Learning to Pay

So I'm spending a decent amount of time on kids issues these days obviously, and am struggling with the idea that people have to move because of school districts.  Why should people have to move to suburbia to get good schooling?  Or enter some lottery and hope to get in to local schools?  Or pay some exorbitant amount to go to private school from nursery school through high school? And by exorbitant I mean, 20, 30, even 45,000 dollars a year - for preschool!!

Our education system is failing our kids and in turn failing us. So many children don't have enough food, they don't have stable parenting, and then they get to a school where they don't have enough materials, are packed into classrooms, and now are forced into programs styled simply on reaching quantified outcomes that force an emphasis of accountability that has nothing to do with true education.  In stead it is a way for the state to feel like it can measure accountability for "failing schools" through nothing but numbers.

It is not about failing schools, but a failing system.  And we are of course right now moving away from funding public schools.  Moving towards charter schools, with another private option seemingly popping up everyday.

I don't purport to have the answer right here today, but I do know that if we started by funding our schools it would alleviate a lot!  One of my colleagues at Occupy has a son who's school after going from 22 to 30 kids per class last year (among other cuts) is going to see another classroom size change this year and will also lose their library.  Yes, teaching kids with no books...?!?  We have to find a way to provide attention to kids education, not penny pinching quantified accountability focused programs that take the emphasis off educating kids, and put it on bureaucratic accountability, money, and privatization.  Too many people get left behind; like an entire city of kids that either can't afford private school, or can't win the lotteries it takes to get into special schools.  But hey, with suburban flight all those big retail big box chains get more business, and housing starts can go up, and those poor kids - mostly minorities - that can't move out to find better schools, what do they "matter" anyway, right?  WRONG.  Fund education so these kids can go to good schools in their own communities, and then stay in these communities and help develop them in ways that don't require gentrification that then force them out into worse neighborhoods with worse schools when the rents go up.  And we wonder why we are becoming more economically segregated?  It's not be choice, its by systemic decree and economic necessity - which unfortunately usually falls (or is meant to fall) along racial lines.

Segrating 'em early

Its so interesting seeing nanny behavior, and kids behavior.  Everyone seems to segregate themselves.  The white kids mostly play with white kids, black with black.  Maybe it's because of who they come there with, friends/family, or maybe its just where the playgrounds that they play in.  Of the two main playgrounds we go to, there are very different social circles and racial mixes.  The kids part that question is tough to get to far into without a lot of time and research though.  Most obviously to me right now is the nanny cliques that are so obviously segregated.  

I just left the library where the Caribbean crew of nanny's was.  They were all sitting around a table on tiny kids chairs, chatting away and texting on their phones while the kids ran rampant through the library under half an eye's supervision.  Somehow it fit so profoundly into stereotyped actions I've seen somewhere, movies or something.  Then of course there was the one white nanny with an Irish look to her, all alone and with a somber look on her face seemingly hoping for friends! 

And then here I am at the (mostly white kids) playground and here's the Asian nanny contingent (I heard later they are mostly Tibetan).  They are all speaking their local languages, but again segregated out, and the kids with them.  Mind you they pretty much all have white kids they are watching.  Then of course there are the kids that come themselves, they come in groups.  A lot here are middle school aged or after even. They stick to racial lines it seems as well.  Not sure why.  I can't understand how they aren't all just mixed as the neighborhood is and the playground would seemingly offer years of that possibility.  I'm looking for me at that age, walking up to George just cause he was new and didn't seem to know anyone.  And there where I grew up, he was a true minority.  Funny that in Brooklyn you wouldn't see that.  Things almost seem more segregated here.  Living amongst each other in strong enough numbers that you don't have to mix.

Not sure what these observations really mean, kids are kids and the dynamics are beyond simple observations.  But the nanny part of it to me was quite interesting and profound.  I mean the girl I look after has a best friend due to their nanny's being friends.  Their parents have nothing in common and are actually quite opposite.  but the kids are friends.  Latino nanny's, white kids that became best friends.  My brother categorized the one crew as the Nordic Nanny Mafia.  This was apparently the crew that I was co-mingled with.  And odd way to chose friends.  And even more interesting to see the way these social dynamics play out on such incredibly different levels of society. 

But anyway, segregated nannying... Odd.

Mannying!

So here I am, an economic minded anthropological historian type with sociologist tendencies and political interests. Degree-ed up, experienced up, and now nannyed up!!  I kind of dig it though!  Not bad.  I mean the last few days I have been inundated into a world of domestic servitude, illegal immigrants, black economics, and underemployability.  I am of course not the typical nanny.  I am a white male legally capable of working here.  And while it may be easy to find one or two of those characteristics in a nanny, all three is tough!  People immediately assume I'm the father.  Which makes it tough to get into the nanny gossip at the playground, but I'm working my way in!  It's truly interesting.  Hearing how the whole game works, how different families are, and how far money goes in our world is always incredible.

Here we are living in the "great" United States of America, where - as is being reinforced - the disparity amongst us all economically starts at such a young age with childcare!  When I was living in the Czech Republic they had three years of paid maternity/paternity leave.  The pay itself decreased each year, but still the state paid for people to take the time to raise their children.  When the time was up (and you could go back early) you got a similar level job with your same company.  Here in the US you get six weeks unpaid time and then it's straight back to work and to be made to feel bad about it.

