I know it's stupid to go into it knowing it'll be hard, and I can't complain. I'm not. This is just what it takes, and I went into it knowing it would be temporary. Kids get a lot easier as they get older.
A lot of things that are worth it in life take a lot of work. I'll feel better in a few years. At the moment I feel like I'm dying.
At any rate, here's to things getting easier. I'm sure our hard work will pay off soon enough.
It feels like mine is on pause until the kids grow old enough to be left to their own devices, taking their own baths, brushing their own teeth, reading their own bedtime stories etc etc.
This is very real. Sometimes I sit to do some more work before bed and think wow, I'll finish this... Go to bed... And wake up as early as I can to work some more. Then my son will wake up, and I'll be with him until 6 or so in the evening. While he naps I work more. Rinse and repeat. It's a gauntlet.
Things being on pause isn't really a bad thing at all, but it certainly feels bad in the moment. I have two 9 year olds though, and it's true. Eventually they want to read before bed on their own, they want to play on their own during the day, and the pressure is off. There's a lot more time.
I also have the luxury that on weekends, during the day my older kids will play with the baby and give me a bit of a break. Sometimes even for an hour or so. It's usually an opportunity to catch up on work, but it's often badly needed and a big relief.
It would be stupid going into it thinking it would not be hard. Raising kids is always hard, unless you don't care. And it is always hard in different ways. Kids can see what you can do, and what you can't do; what you can provide and what you can't provide. And as long as you are really trying they will ultimately accept what you have to offer with love.
* https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/02/cost-rais...
He was very philosophical about it :-)
The more likely scenario is you've invested in that relocation, paying the financial and social costs, and then suddenly it's 2001 and you have no job, no stock, and no community to fall back on. So yeah, a philosophical view is probably wise. :)
For more institutionalized settings, there's co-op daycares, but we looked into this and they're largely incompatible with having two working parents since the schedule usually requires volunteering in the middle of the workday.
So the problem is a bit of a prisoners dilemma: you need to be able to rely on this group (having to scramble to find another solution is OK a few times a year, but not 3 times a month), but you also don't want to be 'tied down'.
So the alternative is to have lots of rules and required 'volunteering'. Which basically turns into the same as 'real' daycare, except that you have to take the day off to do your 'volunteering' (in the case of 2 working parents). So it's just scrambling to solve all the problems that money is supposed to solve (be a fungible store of value), but while at all costs keeping 'money' out of it.
Having been involved with attempts at systems like this, and having observed the problems in a few others, I no longer think it's feasible, at least not for dual income career oriented people. The places where I've seen it (more or less - it wouldn't work as a lifestyle for me) work are of the type of the mommy group of stay-at-home-parents, but those are hardly comparable to real daycare.
What little there is can usually be extended to 1 or maybe 2 kids. We routinely have 4 kids at our house (2 ours), but nobody will be able or want to manage more than that, and not very frequently. Even that sort of arrangement only happens via trusting friendships that are built over time. Distributing the load across multiple arrangements would be logistically daunting.
Perhaps a religious or cultural group would extend their resources in this way, but you would have to belong to those groups, and even there, nothing is free.
And one more thing: any place in the Bay area where you can find a house large enough to comfortably house 6 kids in a relatively safe area is going to be unbelievably expensive. I'd you live in such an area your neighbors will either have many fewer children or be wealthy enough that they hire full time childcare, so they won't have the same needs for village style arrangements as you.