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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

I personally find my weekends a bit exhausting because of my 5 year old, and get to relax at just doing my professional job on Monday when he is back to school. I fear that 3 day weekends every week (since we shouldn’t leave day care workers and teachers out of this) would be the end of me.

I’m sure my perspective will change after we are out of the needy kid stage, but even before my son was born, I liked working (I would spend Saturday mornings at work, obviously impossible now) and would carefully select jobs that I would like doing. In addition to, or besides, perhaps we could focus on creating and encouraging fulfilling jobs (to satisfy a wide variety of tastes) vs just cutting back days or hours worked?

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It's funny how the most honest groups of people with respect to the purpose of schooling is parents with young kids. Basically what you want is daycare and it just so happens that school fulfills that on Monday. Not judging, I think that's a very common perspective, but amused.

Parent (boys aged 6 and 9) here. At first I figured that school at that age (kindergarten) was basic skills, not very critical, and as you say mainly a way of getting kids out of the way.

With some experience now, I think that school provided more than I thought:

* socialisation

* authority outside of bfamily

* development of personality

* habit-forming for later school

.. aside from the fact that even if you're a good parent and have already exposed your kids to letters and numbers, you will likely not have ensure a complete coverage.

Example of importantance of school choice: my first son went to a regular public kindergarten and lost some of the autonomy he had built-up with us. Going to the bathroom was done together with an aide at school, so why not at home?

My youngest ended going to a Montessori kindergarten by accident. They focus a lot on autonomy and as a result he is very much 'his own boy', even at the age of 6.

And beyond kindergarten, even just in primary, the 'skills' part of school is difficult to do 'in-house' unless you spend a lot of time on it. There's a reason we applied Taylorism to education.

I guess it's amusing to you because you don't have children.

I think wanting daycare is totally reasonable though. I just think it'd be nicer if it didn't have to be school. Traditionally, multigenerational households would have helped with child rearing but now it's often pretty much entirely on the shoulders of the parents which I know would be extremely draining.

> Traditionally, multigenerational households would have helped with child rearing but now it's often pretty much entirely on the shoulders of the parents

It goes much further. In 90% of human societies up to 60 years ago, it was normal for children to spend a lot of time interacting with neighbors and others outside of the home and schools environments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village

Furthermore, the extreme forms of helicopter parenting where children are not even allowed to walk to school by themselves is very US-centric and very modern.

I agree. As a parent, I both want my kids to learn, and I want care for them so I can work. I think if we were more honest about both these needs, we could do better at both. I have seen a certain mania that schools are only for education, and it leads to crazy things like expecting five year olds to spend 45 minutes per day writing, or otherwise asking kids to sit and learn for a lot more of the day than they can really tolerate - as opposed to more outside time, more play time, more movement. It's ok to be a school and a daycare!

Semi-related, I know I'm responsible for deciding to have kids, but the ongoing functioning of society relies on a continuous supply of people to keep it running. I sure hope some people are still working after I retire! It would be nice if the U.S. could support parents more than we currently do.

That’s also why the “remote learning” during Covid was such an infuriating joke: the main purpose of schooling (which is daycare) was destroyed, and the learning was marginal at best. This is all while the elementary school children were at no risk from the disease, and while plenty of other “essential workers” were busy working their jobs in person. What a joke.

> This is all while the elementary school children were at no risk from the disease

First, that's untrue:

https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/covid-19/

Of course it's not even close to the death rate in adults, especially older ones, thankfully, but it isn't "no risk".

Second, the main reason for school closures was that the kids, even if there's very little risk for them, can transmit the disease to family and friends.

Nonetheless, some countries, like France, made the choice to keep the schools open to maintain some level of schooling for most kids. It wasn't without issues and massive criticism from teachers ( who were risking their lives to keep other people's kids occupied), parents ( because classes were closed when a kid got Covid to prevent further transmission, so you could suddenly have to deal with your kid), etc.

That link is a very complicated one that could mislead people due to the first numbers they see. The number of direct deaths of under 10s in developed countries who did not suffer from a serious congenital condition is essentially 0 (e.g. in the UK about 1 in 20k deaths were of a child under 10 and as far as I know they all had serious health conditions).

There's been an outbreak of hepatitis recently which has resulted in a number of deaths and is very probably Covid-related.

There's also a significant risk of Long Covid, although the details are still being debated.

Covid attacks the immune system and also hugely increases the risk of complications from micro-clotting. It's certainly not a disease to be casual about, in either kids or adults.