What do you do with the children though once you are back to work?  Well, if you have the cash you hire a nanny.  If you don't have that much you send them to daycare, but, if like most of us you can't do much more than pay your bills and eat, you're pretty much screwed.  Or I should say, your children are pretty much screwed.  If you want to raise them yourself you can't work.  If you need to work to eat and don't get any state support to take care of your kids, to bad.  You are forced to make decisions between putting food on the kid's tables or raising them yourself.  Which I think is a bit hypocritical given so much rhetoric about the importance of the nuclear family. 

The bottom line is that it did not always used to be like this.  My grandfather (and much of his generation) raised a family on a single income with a stay at home mom.  This is not longer possible for current generations.  He was able to earn a solid middle class wage, own a home, go on vacations, and support a wife and three kids.  I think of myself and my generation now and wonder how we could ever do that.  We have a trillion dollars in student debt, and if we can even get a decent job, real wages haven't gone up since the 1970's.  If I want to own a home in the new york metropolitan area my combined household income needs to be at least 100,000 dollars for just small apartments in outer boroughs or shacks in deepest darkest suburbia.  Add in existing debts such as the student one, the burgeoning credit card issues so many have as they try to tie up loose ends.  Couple this with the continuing innovation and addition of goods such as TV's and computers needed for daily existence (just to find jobs and stay informed on a level playing field), and you've got this massive consumerist and competitive culture that just has us all just trying keep up with.  We can no longer raise a family on a single income, and are in fact struggling to manage it with two.

So if that's the case, who looks after our kids when we are off at work?  I remember when they called us latch key kids when I was growing up.  Kids who had keys to the home so they could let themselves in when they got home from school.  But this isn't what I'm referring to at all.  We're talking about the first three or so years of life as babies and toddlers before there's any school to go to.  When we learn to eat, crawl, walk, play, talk, and think coherently amongst a host of other things.  Bottom line is that this is the gaping hole in our child development/care system in the US, and it is the most vulnerable time in a child's life.

In many European countries they have ways to try to allow mothers and fathers to be able to be active parts of this development every day and all day.  Here so many people aren't and in my opinion, the child and society suffer the most.  As one nanny said today, "in my country (from northern europe) we don't have any problems with bullying.  Here, in my kickboxing and grappling gym, we've got kids from 5 years and up coming in to learn to be able to stand up to bullys." Our society in America has a huge problem with this. She speculated as to why (she's been here 6 years, studying and nannying), claiming she though it was because these kids weren't actually being cared for, weren't being given attention and consistent familial attention. This of course is a long standing view of mine as well.

Capitalism, while it pretty much commodifies everything, does not create a market or allow for a financial value to be put on personal domestic care and housework within our own families. Yes of course, you can pay someone else to care for your kids. But not get paid to care for your own kids.  It was stated on several occasions today that almost all nanny's end up putting their kids in day care so they can care for other people's kids. There is something inherently wrong about that. No one gets to be raised by their own parents unless they are so wealthy as to not have to work.  But even then, there is an entirely different category of people with so much money they just can't be bothered.  They hire a nanny even though they don't work!  It was this demographic that the one nanny was so worried about.  The kids that lack any disciplining or sense of value.  She sighted one incredibly rich family in Manhattan she'd worked for that had one child that was so out of control he had thrown a rock at the nanny's face, shattering the eye socket (without remorse or punishment).  The same child had also apparently thrown his aunts dog in a pool, and when told that he couldn't do that because it couldn't swim and would drown, that he then went back later at night when no one was around and did it again - killing the dog.  His punishment?  He had to say he was sorry to his Aunt.  Nothing more.

She continued to discuss this as a pattern.  The raising of children with little coherent or consistent disciplinary structure as a huge root of many issues.  That when these kids break things there is no sense of lose, or repercussions, for they are simply replaced without a learning or value lesson being imposed at all. 

The fact is, that we have transformed our society's child raising ways over the last several decades into one that is not beneficial to either children or our societies.  Parents and children detaching from each other at six weeks.  Day care and nannying, where caregivers turn over monthly if not weekly.  And this is of course only for those who can afford it.  Otherwise, its grandparents, friends, neighbors, parents who forgo work and income, or who knows what to look after children.  This of course opens a while different pot of familial and marital struggles over family dynamics, finances, etc. 

It seems like such a simple concept to me.  Take care of your children: schooling, housing and food, love and discipline, whatever.  But that is not what our society here does.  We leave everyone to their own accord, while still forcing everyone collectively to deal with the consequences.  Children not raised with care and concerted concern can easily become burdens upon all of society if, or as, they lash out.

I am only two days into it.  But just seeing the market for the industry and how it seems to work on so many different levels, it reaffirms my worries about this country.  Take care of your young, poor, and sick and you will maintain a civilized society capable of great things.  We used to be able to do this to some extent a couple generations ago.  And while our methods haven't changed, our surroundings and economics has.  We haven't changed with it and we're getting further into trouble.