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> When considering the implications for Western countries, the authors highlight that the provision of affordable high-quality childcare support, which goes bey

> When considering the implications for Western countries, the authors highlight that the provision of affordable high-quality childcare support, which goes beyond effective supervision, should be prioritized. > Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. There is now way you can pay for these kind of ratios. These ratios can only happen due to a social structure that involves large extended families and a social structure that has a large proportion of the population (pretty much all the females) that spend all their time with each other and the children. However, that would be a huge step backwards from the progress we have made in women’s rights and equality.

micromacrofoot 3y ago
Why does it have to be all women?
- EGreg 3y ago
  Exactly the right question. People make all kinds of assumptions and thanks to the corporate world, both sexes now slave away for the market: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 I wrote that in 2017 and it's only gotten worse since then
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    People could accept lower living standards and opt for single income families. However, people like to compete, for purposes of fulfilling their own ego and attracting a mate. That is why higher income individuals attract other higher income individuals. Corporations did not make people competitive. People want financial freedom, people want to buy goods and services, and people want to attract a partner per their liking.
    - EGreg 3y ago
      Corporations, just like governments, engage in pervasive propaganda, from impressionable school years all the way to adulthood. Edward Burnays said propaganda got a bad name after WW1, so they renamed it to "PR". It's how corporations got women to smoke, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom How they control the crowd, featuring Edward Burnays and his uncle Freud (whose theories became famous ironically because of his nephew): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 How the corporate world market to kids: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ They marketed it to Black youth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjKyVzRr_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjKyVzRr_U They marketed it to teen girls: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/30/social-media-girls-teens-depression-tiktok/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/30/social-m... Sometimes the mask comes off and they do it too openly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 The for-profit model of news corporations and social networks has led more and more adults to become perpetually angry and tribal politically: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ There is even a term for what they resort to in order to please shareholders: surveillance capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism I was at the event in NYC when Sheryl Sandberg unveiled her book, "Lean In": https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/0385349947 https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/03853499... Make no mistake. YCombinator and shareholder capitalism leads to this inevitably. Corporations have to please shareholders forever. And there is more and more push for inclusivity and part of that means adapting people from traditional roles (e.g. women homemakers) into types of work that benefit the market. As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined. People are distracted into being e.g. gender warriors (Red Pill vs Feminism) rather than realizing they are all being exploited by a for-profit capitalist system that gradually relegates them to gig-economy workers and depresses their wages as they get replaced by AI. It's like a slowly-boiled frog. Anyone can opt out if they want. Opt out of the over-diagnosis of ADHD for their kids in public schools, by spending more time with them. Opt out of single parenthood and nuclear families, creating something far more expansive and with the benefits of traditional societies. Health benefits abound. Kids aren't overmedicated by amphetamines. Teens aren't depressed due to tiktok or angry due to drill music. Middle aged women aren't on antideprssants. Men aren't on opiates. Elderly parents aren't in nursing homes being drugged up. I'm not saying it's a utopia but the capitalist system has gone in a very bad direction, arguably worse than USSR where people drank vodka to cope. Look at any traditional society even within the US, such as the Amish, or religious orthodox Jews, or Christians in small-town America who still get together for Church etc. You don't have to be religious to make it work. But it takes a village to raise a child, and today's children are raised by government schools and indoctrinated to be corporate drones, for a job market that will be gone by the time they graduate. I recommend phasing in a UBI, at least, to help save the increasingly under-employed (i.e. making too few $s) people and families from falling through the cracks even further. The best kind of UBI can be done on a community level, for newlyweds and new parents etc.
- Qem 3y ago
  The whole pedophilia scare makes people suspicious by default of adult men in contact with non related small children. There's a great movie I recommend on that problem, The Hunt (2012): https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2106476/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2106476/
