2024 UK politics - now with Labour in charge
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Roughly started changing in the 80s when it became more culturally normal for women to work full time in , rather and not just in support staff roles. That has obviously accelerated since.
Interestingly, a lot of the productivity growth since the 80s has come, in part, because women who weren't earning now are. Incomes for fathers in the US grew roughly 6% from 1980-2018 - instead women entering the workforce added a tonne of productivity and household earnings.
There is an argument that part of the Western stagnation is that the gains from underemployed women entering the workforce from the 80s-00s have largely been achieved.
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Has it occured to you that the 'spurious reasons' children are being sent home for are part of the nursery caring for the other children? You get parents sending their kids in knowing they are unwell and the nursery then has to send them home to protect the other kids in their care. I've got no current skin in the game either way as my youngest is now 21 but do have a bit of knowledge of what's involved from when my wife was a nursery manager (one of my sisters was also a supervisor at a day care nursery before moving into a school). It's not like they're just left feral whilst the staff sit around having coffee. Everything is scheduled, for children under two there are no more then 3 children to a staff member.
If you have groups of children together at that age they don't always behave as you would like, they're learning acceptable boundaries so things like biting happen until they learn that isn't acceptable. Obviously, if they are on their own at home that doesn't happen unless they bite a parent. I would argue that's a part of the process of growing up and learning social boundaries.
It's not like (many) people are chucking their kids into day care to give themselves an easier life. You're in the fortunate position that you could assess what works best for you on the childcare v working front and that involved your wife staying home which is your choice and for best solution for you. Would you have come to the same conclusion had that required you giving up your career? For others the finances might not stack up and it may be that working full time just to have a couple of hundred a month left after child care is the difference between being able to cover the bills or not. We had the irony of my wife returning to work looking after other kids whilst my eldest was in a different room of the same nursery a few days a week for the first year or two!
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Not disagreeing with any of this tbh, though I would suggest some nurseries are quicker to send children home than others. I'd also add under 3s are not social beings. They're not cognitively able to be so. They need sufficient supervision for the biting not to happen.
It shouldn't have to be a luxury to have a choice! I agree!
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Up to the 70s as I recall. Not so sure about the 80s on. When I was growing up none of the mothers worked, and that included a wide range of incomes for the fathers from labourers to dentists.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
My mother worked part-time certainly from when I went to school. We also had a couple of au pairs which I think were before I went to school. (I'm the youngest of 3, with the eldest being 5 years older than me).
Most of my friends mothers worked part time too. I don't really recall m(any) stay at home mums, but the early 70s is quite a long time ago now!
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Lastly, I do think the impacts of large amounts of children going through nursery 0-3, as outlined in the blog BB linked, is really not looked at, and it's not talked about at all.
I think, ultimately, this is because the cost-of-living situation we have put parents into is such that there is so little choice, why bother discussing it?
I do wonder if there is a correlation between children starting fulltime care as babies and the reported increases in behavioural problems at school. These things are hard to tease out as there are so many other factors. But you can't discuss it with anyone as they all take it personally....
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I think if you are working part time and hiring au pairs then that is a lifestyle choice rather than a financial decision.
Same applies to childcare today. Choose as you please but there will be consequences.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
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My mother started working part time in the 1960’s once my younger started school. This was same for lots of the kids at my school, usually if your mother didn’t work you were middle class.
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Here, have some data on the topic: https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/BN234.pdf
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That data only seems to cover from 1975.
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So in 1975, the majority of women in the 25 to 54 age bracket were working (57%). In 2017 that had risen to 78%.
That is not surprising given how many glass ceilings have been smashed, and the general expectation of having a career of some sort for both sexes.
Also peoples expectations around living standards have altered dramatically in the same period with foreign holidays being the norm now as just one example.
That's not to dispute that things aren't hard for young parents, but it has never been easy for them either.
