be done. My youngest is still a toddler, and much of his experience of being at home is me chasing him around the apartment taking (almost) everything away from him. He loves going to day care where he's in an environment that's designed around him and where he's allowed to mess with just about anything he wants to. I'm skeptical that I'm worse in that regard than a "median" parent.
In practice, very few stay-at-home parents dedicate all of their children's waking hours to their kids.
When childcare closed across Europe due to the pandemic, I've seen a lot of my friends with kids turning from oh so "concerned" parents to people in survival mode who suddenly don't mind their kids having sugary food in the evening or watching yet another TV show if that is what makes them happy:
It's one thing to hand the nanny a list of things to do or to avoid, it's another thing to prepare gluten-free, vegan food 3 times a day while also making sure the little one does the preschool-level introductory course to quantum physics.
> Parents have an animalistic, senseless love for the children, which confuses themselves with the child all the time, the educator has respect, and this is much more valuable for education, even if there is no love present at all. I repeat: valuable for education, because even though I call parental love animalistic and senseless, that does not value it lowly, it is just as much a unknowable mystery as the artful, creative love of the educator, only in the context of education however it cannot be valued low enough.
Your argument could easily be used to argue against anything in our service based society. From schooling to dentists.
> The Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program
> Past research documents the persistence of positive impacts of early life interventions on noncognitive skills. We test the symmetry of this finding by studying the persistence of a sizeable negative shock to noncognitive outcomes arising with the introduction of universal child care in Quebec. We find that the negative effects on noncognitive outcomes persisted to school ages, and also that cohorts with increased child care access had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life. Our results reinforce previous evidence of the central role of the early childhood environment for long-run success.
https://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/kmilligan/research/BGM-childcare...
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170603
Edit: Here’s a decent explainer for anyone who doesn’t want to read the whole paper. https://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/how-to-unde...
> After a few years, there’s no distinguishing between a child whose performance was improved (or worsened) by daycare and one who did not go to daycare.
Is this potentially because most schools are aimed at "middle of the road" kids, kids who come in with more experience / skills / knowledge spend a couple of years just reviewing and waiting for the other kids to catch up?
Not arguing against the findings, just trying to explore alternate hypotheses.
I’m not an expert in the field but it’s an interesting question. It seems like a lot of research on childhood interventions converges around cognitive capacities being pretty innate, but socialization or behaviour being more affected by environment.
It’s a tough one to test empirically, of course, since it would involve taking gifted children and sending half of them to personal tutors and enriching experiences and the other half to, well, “regular” school.