zlacker

I appreciate your optimism but I’m skeptical. I dated someone who worked in child care (with a degree in ECE). She was quite miserable caring for a dozen screaming babies all day. I think the burnout and turnover for such a job (which requires a degree but still paid minimum wage) is likely to be extremely high.

The other thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the economics of it. The pay for the staff is very low but the cost of service to parents is very high. That means so much of the cost is overhead which would make the whole thing quite unsustainable, even when ostensibly covered by the government.

I live in Canada and a similar issue is occurring with our universal health care system. The costs are skyrocketing even as wait times are increasing.

>>chongl+(OP)
Burnout and turnover for teachers are also like that, so it's what you'd expect? maybe they can unionize like teachers though

>>nemoma+Z
It sounds like she was a poor fit, or the child care center sucked.

Try to find one that has long average tenure (10+ years, if possible).

>>chongl+(OP)
This is some weird logic. "I dated someone that didn't like to work on child care and therefore I don't think universal childcare is a good idea".

Yeah, I dated someone that was a teacher and didn't like her job. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't provide education to kids.

>>chongl+(OP)
Maybe babies aren't meant to be cared for a dozen at a time? But no, we have to "scale" child-rearing, just like we have to scale everything for greater growth numbers. \s

>>chongl+(OP)
What sort of huge overhead is there that dwarfs the pay for low-paid staff?

>>nemoma+Z
I feel like unionizing really hasn't done much for teachers. They're paid poorly, the conditions are still poor, they don't seem to get much help.

Yay teacher's union?

>>duxup+p9
Teachers union(s) are some of the highest profile anti union targets in the US as well. There’s also issues on a structural level that leads to poor compensation for teachers vs other government positions.

Really school funding and public education in the US in general is in a very strange place across the board and has been for decades

>>no_wiz+Nc
Maybe I'm missing something but I haven't seen a lot of teacher unions being broken so I'm not sure what you mean.

The results for a given teacher are poor no matter what the reasons, it's a bad "hey get a union" rallying cry IMO.

>>LgWood+h5
Most likely profits of the daycare owners + pay for the magagement (the director or whatever) + rent for the location.

>>ambica+05
I would expect larger groups of young children to require more even ratios of care takers. I don't know if 3 care takers per 12 children is enough for instance, but I've got a feeling 9 care takers for 36 children is not enough.

>>hedora+n3
Sure, if the place paid everyone a lot and had much higher staff:child ratios then everything would be great. Except it would cost an absolute fortune for parents thus even less viable under a government program.

Government programs almost universally have higher overhead and more waste than private businesses. There is no incentive for government employees to improve efficiency, reduce budgets, or cut costs.

>>chongl+ko
We didn’t notice a positive correlation between teacher tenure and cost when we looked around.

If anything, there was a negative correlation: The big corporate ones had high teacher turnover, more levels of administration, and turned a healthy profit for ownership/shareholders. They were priced to match.

Also, government run programs usually are less expensive (take pretty much any privatization program anywhere as an evidence). The government programs don’t have to pay money to shareholders, and aren’t siphoning resources for expansion, marketing, etc.

If government leadership is corrupt as we see in the US right now, then, of course, prices skyrocket, though that usually comes hand in hand with outsourcing/subcontractors/privatization. It’s hard to collect bribe money from civil servants…

>>LgWood+h5
- Extra-staffing of floaters to be able to give staff breaks or handle staff sick days or workers quitting - Taxes - Insurance - Administrative staff to handle billing and compliance - Facilities -- Rent, maintenance, HVAC. Adding to this, the facility might have to use expensive first floor space because the regulation requires them to be able to easily evacuate kids who can't down stairs on their own. - Profits/Owner-operator salary (anyone who can own and operate a successful high-quality day-care with five classrooms could command 6 figures salary on the private market)

>>unders+ei
Depends on the state. My state is 1:3 for under 2, 1:6 for 2-3, and then 1:10 for 3-5. Presumably after that you're out of child care and into school. Ratios get more complex when it's a mixed group, but most childcare centers are going to have children separate based on age.

These ratios seem reasonable to me. Much better than the 1:25 in elementary school.

>>ambica+05
Babies, just like adults, are extremely social animals. And they absolutely need to interact with a bunch of other people their age, even more than us. Daily, and for a long period of time. An hour at the park doesn't cut it, and being all day with a sibling doesn't either.

So beyond everyone going back to a Neolithic way of life and living in a bunch of straw teepees all bundled close together, daycare is the best solution I've found to this need.

Just as an example, my oldest has been besties with another kid since they were both 7 months old.

>>papyru+dT
As a counter-example, neither of my kids really acknowledged other kids in any way at that age (and other infants ignored them right back). A quick Internet search suggests it's normal for them to not interact with other kids until after 12+ months. This was a point of contention with my wife and MIL because my MIL would complain we weren't "socializing" our oldest enough when she was an infant despite clearly never having looked up anything about childhood development.

That and we did take her out all the time. She just wasn't in daycare. The thing about stay-at-home parents is they don't literally stay at home all day.

>>chongl+(OP)
Twelve is a quite high ratio of children to carer. In Sweden what is considered a healthy ratio is 5:1, and many places do meet that rate or are very close to it. 10:1 would be considered a very poor daycare, and most people wouldn't want to put their children on it — only if they have no other choice.

Regarding pay being bad this happens over here as well, unfortunately. Teaching in general is not paid as much as it is worth.