  - pharmakom 3y ago
    The vast majority of child abusers are male and known to the child and family (not strangers), so there is some evidence behind the bias, I suppose.
    - falserum 3y ago
      All stereotypes grow from a kernel of some truth. Lets calculate. - 80-90% of child abusers are male. (Lets use 90% further on). - Us population is 330 million. (So half will be 165m male). - It has 750 thousand registered sex offenders Calculations: - 750t * 0.9 = 675t male offenders; 675t / 165000t = 0.4% of male population in us are registered sex offenders. (1 out of 243 males). - 750t * 0.1 = 75t female offenders; 75t / 165000t = 0.045% (1 out of 2200 females) Caveats apply: not all are caught; these numbers are for all sex offender (I think it includes adult rapists and public urinators); distribution through society is not uniform, some occupations will be more “lucrative” for phedos.
      - micromacrofoot 3y ago
        I wonder what kind of impact removing priests from the statistics would have
        falserum 3y ago
        37 thousand priests in us. (675t-37t) / 165000t = 0.386% (1 out of 259)
      - ajmurmann 3y ago
        The numbers are even worse when removing young boys.
morsch 3y ago
>> Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. > There is now way you can pay for these kind of ratios. As it turns out, 5:1 is the legal limit for pre-k (age < 3) daycares in most of Germany, and the average in 2020 was 4.1:1. For older kindergarten kids, it's roughly double. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betreuungsschl%C3%BCssel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betreuungsschl%C3%BCssel The government seemingly pays about 40 billion EUR per year for pre-school childcare; participating parents, depending on their income, pay up to around 250 EUR a month (+50-100 EUR a month for meals). All of these figures are very rough, but should be in the right ballpark.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  The ratios you mentioned are 1 caregiver for 5 children. The ratios in the article for the societies they studied are 5 caregivers for 1 child.
  - morsch 3y ago
    Wow, okay, that hadn't even crossed my mind. I see your point, then.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Note that the 5 caregivers per 1 child also contains a chain of older children, each looking after one another. You take those 5 kids, and put them in school from ages 5 to 22 or even 26, obviously, there is going to be a dearth of labor supply. The gain is those older kids in school gain financial freedom (especially the girls) rather than having to take care of younger kids. But the cost is still coming into view (not that it isn’t worth it, but we are in for big changes).
cycomanic 3y ago
I find that part of the article and the parallels drawn to nurseries in the UK (by one of the researchers apparently) quite weird. My understanding is that what is denoted caregiver in the article is quite different to a careperson in a nursery. I don't think that a caregiver in the hunter gatherer society will exclusively watch one child only (and not all the time). I suspect more that they are available if needed. If we look at the scientific article, it studied 18 children across 3 camps and the camps of 20-80 individuals. The article says children had often 10-20 caregivers, based on the 18 children that's a minimum of 180 adults. Assuming an average camp size of 50 that would mean more adults than living in the 3 camps. So clearly caregivers are not exclusive which makes the whole comparison to child to adult ratio completely non-sensical IMO and I'm quite disappointed that researcher was tempted to make a comment in this way (to be fair, often journalists try to pull out a political angle in stories, in our communication training as researchers we were actually warned to be vary of this).
- em-bee 3y ago
  The article says children had often 10-20 caregivers, based on the 18 children that's a minimum of 180 adults. i do not understand how you could even come up with that kind of interpretation. that caregivers are not exclusive in such a scenario should be obvious. how could it be any different? and no, it doesn't make the whole thing nonsensical. there is a qualitative difference when a child has many adult role models to choose from. it helps put the experience with their own parents in relation to how they experience other adults. the point is not the absolute ratio of adults to children, but the number of adults each child has access to that they can learn something from. and that doesn't require any exclusivity.
  - cycomanic 3y ago
    I agree that the caregivers are not exclusive should be quite obvious, and yes having a lot of caregivers at different times would give the child a lot of rolemodels to choose from. The part I take issue with is: > Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. In fact, regulations on adult-to-child ratios in early years settings have recently decreased for two-year-olds to one caregiver for five children—the opposite of what the researchers observed in the Mbendjele communities. That is nonsensical. There is at best a very weak correlation between the adult-to-child ratios in nurseries and how many overall caregivers a child has and the ratio of children to one adult in a nursery is certainly not "the opposite" of the ratio of 5 "non-exclusive" adults to one child in the Mbendjele communities. In fact it's quite conceivable that even in the Mbendjele communities for parts of the day 10 children might only be looked after by 2 adults, the same ratio as UK nurseries.

micromacrofoot 3y ago

Why does it have to be all women?

