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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4639 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 26, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Why isn't it more common for a woman with kids to run a small daycare consisting of her own kids and those of her siblings and cousins? Wouldn't parents strongly prefer this over leaving their kids with strangers?

Because (a) sibilings/cousins often don't live in the same areas, (b) it's not super-common for all to have kids at approximately the same ages, (c) professional regulations make running one's own daycare a font of legal liability and compliance costs, (d) the vulgar version of modern feminism abroad in the culture insists that such work is beneath women of mid- or upper-level intelligence and/or means.

How common is "common?" I have no empirical sense of the answer to your question. Anecdotally, I've known many women who have done something along these lines. But in many places there are licensing requirements based on numbers of children being cared for, and often those licensing requirements are minimally compatible with home-based businesses.

As people have fewer children, of course, "siblings and cousins" also trends toward becoming an empty set.

Because it's been deliberately made prohibitively expensive, if not legally impossible.

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