Even the best daycare is going to devote only a fraction of the instruction/attention to any individual child.
If your approach as a parent is to give "the kid" ice cream and electronic distractions, I think you should seriously reevaluate your priorities.
The daycare worker certainly wouldn't run in front of a bus to protect my kid, which I'd do in a heartbeat. But that's not a day-to-day need.
* in the stranger sense of the word.
Plus all the teachers at Sandy Hook who gave their lives protecting their students.
Those two are just off the top of my head. The willingness to put one's self in danger for others isn't exclusive to parents.
I'd agree that it makes intuitive sense that childcare could do better than exhausted working parents, and possibly even emotionally drained stay-at-home parents, but another poster pointed out that this study seems to say "people who can afford daily childcare have children with better outcomes" -- which might correlate pretty closely with "wealthier people's kids have better outcomes", which the research already told us.
As an aside, these kinds of discussions (where HN talks about the world's social problems) are the second reason I come to HN. I'll get exposed to great worldviews, from generally smart people, expressed by people who speak my language.
And child care, together with the possibly related problem of currently worse outcomes for children of single-parent families, are social problems that are potentially immensely valuable for society to solve.
Well, technically I guess I can't disagree with you because you said 'care... more', but I assume you meant that to also mean 'care... better', which is about as wrong as it gets. Why would anyone instinctively know what's 'best' for a child's development, let alone better than trained professionals in a professionally build environment? There are tens (hundreds, more likely) of thousands of people working every day to understand how children develop best, and convert that into actual practice. It doesn't stand the smell test to say that all that is nonsense because parents somehow know better.
The other aspect is how much love children get, and yes of course nobody loves children like their parents. But again there is no reason to think that just 'being loved in close proximity', say, 4 hours a day + weekends is worse than having a parent around 24/7. Nor does 'love' equate 'stimulate good development'. If you are going to claim that in the 'good old days' when children were at home all day with mom they would be doing crafts and nature education and going to playgrounds with equipment designed to stimulate activity in a safe environment, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale that you might be interested in.
My sister ran an after school program for mostly disadvantaged kids and I am certain that she cared for and about her children more than some of their parents. Not all, just some.
You see examples of extended family stepping in all the time making sure children are cared for and their needs met when the parents are doing a horrible job.
Unfortunately we do not live in an idealized world like many might believe, otherwise there wouldn't be infanticide, honor killings, child abuse, child neglect, child abandonment, etc., etc.
I'm not sure what my point is other than "some people's experiences are different from yours." (I'm sure you knew that, just chiming in with my story as a counterpoint)
That statement is useless because it is a tautology. If the parents don't care about or for their children (and trust me, many, many don't) according to you by definition they must have a "psychological abnormality." Being a selfish dick is a bad trait but "psychological abnormally" is going quite far. There's plenty of selfish dicks in the world who couldn't give a rat's ass about their children, including deadbeat dads (or moms) and others. Only in an idealistic, fantasy world do parents universally care for and about their children.
Many people who care about their children are very aware they don't have the ability to care for their children. That's a big reason why adoption (family adoption and stranger adoption) exists. The gender role assumption is pretty weird too. Some people have two fathers and an unknown egg donor for example - do these children have less care than someone with two heterosexual parents? Or do two moms trump a mom and a dad?
BUT kids are super exhausting and demanding and if you are worn out you won't be able to help them much either. I tried not to bring up my kid the way you describe, but I have to say there were plenty of times when I did the equivalent (no iPads or TVs in our case but essentially much the same). He came out fine.
There is no perfect system and what works for one doesn't necessarily work for someone else.
When I'm home with my three kids, my instinct is to think of the skills that will aid them later in life and work on that through various levels of play. Often that's sports - practicing basketball, baseball or whatever sport they happen to be doing at the time. Other times that's academics where if I know they're having a problem with sight words or multiplication I will work on that with them. Sometimes it's just playing video games together.
Looking back on being a father I think to the things that they do on a daily basis and remember, "My wife and I taught them to do that." All the time spent working with them on crawling, walking, talking and everything since then has created fantastic memories I wouldn't trade for anything.
This amuses me. With things like that (crawling/walking/talking) I let my kid find his own way, in his own time. I have no intention of helping him with anything like it, or from school, ever - unless he asks.
What I do do with my son is play. Building radio control cars. Jumping on car hoods/bonnets in a scrapyard. Lego. Jumping in puddles. Flying kites. Making fires. Going on the odd helicopter ride. Concerts...
He will spend such a silly amount of his life being a student that my mission is for him to just be a boy. Without the spectre of under- or over-achievement. No judgement, regardless of his performance. Because no matter what, he is, and will always be, enough.
Everything you listed under your play I've done with my three kids with the exception of jumping on hoods in a scrapyard. I could add endlessly to the list including stop motion animation, working with electronic circuits, learning to dive, etc, etc.
I think essentially we agree; the time a child spends with his parents should be the best time for both the child and the parents.
Not thread parent, but parent nonetheless :) I'd say the ideal response would be ignoring that error but instead replying with "I caught the ball" in an appropriate situation. Kids learn languages by example, all we have to do is give good examples. Correcting "catched/ caught" puts focus on the error, not on the dozens of cases where grammar was fine. If done too often (e.g. not what you described), that can actually impede learning, as the kid could develop a self-perception of being constantly wrong.
In general the pedagogical ideal is creating a setting where learning can take place by itself. The role of the teacher is reduced to designing the setting. Your ball game example can be seen as such a setting: You two are just having fun together and talk about that, and the desired learning of the language just emerges out of the situation.
(I'm an eduactional scientist, so maybe at risk of over-theorizing trivial examples :) )
I like what you are doing with your son, though, I have similar goals for time with my kids.
Then well-meaning adults think to themselves, "how can I optimize this child's development? How can I make every hour spent with him be at least 70% utilized in order for him to develop fully? What can I do to make him better than my friends kids, and especially to avoid becoming an underachiever?"
Maybe children know best how to play. And indirectly know what's the path of least resistance for them to learn about themselves and the world.
Disclaimer: IANAP
Potentially more so than a tired daddy and mommy, yes.
>> I am curious why you think a 22 year old on near minimum wage cares more about engaging with your daughter
>> I am still surprised that rainier thinks that a 22 year old paid to look after his daughter cares more about her than him and his wife.
Maybe that's what you thought, but that's not what you wrote.
The same is true of stay-at-home parents. Some get exhausted after a few hours and others thrive in constantly nurturing and teaching their children.
Comparing the two isn't terribly useful unless you break it down further.
One unexpected upside is my wife spends so much time in the community it has really extended our circle of friends. The biggest downside, however, is I still get to enjoy half the chores because my wife is rarely home in the daytime(!) ;-)