I've seen a lot of posts so far about the obvious negative aspects of this bill but so far no other advantages remarked. So I will at least volunteer my opinion there is another side to look at.
No one will ever verbalize this but the truth is that a lot of people do not have kids today because they are extremely expensive and (unlike years past when we had a farm economy) do not provide any economic advantage to families. In today's society kids are viewed as being nothing but expensive pets. That is why most western economies are in a declining population trend. That is not sustainable either because sooner or later these declining western societies will not even have the option to import population from other poorer countries.
And with today's automation and primitive robots, was is so wrong about early apprenticeship programs training younger workforces into skilled trades in conjunction with liberal arts? The jobs offered to children would not have to be dangerous either while offering free training and skills, producing highly productive lives for kids who would otherwise be gaming in the basement.
For some younger people working (in a good job) might actually be a blessing for them.
It is very true that many young people are forgoing having children with or without having pets. People are delaying or forgoing marriage altogether. The same with having children.
What is different about the younger generations compared with mine is that women expect and are expected to be as fully invested in their careers as men. There is an enormous shortage of good quality child care and what is available is extremely expensive. At the same time, children are….little germ factories. At daycare and at school, they trade germs. A lot.
Children cannot be in school or in daycare when they are sick—running a fever, or for 24 hrs. after vomiting or diarrhea. Now, imagine you have multiple children, who will definitely share whatever they catch with each other. It is not unusual for families with an infant, a toddler, and a pre-schooler to have to use more than one daycare center. And of course there could be school aged siblings in the mix. That’s a lot of germs being shared among all the children —and their parents.
This can make staying employed difficult for parents. Easily, every single day of PTO for both parents can be eaten up by routine childhood illnesses of their one or two kids.
The paradigm used to be that the mother stayed home with the children. She was the one who delayed or simply never had a career. Perhaps she would get some kind of job when the kids were well into school.
A little later, one parent, usually the mother, had a low paying job with greater flexibility while the kids were young and hoped for something better when the kids were old enough to be home on their own after school.
Now, even if a couple wants to have children, they almost certainly must work full time in order to pay off their student loans. Or the women will delay having children to establish their career and then face fertility issues in their mid to late 30’s or later.
Work places have NOT adjusted to provide adequately flexible work hours, more PTO, etc. that allow employees to have families.
Now, I’m obviously talking mostly about middle to upper middle class families who can afford or ‘afford’ childcare and have professional jobs with decent pay abd benefits. Obviously there are many people who work lower paying jobs, often multiple jobs and who must rely on family members, or neighbors or older children or just trust their kids will be ok at home alone. Or parents work opposite shifts which does absolute wonders for the marriage. Some, maybe most schools provide before and after school care for a decent price. Whatever educational reasons are cited, the true push for all day kindergarten is from parents who do not have to scramble for day care for thst year as they have had to for five years or more, if there are are multiple children.
A LOT of things MUST change. Education must be affordable and student loans must be forgiven. Employers must start to provide better benefits including PTO. A four day work week would be tremendously beneficial—I worked 4-10 hr days and later 4-8 hr. days and tremendously helped.
