At its core, childcare is labor. There is a “bonding” element in it, but it’s labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A newborn baby needs to be fed every 2-3 hours. Every feeding takes 30-45 minutes or so to finish the chores (feed, burp, change diapers), then depending on how sleepy the baby is, another 15-45 minutes to get him to sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This means 1-1.5 hours of work, then you get a “down time” rest of 1.5-2 hours, then next cycle…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s 33% to 50% of an adult’s time, if one adult takes care of one baby. Sleep not included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have been stretching the cycle time to 3-4 hours from Wesley’s first week. Fortunately, he seems to have a big belly and can consistently hold more milk than the 2-3 oz guideline amount, and sleep longer at night from the very beginning. Still, it’s a lot of work and very tiring from time to time, especially when he is fussing and only calms down after being held, or when he uses up his energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think the society paints a rosy picture for family and bonding and etc, to make people feel better and feel childcare labor tolerable. There is certainly an amazing element to raise a kid and watches them change on a weekly basis. But still, labor is labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is also a huge distraction and a crazy amount of interruptions. I cannot imagine getting nearly as productive for work as I was while I’m on childcare duty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I start understanding why childcare is so expensive, because it is a lot of labor. The only way to make childcare affordable is for society\/government to subsidize it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At its core, childcare is labor. There is a “bonding” element in it, but it’s labor. A newborn baby needs to be fed every 2-3 hours. Every feeding takes 30-45 minutes or so to finish the chores (feed, burp, change diapers), then depending on how sleepy the baby is, another 15-45 minutes to get him… Continue reading Childcare, two weeks in<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Childcare, two weeks in","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Q1al-3K7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/b2.broom9.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}