Note that long covid is MUCH more common in older populations. I'm unaware of a case of debilitating long covid in a child under 10.

I've got a toddler and already work 4 days week (Friday off). Daycare is 5 days a week, so it's great to have Fridays free to work on my side projects, read, go on small hikes - and when my wife is free - we take long lunches together etc.

As long as daycare / schooling remains 5 days a week, I think 4 days a week of work for parents is a fantastic idea.

But if we are working four days a week, why not daycare providers? They have jobs that are difficult as well, they would enjoy that extra day off. I just don’t see them staying open and working 5 days a week if everyone else are just working 4. Maybe with extra staff? But staffing is already impossible in that sector.

> why not daycare providers

Why not, why not? You don't need extra staff, you just need scheduling.

I was going to comment on that, I'd love to have a 3 days weekend but only if one of those weekends was to reconnect with my wife without the toddler.

> I fear that 3 day weekends every week (since we shouldn’t leave day care workers and teachers out of this) would be the end of me.

We could have different groups of people take off different third days. My preference would be to have Wednesdays off.

There's a short story "Chronopolis" by J.G. Ballard, about a future where society was separated by watches with different colors, and each color had a different time slot for things like commute, lunches, and when they could go to the bank...

If you really just want escape from life, then maybe more personal time is bad & lots of work time is good.

But I'd hope that for many parents, having a day with neither work nor childcare might be an opportunity, might be appreciated, might be a time, finally, where you can rediscover & do some you.

I love spending time with my kid, but it really is hard work. Taking care of my kid is my real job, the one I work for money is much easier to do. Weekends are exhausting, not really about rest, the week is much more relaxed. Many parents would say similar, is that surprising?

Daycare is great for the kid. The teachers can provide much more attention and direction on things that I simply can’t, and he really gets a leg up on social skills being with other kids, not just mom and dad. Spending long stretches at home with just mom and dad (and given COVID, without many play dates), he tends to become a bit wild…three day weekends or week offs aren’t just harder in a linear manner.

That all makes sense. Thanks for sharing. I guess I'm still interested in considering- how could your life be better if you did have some you time too? A lot of parents really lack any kind of time, it's always work or family, and it seems unreasonable in extreme to me; I really want to see a world where parents have some self time too.

I feel even worse for layering on more here, but I think, ultimately, one of the best things a parent can give their child is a sense of personhood. It's one of the slowest, least clear lessons, and the impact seems slow to naught, but having hobbies, doing things, having your own interests as a parent is setting a model of being interested in the world: of engaging yourself & demonstrating control & direction & volition. Parents- in living- to demonstrate what a self is.

That idea- of a world where we can visibly see others who are motivated, have intrinsic motivations desires and pursuits- beyond subsistence & survival- I think that's a keystone factor in the world, in what has made humanity enduring & interesting & capable. I worry after it, significantly. And I want, very much, for parents to have time & permission, for their self to continue to mature & engage, and to not just have to always be engaged, always be tending or working.

I have plenty of time & I spend a lot of it somewhat-inertly, so I can't expect too much from 1 day a week where there might be no work & not constant family. But I do have lots of pursuits, and they do help me shape myself, help me grow & see myself over time. I want very much everyone to have some option, some time to explore on this earth, engaging, not just being engaged.

<puts hockey coach hat on> Semi-off-topic, but did you try taking your kid to play ice hockey? It is one of the best sports for kids that have a lot of energy and need to shake it off. And they have so much padding it is really safe. Where I live we have lots of 5-6 year olds (and a few 3-4 year olds) who really enjoy it. Usually clubs have old kids equipment that you can borrow for the first couple of months while you try it out.

He takes soccer classes, will do basketball also in the fall. We are trying to pack his schedule with fun things to do as those things reopen. Going through the 3-5 stage during COVID wasn’t fun.

Sounds good :) Yeah, the lockdown periods were really hard on all the kids. It seems even the most die-hard "I hate school and it sucks forever" kids were openly admitting they missed going after a couple of weeks of online home school and being mainly confined indoors.

Plenty of people, me included, (males and/or high performance in particular) care more about things than people and will find extremely tiring to talk to people or take care or their kids. Coding doesn't tire me, dealing with kids does.

There are people who have the opposite experience and people who feel ok with both.

This idea that parents should uniquely and equally be caretaker for their kids is absolutely against biological reality for a lot of people; I'm happy to be around my kids for a limited amount of time (and the less they're toddlers the more I can spend with them without going insane) but my main contribution is providing them food, shelter and protection.

