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Comment by bitcurious | Hacker News Reader

> A friens of mine is kindergardener, and he came close to quitting, as his illusions of what his job is were utterly shattered, as it became clear that many parents did not care about the safety of their own and other kids or about the staff.

This framing assumes that the teaches had an accurate risk assessment, and the parents didn’t, but in retrospect we have seen that depriving kids of socialization was much more damaging to the kids than covid exposure was. This conclusion was reached by the majority of developed nations, whose schools either didn’t shut down or reopened months before schools in the US.

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That was not the motivation the teacher is talking about, and it's more something we can now understand better. During lockdown, parents just wanting to get rid of their kids part-time was the issue.

>>> It also revealed some interesting things about social contracts, about who is really essential for the functioning of a society and how little we value them. A friens of mine is kindergardener, and he came close to quitting, as his illusions of what his job is were utterly shattered, as it became clear that many parents did not care about the safety of their own and other kids or about the staff. People just wanted to get rid of their kids and they hated being alone with them as much as they hated being alone with themselves.

> That was not the motivation the teacher is talking about, and it's more something we can now understand better. During lockdown, parents just wanting to get rid of their kids part-time was the issue.

The framing in this thread is pretty uncharitable. Kids, especially young kids, need a lot of attention. It's a full time job, and most parents weren't in a position to quit their jobs in order to focus on it. As I understand it, pandemic parenting was basically trying to do two full-time jobs at once. Most parents want do do right by their kids, but their capitalist bosses were unlikely to accept a major drop in job performance. Basically, they were stuck between a rock an a hard place.

Our two income household society is setup to so parents absolutely require childcare. It's unfair to change that into a moral failing of parents.

> It's a full time job, and most parents weren't in a position to quit their jobs in order to focus on it.

Exactly. Women fought for their equal right to work. The lost time is made up with places to stuff kids into, instead of parents working both 50%.

But it also won't change if we just continue on like that. I mean it's just bullshit to get kids, then give them into kindergarten/childcare as soon as they are 6month old or something, this whole concept sucks.

> But it also won't change if we just continue on like that. I mean it's just bullshit to get kids, then give them into kindergarten/childcare as soon as they are 6month old or something, this whole concept sucks.

Except to capitalists. Capitalists love it. They've got twice the workers competing for jobs, can price the same stuff higher because households have more income, and they have a whole new non-discretionary product (daycare) to sell.

Of course, they're not know for thinking long term.

> This framing assumes that the teaches had an accurate risk assessment, and the parents didn’t, but in retrospect we have seen that depriving kids of socialization was much more damaging to the kids than covid exposure was.

A few thoughts in response to that:

1. This is not the assessment of my friend at all. His kindergarden, btw. remained open during the whole pandemic and the parents that made him question his life choices were the once who sent their kids despite clear symptoms. So the children that have been deprived of socialization we are talking about here, are the ones who were ill. Something that happened to literally every generation there ever was.

2. In that moment the risks that were weighed against each other weren't just about the kids. Kids were one of the biggest contributers to the reproductive factor of the virus. So the choice was between moderating that R-factor so it is smaller than 1.0 and have the infection numbers go down or having it above 1.0 and risk saturating the health system (which can only handle so many infected people at once), which would also risk the lives of totally unrelated people who never got infected with Covid at all, but had chronic illnesses or accidents.

So on a level of "humanity VS virus" it was pretty clear that A) reducing the R rate till effective vaccines got distributed is a good strategy and that B) we had to ensure a good balance with the side effects of said reduction measures. At least where I live children have been the hottest discussed topic and every measure that affected them was very carefully (some would even say: too carefully) chosen.

Now we could do the math and calculate how many human lives that would translate too and then pose the question whether the "business as usual for kids" is truly the ethical right choice, given it clearly pumped up up the R factor and all that. On the one track you potentially have kids with psychological problems (back then this was just a guess) and on the other side with near mathematical certainty a pile of corpses, which are all older.

Now this is a hard ethical question and all depends on just how badly you predict those kids are affected, and how high that pile of corpses is going to be — but let's not forget there is always the benefit of hindsight.

Back then it was quite clear what had to be done to beat that virus. The matter of discussion was just whether individuals and organisations were willing and able to do it. Many were able, but not willing.

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