Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well we are also a very mobile society which renders that not possible. And we tend to have children later, not at 21.
When I was growing up, my parents lived within 200 miles of our grandparents for only 6 months. And most of the time it was halfway across the country. My wife was different, but she grew up on a farm and lived in the same place until she was 18.
My wife's parents were halfway across the country when we had kids while mine were close. My mother helped take care of the kids for about 5 years, but at that point she was 75 and really too old for that. My wife's mother was semi-invalid in a nursing home at that point. And by the time our oldest was 7, we moved halfway across the country, so we couldn't even use my mother for baby-sitting.
When I think of some of my best friends when they had kids, one's mom was in her upper 80s and the father was deceased, another's mother was deceased and her father was hundreds of miles away, another had a deceased father and a mother a couple hundred miles away and a 4th had both parents deceased. None of them had children before 30.
Extended family is nice, but its just not possible for most people these days.
That mobility is basically reserved for middle class and above professionals.
I'm from a small city in Appalachia. Virtually all of my immediate family is nearby. Out of five aunts and uncles, none have lived outside the general area, about an hour or so. Only a couple of my first cousins do, and those who do got out of here when they went to college. I'm the only one of my cousins who still lives in this area who has a white collar job where I could reasonably find a job in another area, and then move.
A friend of mine that I went to high school with constantly posts about his financial problems on Facebook. He works as an auto detailer at a shop around here. His wife works in some pink collar position in a rural county court. That county doesn't pay well. They have two kids. They rent. My guess is they are making $50,000 - $60,000 together.
The grandparents help out with the childcare all the time by how they tag each other on Facebook.
People like this don't have a lot of cash to move. They depend on family members for childcare, and possibly financial assistance from time to time. They probably couldn't find a job ahead of time in another city. They'd struggle to find an apartment because they wouldn't have proof of employment/income.
My girlfriend and I are upper middle income. I work in IT remotely for a county government and she's in a supply chain office position in manufacturing. Combined, our income would be $170,000 - $180,000. She has kids, but they are both grown. She could probably find something elsewhere if we needed to move. We have at least $200,000 in equity between the two houses, probably pushing $250,000.
We have the resources to be able to afford to make those major life changes that would benefit kids. My friend and his wife really don't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnywhereElse
It all comes down to priorities. It is just that simple. Start paring down the budget to allow either affording the childcare or one parent working, or as has been suggested, work different shifts (we did when we adopted a baby with special needs and learned no one would accept him in their care). Later, we pared down the budget, and I was able to work part-time and/or call-in work while spending more time with both kids. I really like my kids, not just love them, and I really know them. We don't mind fixer-uppers, used cars and I was born genetically thrifty.
Children are a privilege, and it is the responsibility for the parents to plan wisely on how it will all come together. Far too many would not choose to be stay-at-home parents even if it was affordable. The amazing thing I learned long ago was that if there is a cost to something that one really feels justified in making, there is a way to get it done. The refrigerator broke years ago, $700 which was a lot of money. We got it, and I thought, if we could do that out of the blue, we could afford a Disney trip. Ten Disney World trips later, that was the right decision too. Tighten your belts, grit your teeth and figure it out!
It's easy to say it "comes down to priorities," but a lot of people end up having kids, then have to back whatever they have into a lifestyle now involving a child. It often doesn't work the other way around.
The median household income in my area is between $45,000 - $50,000, depending on what city you look at. That's not that much money even for a single person. Add a spouse and two kids in on an HHI of let's say $55,000 - $60,000. Unless they bought at least several years back, prices, rents, and now interest rates have skyrocketed lately, making housing difficult to afford on that income. There's only so much fat that you can cut.
I shop at Aldi and Walmart because they are the best options in town, but when you go there, it seems like every other person is paying with EBT cards. There are a lot of haggard, poor looking people. I'm sure most of these people want to do better for their families, but there aren't a lot of options here in terms of gainful employment.
1. That already happens via deductions on IRS 1040s for dependents.
2. Beyond that, it is not the job of the government to provide child care services or to subsidize childcare services. Not. The. Job.
