What is your plan for Grandparents, babysitters, childcare, or even the school system to help maintain no screens?
No screens seems awfully privileged in a way... maybe you're just Bill Gates
Not impossible.
https://www.businessinsider.com/screen-time-limits-bill-gate...
I think it's quite brash to say that it's "privileged" to raise children with no screens. Would you like to elaborate? People certainly existed without them.
I will cop to allowing him to watch a playlist of nature videos I’ve downloaded and watched through beforehand, on an old laptop, at times when I need to do something urgently without toddler assistance.
Otherwise, he can spend a good hour at the sink “washing” dishes with a trickle of water or attempting to sweep (ignoring his actual toys entirely!)
My husband grew up without a TV in the house in 70s-80s West Germany. His parents eventually got one, but it sits in a side room and is usually just turned on for the 8 o’clock news.
I asked my mother-in-law about this sacrifice on her part. Her answer? She didn’t think she’d have time to watch everything her kids were watching to make sure it was appropriate, so she took Alexander’s solution to that Gordian Knot - they simply sold their TV once their first child was a few months old.
My in-laws’ generation was glad to get enough to eat as children in postwar Germany; a TV was an unimaginable luxury until they were in their teens. She didn't feel like she was depriving her children of anything important.
My husband and his sister weren’t forbidden to watch TV at others’ houses, or to go to the movies. Neither of them ever wanted to buy one for themselves as teenagers or university students, and today, they both keep very quiet houses.
Result? They talk a lot when not sitting around reading. Guests at my in-laws are offered the contents of the decently-stocked magazine stand, a rotation of coffee table books, or if they’d like something from the bookshelves.
I grew up in a stereotypical American house with the TV on all the time, but started escaping it early to hole up in my room with a computer long before most people had internet access at home.
In some ways, I feel more at ease visiting my husband’s family than my own, despite a bit of a language barrier.
One might say there’s less of a lifestyle barrier.
My husband's family has much less money than my American relatives, so privilege has nothing to do with the fact that my German niece got her first dumbphone at 11, puts her school laptop away when her homework is finished and picks up one of her craft projects, and my American nephew has had his own iPad since he was 3, his own TV and AppleTV since he was about 6, and now a Roblox addiction.
Around the world it's quite common to have an extended family serve as a support network, especially around childcare. You're right though that maintaining no-screen when your child is with others is harder though, and finding how people deal with that was my main motivation for making this thread.
I understand that not everyone can live on one income. But more often I see in my circles people that can make it work, but choose not too because they don't want to make that career/financial sacrifice. Instead both parents work and send their kids to daycare. Of course that's totally their choice. I've made a different choice and perhaps this is an unpopular opinion this day and age, but I think it's the best choice if you can make it work financially and are willing to put in the effort that it entails.