Originally posted by mad_gater
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I don't know, my grandparents did manage with no government assistance and lots of kids who lived to father kids who went/are going to schools either here or back in Mexico....and by schools I mean post secondary. I'm not saying that people should have kids all willy nilly. If you only want one, that's perfectly fine. What I don't agree with is using money as an excuse.
Originally posted by Annoyed
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I'm going to categorize that as "too hard to believe" unless you have some hard numbers to back it up? My parents did very well here in PA without the government. At most, I just got a reduced lunch at school depending on the year.
About 15 years ago, I passed on a very good job opportunity that would have taken me out of this economic hellhole. The reason was so that my mother didn't have to give up the house she had been in most of her life; Dad had passed some years before, and while able to live independently, she was no longer able to take care of it on her own. I was the only immediate family member whose situation at the time allowed me that choice.
So don't tell me that it doesn't happen.
So don't tell me that it doesn't happen.
Moving in with you wasn't an option? Anyway, that's awesome of you. However, you're not exactly the "current generation" and I was speaking in hyperbole. The trend does not match up to your example.
Originally posted by Womble
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In the USA the attitude is very different, to the point that police may take into custody children found walking to school unattended and file child neglect charges against parents. There are laws on the books in some states that prohibit leaving children as old as 12 home alone. American parents schedule "play dates" to have their kids play together, and drive their child to and from, in situations where a flock of Israeli children would just call each other to coordinate and run outside for a game of soccer. I get where it comes from; crime in the USA is higher, distances are greater and multiple-car families are more common than in Israel so there's both more pressure and more opportunities to helicopter-parent. But it also means higher cost of parenting. Driving a child everywhere, paying for activities that in another society would have come for free simply from neighborhood mingling, hiring babysitters and nannies in more situations than otherwise would be necessary (and massively inflated perception of what level of material prosperity a child needs) all drive up the costs.
Also, I think American employers are typically less family-friendly than the Israeli ones. Here it's not at all frowned upon to bring one's child to work when you have nowhere to leave them; a girl from my department routinely brings her toddler daughter to work for the entire 8 hour shift, and the management doesn't see it as hurting her productivity (truth be told, whatever we lose in productivity when there's a child in office, we gain in morale; nothing hurts efficiency quite so much as boredom, and nothing destroys boredom as effectively as children). I can't imagine my co-worker bringing her two little girls (5 and 8) to office had we worked for, say, Amazon or another large American company.
Originally posted by SoulReaver
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So much truth...though some of the implications I am seeing in it are...troublesome.
Originally posted by Annoyed
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