There is a role for government in society, of course. Beyond appropriate regulation, it can be a legitimate job for the government to provide for public goods. Childcare services clearly do not fall in that domain, as childcare services are clearly private goods.
I agree childcare services are a clearly private good and not a government job.
However, it was the federal government policy to ship well-paying manufacturing jobs overseas. It was the federal government policy to drain Appalachia of its industries. It was the federal government policy to open borders since 1970's when increased the number of manual/minimum wage workers keeping hourly wages lower.
Further, it was the federal government policy to allow insurance companies prescribe opioids instead of physical therapy for work related injuries. These drug policies which have infected the poorest areas of the US.
Don't even get me started about the federal government's role in inflation and devaluation of the dollar with an expanding federal deficit! Are prices rising or our dollar has lost value? Whatever . . . . . . it's federal government policy along with the federal reserve.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Serious Conversation
I'm from a small city in Appalachia. Virtually all of my immediate family is nearby. Out of five aunts and uncles, none have lived outside the general area, about an hour or so. Only a couple of my first cousins do, and those who do got out of here when they went to college. I'm the only one of my cousins who still lives in this area who has a white collar job where I could reasonably find a job in another area, and then move.
A friend of mine that I went to high school with constantly posts about his financial problems on Facebook. He works as an auto detailer at a shop around here. His wife works in some pink collar position in a rural county court. That county doesn't pay well. They have two kids. They rent. My guess is they are making $50,000 - $60,000 together.
The grandparents help out with the childcare all the time by how they tag each other on Facebook.
People like this don't have a lot of cash to move. They depend on family members for childcare, and possibly financial assistance from time to time. They probably couldn't find a job ahead of time in another city. They'd struggle to find an apartment because they wouldn't have proof of employment/income.
My girlfriend and I are upper middle income. I work in IT remotely for a county government and she's in a supply chain office position in manufacturing. Combined, our income would be $170,000 - $180,000. She has kids, but they are both grown. She could probably find something elsewhere if we needed to move. We have at least $200,000 in equity between the two houses, probably pushing $250,000.
We have the resources to be able to afford to make those major life changes that would benefit kids. My friend and his wife really don't.
It's easy to say it "comes down to priorities," but a lot of people end up having kids, then have to back whatever they have into a lifestyle now involving a child. It often doesn't work the other way around.
The median household income in my area is between $45,000 - $50,000, depending on what city you look at. That's not that much money even for a single person. Add a spouse and two kids in on an HHI of let's say $55,000 - $60,000. Unless they bought at least several years back, prices, rents, and now interest rates have skyrocketed lately, making housing difficult to afford on that income. There's only so much fat that you can cut.
I shop at Aldi and Walmart because they are the best options in town, but when you go there, it seems like every other person is paying with EBT cards. There are a lot of haggard, poor looking people. I'm sure most of these people want to do better for their families, but there aren't a lot of options here in terms of gainful employment.
I'm probably going to be the only one to mention this - but unpaid leave flexibility would solve a lot of these problems. You may not be able to live on one income, but it's possible to live on 1.5 (or 1.6 or 1.7), in other words, one parent could take off when necessary, but still work when child care is available. For whatever reason, suggesting this is taboo, but I'm not going to let myself be deterred, since I really believe this needs to be said. Sure, living on 1.7 incomes is not as easy as 2 incomes, but it sure-as-all-get-out is nowhere near as hard as one income.
I'm probably going to be the only one to mention this - but unpaid leave flexibility would solve a lot of these problems. You may not be able to live on one income, but it's possible to live on 1.5 (or 1.6 or 1.7), in other words, one parent could take off when necessary, but still work when child care is available. For whatever reason, suggesting this is taboo, but I'm not going to let myself be deterred, since I really believe this needs to be said. Sure, living on 1.7 incomes is not as easy as 2 incomes, but it sure-as-all-get-out is nowhere near as hard as one income.
I believe that would help a lot. We had a bit of issue with flexibility at my place of employment and ended up losing a couple good employees because the boss would not be flexible in work hours after the birth of their children. He finally saw the light and started working with the mothers to juggle childcare issues.