EGreg 3y ago
Exactly the right question. People make all kinds of assumptions and thanks to the corporate world, both sexes now slave away for the market: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286 I wrote that in 2017 and it's only gotten worse since then
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  People could accept lower living standards and opt for single income families. However, people like to compete, for purposes of fulfilling their own ego and attracting a mate. That is why higher income individuals attract other higher income individuals. Corporations did not make people competitive. People want financial freedom, people want to buy goods and services, and people want to attract a partner per their liking.
  - EGreg 3y ago
    Corporations, just like governments, engage in pervasive propaganda, from impressionable school years all the way to adulthood. Edward Burnays said propaganda got a bad name after WW1, so they renamed it to "PR". It's how corporations got women to smoke, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom How they control the crowd, featuring Edward Burnays and his uncle Freud (whose theories became famous ironically because of his nephew): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 How the corporate world market to kids: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ They marketed it to Black youth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjKyVzRr_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjKyVzRr_U They marketed it to teen girls: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/30/social-media-girls-teens-depression-tiktok/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/30/social-m... Sometimes the mask comes off and they do it too openly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 The for-profit model of news corporations and social networks has led more and more adults to become perpetually angry and tribal politically: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ There is even a term for what they resort to in order to please shareholders: surveillance capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism I was at the event in NYC when Sheryl Sandberg unveiled her book, "Lean In": https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/0385349947 https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/03853499... Make no mistake. YCombinator and shareholder capitalism leads to this inevitably. Corporations have to please shareholders forever. And there is more and more push for inclusivity and part of that means adapting people from traditional roles (e.g. women homemakers) into types of work that benefit the market. As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined. People are distracted into being e.g. gender warriors (Red Pill vs Feminism) rather than realizing they are all being exploited by a for-profit capitalist system that gradually relegates them to gig-economy workers and depresses their wages as they get replaced by AI. It's like a slowly-boiled frog. Anyone can opt out if they want. Opt out of the over-diagnosis of ADHD for their kids in public schools, by spending more time with them. Opt out of single parenthood and nuclear families, creating something far more expansive and with the benefits of traditional societies. Health benefits abound. Kids aren't overmedicated by amphetamines. Teens aren't depressed due to tiktok or angry due to drill music. Middle aged women aren't on antideprssants. Men aren't on opiates. Elderly parents aren't in nursing homes being drugged up. I'm not saying it's a utopia but the capitalist system has gone in a very bad direction, arguably worse than USSR where people drank vodka to cope. Look at any traditional society even within the US, such as the Amish, or religious orthodox Jews, or Christians in small-town America who still get together for Church etc. You don't have to be religious to make it work. But it takes a village to raise a child, and today's children are raised by government schools and indoctrinated to be corporate drones, for a job market that will be gone by the time they graduate. I recommend phasing in a UBI, at least, to help save the increasingly under-employed (i.e. making too few $s) people and families from falling through the cracks even further. The best kind of UBI can be done on a community level, for newlyweds and new parents etc.
Qem 3y ago
The whole pedophilia scare makes people suspicious by default of adult men in contact with non related small children. There's a great movie I recommend on that problem, The Hunt (2012): https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2106476/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2106476/
- pharmakom 3y ago
  The vast majority of child abusers are male and known to the child and family (not strangers), so there is some evidence behind the bias, I suppose.
  - falserum 3y ago
    All stereotypes grow from a kernel of some truth. Lets calculate. - 80-90% of child abusers are male. (Lets use 90% further on). - Us population is 330 million. (So half will be 165m male). - It has 750 thousand registered sex offenders Calculations: - 750t * 0.9 = 675t male offenders; 675t / 165000t = 0.4% of male population in us are registered sex offenders. (1 out of 243 males). - 750t * 0.1 = 75t female offenders; 75t / 165000t = 0.045% (1 out of 2200 females) Caveats apply: not all are caught; these numbers are for all sex offender (I think it includes adult rapists and public urinators); distribution through society is not uniform, some occupations will be more “lucrative” for phedos.
    - micromacrofoot 3y ago
      I wonder what kind of impact removing priests from the statistics would have
      - falserum 3y ago
        37 thousand priests in us. (675t-37t) / 165000t = 0.386% (1 out of 259)
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      The numbers are even worse when removing young boys.

