3 ms·
We used to have a 24/7 grocery store in Dunedin! ;-) Now it shuts before midnight. You'll find in the major centres like Auckland or Wellington that there'll be
by veb 12y ago
We used to have a 24/7 grocery store in Dunedin! ;-) Now it shuts before midnight. You'll find in the major centres like Auckland or Wellington that there'll be more of those open 24/7... but I can't think of anything else.
Mind you, banks that shut at 4.30pm are kind of annoying for many people and I can't blame them (even though my wife is a banker). There's only _one_ small branch open in a city of 140,000 people on a Saturday. No other banks open in the weekends here at least.
That being said, and on topic with the article... it'll be much easier for a single mum to stay at home with her kids and collect money from the govt, rather than to work nightshift at a supermarket most likely. I don't even think we have these extreme daycares in NZ. She may not get more money than someone who stacks shelves, but it's definitely much better than her losing out on her children growing up or the children missing their only parent from their lives.
Many parents like this will normally go back to work once the kids start full-time school, but still receive maybe $100 for accommodation help if they're not making enough. I like this a lot better than them having to be in the same circumstances as the women in the article.
(I know men fall into this too, I just used women as an example as the article primarily did)
- jessaustin 12y agoI don't even think we have these extreme daycares in NZ. They're not the norm in USA either. As TFA implied, this is not just a failure of the state (although it is that), but also of the social structure. The single parents described have no one to whom they can turn. I know a family (parents not married, but together for a long time) that had a hard time over the summer. They camped in a state park for over a month. (The younger son loved it.) The good news is that now both parents are working, incidentally at jobs that allow them to still eschew daycare. (Not that daycare is bad for other families; this is just an indication of this family's views.) My time in NZ was almost entirely in Wellington, and was over a decade ago, so maybe everything is different now. One challenge for me was living and working downtown without an automobile. When walking absolutely wouldn't work, I found the buses to be less convenient than buses I've ridden elsewhere.