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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

That's another challenge for parents. Books are expensive and take up space. Lego and various other toys are also expensive, take up space, and children constantly need reminders to pack it up. Arts and craft quickly dominate spaces and lead to disputes over which child made all the mess. Contrast with reading on an app like Libby (free, no bookshelves), playing Minecraft (cheap, no pack-up), or digital art/puzzles.

Digital equivalents are pushed in every workspace. Scrawling unnecessarily on paper would be frowned on as wasteful in the average office. Sending a paper letter instead of an email is rare.

I'm not arguing that there aren't advantages of physical books, board games, and literal painting, but doing things the "right way" is clearly more expensive, less space efficient, and uses up more time packing up. It all influences parenting decisions.

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Books aren’t expensive if you teach them about the library

Assuming there's one within walking distance for the kid.

Why wouldn't there be one within walking distance, or even driving distance (assuming most people would want to drive their kids to nourishing activities)?

You must live in a wealthy place.

In my experience in most places libraries are not common. They use lots of space and money, that usually is needed for more important things like building sewers in neighborhoods that have none.

I live in the US, in the Midwest. However it seems that the average distance to a library across the country is around 2-5 miles.

While probably too far to walk for the average American, it's certainly not too far as to be unreachable.

That's fair, but if you have a library card and the Libby app, you can queue and borrow e-books for free and without leaving the house or remembering returns. My kids borrow from their school library but also read on Libby a reasonable amount. I use the Books app. My wife reads on Libby as much as she reads physical books. If we go away for a week, it's easier to pack an old phone or Kindle than a stack of books when the older kids can get through 2-3 novels a day.

> That's another challenge for parents. Books are expensive and take up space. Lego and various other toys are also expensive, take up space, and children constantly need reminders to pack it up. Arts and craft quickly dominate spaces and lead to disputes over which child made all the mess. Contrast with reading on an app like Libby (free, no bookshelves), playing Minecraft (cheap, no pack-up), or digital art/puzzles.

No, at least no for most folks in western world. If you make your life hard on purpose living far away from civilization for whatever reason then yes you created your own challenges, but that's on you and you dragged rest of your family into it.

We have tons of libraries around, what kind of developed society would ignore such an important place? We also have 'ludotheques' which are literally for kids and also have various rental toys. And we live in small village, surrounded by other small villages. Complaining books take space... thats just sad, not commenting on that one.

Lego / Duplo are amazing (we bought 2 full sack of potatoes worth of original used duplos for like 50 or 100 bucks, with massive train setup), kids love it, but if you list as an issue that kids actually have to clean up after themselves, it becomes pretty obvious problem lies elsewhere (rest of your comment says so too). Parenting is hard, moreso these days, but its also massively due to the fact many parents simply don't do good parenting, they can't suffer even a bit for their kids because they are oh-so deep in their comfort zones or feeling important or whatever. Rather few teach discipline which is one of the most important skills for their future life success regardless of their path, and it shows pretty much immediately. But folks without discipline themselves probably can't teach one. More often than not they are glued to screens even in front of their kids. I am literally naming various shitshows and their direct causes we see around us across few countries and societies.

What kind of hobbies and passions do kids have? How did you invest yourself into developing those passions? What kind of role model are you for them? Thats completely parent responsibility, schools will never supplant that and its not their purpose (the fact that good teachers often end up as huge parental figure in their pupil's lives just shows what they have at home, have a friend a teacher on private school for very rich and influential people in Geneva, Switzerland and stories he tells me about 6-7 years old who like him much much more than their own dad with 7 lamborghinis...). And so on.

But if parent's mode is career and money first or general me-first and kids leave my precious free time alone then its always the same sad story at the end.

Get off your high horse. We should be thankful these parents even bit the bullet and had kids in the first place. With the way demographics are going, I’m only half kidding

"We have tons of libraries around, what kind of developed society would ignore such an important place?"

Libraries in much of the developed world are seeing decline. The problems of American libraries are often reported on HN. As an OpenStreetMap editor working across small-town Europe, the library is one of those pieces of community infrastructure I go look for first, but I have seen firsthand how they have been shut down, or opening hours may have been slashed to e.g. just a couple of hours on two days of the week. In cities library locations get merged when budgets are an issue, and while occasional big new central library projects are approved, they are a different kind of facility than the library of yore.

My kids have loads of Lego, hundreds of books (plus library access), and rooms full of art supplies. They're well travelled, very knowledgeable, outdoorsy and more.

I'm talking about how small decisions influence parenting in general, including habits of busy or lazy parents, and how it's changed over recent decades. When I was young, consoles were barely a thing, so you played with construction toys and board games - everyone did. You couldn't read on a Kindle or app. There wasn't Procreate and a stylus. My point is that the modern equivalents are often very engaging (Minecraft, as one example), space efficient and affordable. When things are often easier and cheaper, people tend to roll downhill towards them.

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