For some reason parenting doesn't seem to affect father's employment.
I'm probably going to be the only one to mention this - but unpaid leave flexibility would solve a lot of these problems. You may not be able to live on one income, but it's possible to live on 1.5 (or 1.6 or 1.7), in other words, one parent could take off when necessary, but still work when child care is available. For whatever reason, suggesting this is taboo, but I'm not going to let myself be deterred, since I really believe this needs to be said. Sure, living on 1.7 incomes is not as easy as 2 incomes, but it sure-as-all-get-out is nowhere near as hard as one income.
This is an excellent suggestion and many companies already do this. I do this at our business, even for grandparents who need time off to help with their grandchildren.
Politicians, economists, and educators are citing two studies, the Perry Preschool Study and the Abecedarean Project, both of which followed low-income kids who’d received public preschool education. Both studies found enormous benefits in early education; the children who received it were much more likely to hold down jobs, have savings accounts, and stay out of prison than their non-preschool-educated counterparts. Soft skills learned in preschool—how to regulate emotions, how to work in a group—were shown to be helpful later in life and harder to train into people as they got older. Many economists, among them Nobel laureate James Heckman, have advocated for preschool as one of the most efficient uses of education dollars. Focusing systematically on LEARNING ABILITIES through PLAY for your 3- to 6-year-old, over and above knowledge and skills, is proven to develop QUANTUM LEAPS in their COGNITIVE, COMMUNICATIVE and SELF-REGULATIVE development, enabling them to master ANYTHING in the future with speed and ease.
In our rapidly-changing world, there’s NO better way to prepare your child for an outstanding academic future, combined with exceptional personal success and happiness.
That's the basic principle that the Montessori schools use. I've learned a lot about Montessori recently, from the friend of a friend who was trained in their method and has a career's worth of experience in applying it. They start kids out at age 3 playing with blocks that demonstrate algebraic principles. The blocks are different sizes, but fit together to form a whole. Of course the kids don't learn actual algebra, but their familiarity the with the simple concepts they learn through play prepares them for easily learning higher math when that comes up in the curriculum.
That's just one example of how they teach. The Montessori system is way ahead of other schools in understanding child brain development, and leveraging that knowledge through their teaching methods to routinely produce early achievers, and what others might call accelerated learning. It's fascinating.
My 85 year old mother ran a preschool for 50 years. Two hour classes, not all day daycare. She just told me that she was talking with a local school district employee who said they had done many studies over the years and her preschool students were always the ones at the top of the lists as they went through school. She was not a fan of Montessori, just good old fashioned educating for 3 and 4 year olds.
I followed her example and also put my children in preschool classes so they could be home with me the rest of the day. Those years go so fast and all of a sudden the children are in all day school and don't need full time daycare.
My 85 year old mother ran a preschool for 50 years. Two hour classes, not all day daycare. She just told me that she was talking with a local school district employee who said they had done many studies over the years and her preschool students were always the ones at the top of the lists as they went through school. She was not a fan of Montessori, just good old fashioned educating for 3 and 4 year olds.
That's interesting. At 3, there didn't used to be much "educating" offered; it was mostly about learning to follow simple instructions doing little projects with construction paper and other simple materials, learning to work in a group and get along with other kids, practicing manual dexterity by learning to use scissors and cut and fold forms made of construction paper, and using glue--very simple things. Nowadays I hear they start teaching math and reading at 4.
Actually his wife does receive SS, even better is she didn't have to pay into the system. She gets 1/2 of whatever her spouse gets, plus his full SS. The 401k is just poor planning on their part. Sounds like they had a little too much fun when they were younger and now are paying the price by having to work longer. Nothing wrong with that. Life is about choices.
Edit: if they get divorced, the ex-wife would receive her husbands SS as well as 1/2 his 401k balance. So they're both protected in event of divorce.
Single income can work if you are willing to sacrifice.
Correction: the wife would receive 1/2 of her ex-husband's SS, not the full amount. She would still get 1/2 the 401k.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