morsch 3y ago

>> Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. > There is now way you can pay for these kind of ratios. As it turns out, 5:1 is the legal limit for pre-k (age < 3) daycares in most of Germany, and the average in 2020 was 4.1:1. For older kindergarten kids, it's roughly double. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betreuungsschl%C3%BCssel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betreuungsschl%C3%BCssel The government seemingly pays about 40 billion EUR per year for pre-school childcare; participating parents, depending on their income, pay up to around 250 EUR a month (+50-100 EUR a month for meals). All of these figures are very rough, but should be in the right ballpark.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
The ratios you mentioned are 1 caregiver for 5 children. The ratios in the article for the societies they studied are 5 caregivers for 1 child.
- morsch 3y ago
  Wow, okay, that hadn't even crossed my mind. I see your point, then.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Note that the 5 caregivers per 1 child also contains a chain of older children, each looking after one another. You take those 5 kids, and put them in school from ages 5 to 22 or even 26, obviously, there is going to be a dearth of labor supply. The gain is those older kids in school gain financial freedom (especially the girls) rather than having to take care of younger kids. But the cost is still coming into view (not that it isn’t worth it, but we are in for big changes).

cycomanic 3y ago

I find that part of the article and the parallels drawn to nurseries in the UK (by one of the researchers apparently) quite weird. My understanding is that what is denoted caregiver in the article is quite different to a careperson in a nursery. I don't think that a caregiver in the hunter gatherer society will exclusively watch one child only (and not all the time). I suspect more that they are available if needed. If we look at the scientific article, it studied 18 children across 3 camps and the camps of 20-80 individuals. The article says children had often 10-20 caregivers, based on the 18 children that's a minimum of 180 adults. Assuming an average camp size of 50 that would mean more adults than living in the 3 camps. So clearly caregivers are not exclusive which makes the whole comparison to child to adult ratio completely non-sensical IMO and I'm quite disappointed that researcher was tempted to make a comment in this way (to be fair, often journalists try to pull out a political angle in stories, in our communication training as researchers we were actually warned to be vary of this).

em-bee 3y ago
The article says children had often 10-20 caregivers, based on the 18 children that's a minimum of 180 adults. i do not understand how you could even come up with that kind of interpretation. that caregivers are not exclusive in such a scenario should be obvious. how could it be any different? and no, it doesn't make the whole thing nonsensical. there is a qualitative difference when a child has many adult role models to choose from. it helps put the experience with their own parents in relation to how they experience other adults. the point is not the absolute ratio of adults to children, but the number of adults each child has access to that they can learn something from. and that doesn't require any exclusivity.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  I agree that the caregivers are not exclusive should be quite obvious, and yes having a lot of caregivers at different times would give the child a lot of rolemodels to choose from. The part I take issue with is: > Ratios of caregivers to children were greater than five-to-one in the observed hunter-gatherer groups, whereas in UK nurseries each adult is responsible for numerous children. In fact, regulations on adult-to-child ratios in early years settings have recently decreased for two-year-olds to one caregiver for five children—the opposite of what the researchers observed in the Mbendjele communities. That is nonsensical. There is at best a very weak correlation between the adult-to-child ratios in nurseries and how many overall caregivers a child has and the ratio of children to one adult in a nursery is certainly not "the opposite" of the ratio of 5 "non-exclusive" adults to one child in the Mbendjele communities. In fact it's quite conceivable that even in the Mbendjele communities for parts of the day 10 children might only be looked after by 2 adults, the same ratio as UK nurseries.