My mandated paternity leaves, while being economically advantageous, were an absolute nightmare.

This is besides the point you're making, but I personally feel that being a parent is mostly a ghost job. You need to figure out how to put the children in positions where they'll find things to play with themselves, and then let them do it.

For me, I just bring a package of crackers, some water, then go out in the streets with my kids, visiting nearby playgrounds or lots with trees. They'll then start playing, perhaps needing a little help getting started, and my involvement is mostly coming up with a plan for where to go next, and watching out for signs of exhaustion. So most of the time, I'm actually not active.

I also enjoy having limited help with say cooking or cleaning, but yeah, that's exhausting, because you need to multitask and both do the job and monitor their state and the job they are doing.

If you're doing it right, it's pretty boring. Kids need to play and you're just kind of hanging around the playground. Good opportunity for reading, or sometimes I listen to a podcast with one ear and keep the other one free for kids.

Mandated paternity leaves is to provide an equal part contributions towards children for both the mother and the father. Otherwise the mother take most of the hit ( as evidence in countries without it ).

It's also to create gender equality in the work place. If there's only maternity leave then hiring a woman of childbearing age has a higher risk for an employer than hiring a man. This leads to discrimination in the workplace with women having lower salaries, less access to interesting projects etc.. because the thinking goes that she is likely to become pregnant and have maternity leave.

In countries where men have mandatory paternity leaves that are significant this imbalance is greatly reduced.

Holy shit. Your motivation to spend time with your kid sounds terrible.

You could actually spend time on thinking what you could do with your kids.

Why did you get kids in the first place?

It seems to me like you actually don't want to be a parent?

To me it seems he doesn't like spending time with toddlers. It's a big jump from here to conclude that he doesn't want to be a parent. Toddlerhood is just a temporary state.

He literally said he cares more about things than people and his parental leave was a nightmare. To me it seems he just hates toddlers more than other people.

But even if what you say is true I'd still say he doesn't want to be a parent. You don't pick and choose with parenthood.

Many new parents always go through some depression when their first kid is just born, the life changes are drastic and sacrifices have to be made. My wife got hit with more of this than me, so I took a couple of years off of work to take care of our (then) baby so she could go back to work earlier (she just moved to the USA and was unemployed, and I just got laid off from YCR, so we got to make a choice). Always got to look out for the mental health of your partner, and judging isn’t very useful.

Work is definately an escape for alot of people.

A few individuals at my work when COVID hit it's first of many peaks/waves of March 2020, were forced to stop coming to the office.

They shutdown the office March 14, yet these people were still coming in March 31.

The reasons varried.

Children, family, environment, , lack of wfh infrastructure, personal challenges (one employee hit hard times and didn't have internet at home or mobile device, company hooked him up with mobile hot spot and mobile), and many more.

With my own personal home life challenges, working from home 3+ years now, I have sat in my home office "working" while I catchup on binge watching on days I am actually off (I work with clients in North America, i might work a stat holiday of one country, I might not, varies per holiday if they are on diff days -- I take of both Canada and USA thanksgivings).

I have a friend at work who sounds alot like your post. The only exception is he doesn't have a family/responsibilities really. Work is his hobby/life, shows up on his days off just to chit chat with friends at work(he does have friends outside of work). We joke he would sleep there if he could.

You need a hobby, something productive to do outside of work :) something I am struggling a little myself with

Day care centres near me already have their staff on shifts, or at least some people working part time and starting later than others, so that they can cover the extra couple of hours that parents doing a 9-5 would need to be able to do those hours + the journey from day care to their work and back. If they gave their staff less hours each, that would simply mean they'd need to employ more staff to give the same service.

Daycare centers where I live are already stretched thin with staffing. It is already becoming less accessible because they simply can’t hire enough workers, anyone who wants to work full time can easily do that. Minimum per kid staffing rules mean that the staffing problem can’t be solved by increasing productivity.

The only way they could employ more staff is by drastically increasing pay, but then daycare becomes even less accessible than it already is. It’s a huge mess that is probably unrelated to this proposal, but an excuse to go to 4 day a week schedules (because parents can fill in for 3) would probably be taken quickly.

You said it. Sometimes I can’t wait for Monday to roll around. Sometimes I daydream of just checking into a random hotel or airbnb and hide for half a day.

It's possible to have daycare/school workers working 4 day weeks but still have daycare/school be open 5 days a week

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