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Side point: foreign holidays have got remarkably cheaper - so much so that I know people who holiday abroad because it's cheaper than going on holiday in the UK. It's not the status symbol you think it is!
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Oh dear. Wait until you have to finance the Chasey's obligatory California road trip!
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Sure, some foreign holidays have become cheaper, and cheaper relative to holidaying in the UK. But you're not quite comparing what I have tried to show.
In the 1970s, many people's holiday (if they had one) was a couple of weeks in a shitty caravan or 'hut' on a shitty holiday camp. How many would put up with that now? Even the likes of Butlins are nowhere near as shite as they once were.
A decent holiday is now the expectation and the norm, which it wasn't 45+ years ago.
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I'm obviously not an expert but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that any increases in behavioural issues amongst school aged kids is because of a higher prevalence of sub-standard parenting when the kids are at home e.g. ubiquitous use of "gadgets" and failure to enforce suitable "boundaries".
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Like I said, plenty of factors. If you think parenting standards are dropping, what do you think is causing that?
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If you read the article I posted it explains the link. It is based on averages, so is not certain. Essentially less adult attention leads to more aggressive interaction between kids.
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This, for me, is the key point that is arguably the foundation of all the discussions we have around housing, jobs, productivity, healthcare, raising children etc. Expectations and living standards have risen dramatically. A a society we are better educated, more connected through the internet age, job choices/lifestyle choices and expectations that go along with that are far higher. Ultimately this leads to people wanting more and paying more to get it which pushes the price of all material goods and services up, usually outstripping wage growth.
I am not saying there is anything wrong with that, but ultimately as any society develops and living standards and societal norms evolve and improve, it generally also leads to increasing inequality as fewer peoples wages grow enough to meet ever increasing living costs.
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Parents spending too much time on social media or watching on-demand telly?
But taking a step back, kids being in childcare from a young age is not a new thing in the UK, yet behavioural standards are currently falling. So the age kids start nursery (constant over the last generation or so) isn't an obvious driver of current declines in behaviour.
So it has to be the parents.
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To be fair, it's marginally more interesting than the 'dissolution of the monasteries' debate.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]3 -
I wonder what "worse behaviour" means in practice. In my experience of professional life, the people who really get on are the "unreasonable" ones who won't take no for an answer, who take credit for others' work and dump work on others etc. The well behaved folk don't tend to make it so far. So may being trained to behave mildly badly from a young age is in a child's best interests (if not the folk who look after them at nursery).
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Having friends who are teachers (many in some of the most deprived LEA's in England) this generally means verbal abuse of both teachers and classmates, refusal to do work or disrupt others work, all the way up to physical violence.
I can't comment myself not being a teacher or a parent, but my friends who are teachers generally lay the blame on lack of boundaries set at home which is then brought into the classroom. School discipline and what is now acceptable also greatly differ from when any of us were at school, so those who are disruptive feel the consequences for their repeated bad behaviour are minimal (I.e. it is nigh on impossible to exclude a kid these days).
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🙁 Disappointed you didn't pick up on the Henry VIII was a proto-leftie vibe. Granted more Nicolas Maduro than Keir Starmer.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Re boundaries, the thing I found hardest long term as a parent, and still find hard even though the offspring are in their 20s, is having to be a parent rather than a "mate" to said offspring. Sometimes they really do have to be told that despite what their friends may have told them or what they've seen on the internet, telly or at school, something is just not acceptable, despite being seemingly innocuous etc. And if the parents don't tell the kids, they will likely learn the hard way from employers, the rozzers etc.
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I'm tempted to start a parenting (and grandparenting) thread. More interesting to me than cars, not least as I get to borrow some nice ones and play with their brains, but as I give them all back before close of play and generally don't get vomited on, but it does seem to deserve a thread of its own... Pinno would approve, obvs.
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Good idea Brian. Some say that children are a bit like farts - you can just about stand your own.
[Edit: just seen that you've already started a new thread 👍️]
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0
