Quote:
Originally Posted by xrayagent
In America, our consumerist culture pushes both mother and father to work, except for the rather well off. Poor folks work to make ends meet, middle class works to have just a little bit more…whatever it is they think they need. Thus, is the need for childcare created, even for very young children. Poor folks often have a network of friends and family that share the chore of caring for a group of children (as is the case in the rural community in which I teach.
My wife and I had very differing views of daycare. My early life was split between daycare and my grandparent’s home; in her life, her mom quit work to raise three children, as did her sister-in-law. When our kids were born, she took off the maximum allowed time off (3 to 4 months).
As a teacher, I take care of the kids after school, and for almost two months off in the summer. My kids are in a daycare run by the school system for which I work, so I feel very confident about it. When we were looking, however, we did go to a few places that were only slightly above a crack house; one was run out of a family’s basement and the other out of an old convenience store; there were very few windows and I didn’t want to leave the kids in a cave!
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I have to wonder if it`s really the "consumerist culture". Japan is just as, if not more, consumerist. Everyone buys the newest things. These things are "necessary". But yet the country isn`t in the same sort of situation as the US. I think it really lies in a fundamental ignorance of how to manage your money properly... That and the outrageous places people spend the money they do have.
If everyone took a step back and really thought about where their money was going and what they could do to live a better life, a lot fewer people would be in the type of situations they are in.
This doesn`t really apply to truly poor people - those who can barely scrape by at all - but with the middle class, I have come to believe that intelligence is one of the largest divisions between leading a comfortable life and not.
I have seen people (in the US, mind you) who make far MORE than my husband does a year... Who are in credit card debt up to their necks, and who can`t seem to find enough money to fill the refrigerator, let alone buy new electronics... Whereas we are leading an extremely comfortable life, and have even bought a very nice condo. Debt? Only our mortgage.
It is really a mystery to me.
Back to the subject of daycare - My son has never been in daycare. We went around to a few here when we were thinking about the preschool programs a lot of them offer. I`m not working, or at least not enough to actually NEED daycare, so we`re not eligible for the city-run nurseries. My son has had a lot of serious medical problems, and is quite behind in his development, so we were advised that he may benefit from a "structured" environment when he has a lot of chances to interact with other children...
They were all impeccably clean, and had full licensed staff (as in people who graduated from a real childcare training school), and were generally all very nice. The main differences were where the children spent their outdoor play time. One place had a large terrace, one had a huge yard, another had a large balcony, and another took the children to the park.
And these were the low-cost end of the scale. I can`t possibly imagine the type of daycares that exist in the US ever existing here.