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Just how Bad is Daycare? A Chilling Case Study & Literature Review
In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone share their personal experience of taking a huge risk by pulling their three children out of daycare and opting for a more unconventional childcare arrangement with their neighbors. They discuss the staggering costs of daycare for middle-class families and the surprising improvements they noticed in their son's behavior and the family's overall health after making the switch. The couple also delves into the long-term effects of frequent illnesses in early childhood and the controversial findings of the Tennessee Volunteer Pre-Kindergarten Program study. Throughout the conversation, they offer practical advice on how to create a sustainable and mutually beneficial childcare arrangement within your community. Join Malcolm and Simone as they challenge conventional wisdom and share their insights on prioritizing children's well-being.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] We ended up trying something that a lot of people said, you guys are insane to be doing this, We have graphs on all of his behavior and it was night and day. The two scenarios, a standard. Like mid to low end daycare versus just staying in a house with minimal supervision, doing whatever they want all day.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. Something really shocking happened to us recently. We took a giant gamble on how we were handling our children's childcare.
So before this, we were sending our children to a daycare facility. And if you are not at the lower end of income in Pennsylvania, that means you are paying for that all out of pocket. So by the time we got to children number three, three at a I'd say like a low [00:01:00] range to mid range facility in terms of cost.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: This is costing us what was it? 5, 400 a month?
Simone Collins: It was we paid 1, 193 every week and that's 62, 036 a year. Insane. So that's
Malcolm Collins: just for three kids?
Simone Collins: Just for three kids.
Malcolm Collins: With the fourth kid on the way, we basically decided this, and keep in mind, we're in suburban or really ex urban. Pennsylvania.
We are. Friends of
Simone Collins: ours looked at our daycare bills and said, this is, you're so lucky. I wish I could be paying this.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Who would live in like New York and Philadelphia.
So this is almost as inexpensive as it gets unless you're in an extremely rural area.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or unless you are low income. And we actually know people also actually who intentionally manipulate their income.
Yeah. In a way that probably the IRS would not be happy about to qualify for subsidized daycare because it makes that much of a difference. 62, 000, that's a [00:02:00] generous salary for someone. That's yeah. Yeah. And this is why a lot of people are like why bother? Working when all of it would literally go to daycare and keep in mind.
Of course, it's post tax dollars
Malcolm Collins: I'd point in mind this was only Three kids. Yeah, this is the minimum number of kids we could have and be above replacement rate This is the yeah. No, I mean it's it's insane. Yeah, so to be above replacement rate in the u. s. You And you are not in poverty, you need to be extremely wealthy.
And this does part to show why you do get this higher fertility rates on the really low end, because there just isn't a cost to additional kids when the state's offering to pay for everything. In the same way that there is an enormous cost to additional kids for the middle class. I need to go further with our experiment because something came down to, we realized we couldn't, keep aff
Published on 1 year, 5 months ago