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Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

I live in Germany, both my kids go to public kindergarten/daycare (there is no distinction between the 2 here, it starts when the child is 1 year old) & the kindergarten teachers are mostly German themselves.

They don't earn great wages but they are not indentured servants either.

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I became a parent last year and all of my research indicates that 1 is way too young to send a kid away. The optimum age seems to be 3 years. It seems we have come to accept social norms that are not designed around the well-being of the child.

It's a tough question that we have struggled with with both our kids. At the end we've reached the conclusion that we need to balance between the needs of the child and the needs of the parent.

The first 2 months after the birth we were both home, then my wife stayed for another 9 months & finally I took 1 more month of parental leave (so in total it was 1 year before starting to acclimate him to daycare).

After almost a year at home my wife needed (mentally & socially) to return to work & if we could afford to live off of her salary alone I think I would have gladly stayed at home for another 6+ months (instead of just 1).

But I don't think our kids would have been better off overall if my wife stayed for another 2 years but would have done so only out of a feeling of obligation and suffering during that time (it is VERY isolating to be a stay at home parent, even when you have contact to other parents of young children & there is a real lack of intellectual stimulation despite there constantly being work to do).

I don't have all the answers but I think it's a tough question & the balance really depends on the kids and the parents - I believe there is no "1 size fits all" solution.

> there is a real lack of intellectual stimulation despite there constantly being work to do

My wife is taking more of a leading role with our 1 year old (maybe 70/30 between her and me ... also in Germany) and she gets her mental stimulation through voraciously reading about changing dietary requirements of children as they age along with general child developmental research. In fact it is leading us to a discussion about startup opportunities.

Im glad it works for you & it's great you were able to fit the situation to your advantage & interests. But different people have different wants and needs.

The norms are designed around parental leaves available.

Right. So there's a large group of mostly women who accept low wages to store children so more privileged people can go earn higher wages.

Why do you assume the kindergarten teachers earn less than they would have otherwise had in a different job or less than the average parent of the kids in their group? I mean yes, I support better wages for them (jobs in education generally don't pay that great) & I'm sure people working in the financial sector earn much more but I don't think that was the alternative the common teacher had to chose from.

As I said wages are not great but they are not that far from the median. My wife (teacher in a music school) doesn't earn more than a kindergarten teacher, the advantage is mostly in economies of scale (1 teacher per 6-7 pupils vs 1 mother per 1-3 offspring).

> Why do you assume the kindergarten teachers earn less than they would have otherwise had in a different job or less than the average parent of the kids in their group?

Cause when they leave, they get jobs that earn more money.

Who leaves what job? There are plenty of kindergarten teachers who stay at that job their entire careers. If you refer to the parents, in Berlin it costs no money for the parent to send their kids to kindergarten (same as public schools).

And plenty who leaves at least around here. Those I knew personally got more money after. I can also check unemployment rates (low) and compare kindergarten salary to other jobs that hire same qualification (most of administrative work, junior tester etc).

I assume they earn less money they would otherwise, because those who left found better paid jobs without much problems.

In Iceland at least being a leikskoli teacher requires a degree and they are far from child storage. They work and care for the childs development. This is at least a fairly common model in Nordic countries and presume its similar in a lot of Europe.

I've heard horror stories about featureless cinder block rooms as day care in the US though.

In UK (before state mandated ages, ie 4yo) the level of care can be pretty grim, and it's often low skilled young women ([1]) - particular if you're poor yourself.

[1] because for some reason minimum wage is reduced for younger people, like young people don't need housing or food, I don't know ...

One of the many reasons I'm glad I moved here from the UK before having kids.

Funny, I did the same thing. Describing the Icelandic preschool system is the best way I have to blow my UK friend's minds.

"No matter where you live, your child is in the catching area for a nearby preschool and is automatically enrolled there. And it's by no means a child storage facility; the primary focus is on teaching children through play and at least half the staff have a master's degree in preschool teaching. And they're fully fed. Also, it's practically free."

If anything, the wages are so low because people like you consider these thankless hard jobs "child storage".

In my son's daycare about a third of personnel were men.

Same for my son's group.

In Germany almost everybody sends their children to Kindergarten, so the parents on average earn an average wage.

> So there's a large group of mostly women who

enjoy what they do

> so

other people can do other jobs that the aforementioned women benefit from, such us public hospitals, roads, railroads, public transport etc. etc. etc.

FTFY, dear American friend

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