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| Discussions
on Socialization |
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Contributions will be
added to the top of this collection as I receive them
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From: "Silke R
Subject: Who
should pay to raise children?
I agree with you (and not just out
of self-interest), but just a few 'devil's advocate' challenges:
- Not sure it falls onto parents
to pay all the costs since the government does pay our play groups (for
kids age 0-6, at least in Ontario), libraries, playgrounds, kindergarten
(all 2 1/2 hours of it, or all day in Quebec or for those lucky enough
to have one parent born or educated in French), primary & secondary
school, some of post-sec and most health-care, o yes and the famous $ 100
Harper money instead of day-care ;(
- On commodification - if children
are an investment in production and old age security, is that not also
commodified? Except that the child's (future or current) labour is the
commodity instead of the service of caring for the child?
- "more fear of harm to children"
yes, and a b&*(^&$%^ law that states you can't leave them unsupervised
until they are 12 years old - I walked 2 km to school and spend all afternoon
outside unsupervised when I was 6 - and the day they turn 13 they can baby-sit
other people's kids! To be fair though, not sure that free roaming produces
moral training and fewer crimes, it certainly produces a lot of bullying.
- One should think that the increased
use of outside agents (day-care, organized sports and rec) creates an increase
in moral training (albeit a decrease in independent thinking). My theory
is that this is where the quality comes in - in Ontario, you can spend
$ 700-800/ month for home based day-care and may or may not be lucky to
have quality care (and likely you will never know), or you can spend twice
that (literally) for a centre based day-care where you know they have quality
care from trained professionals (not in my school district though), or
you can stay home, which is probably better than a lousy day-care but not
as good as a good day-care because the kids still get parked in front of
the TV (DVD in our house, at least we pick the program) when Mum has work
to do (since they can't roam outside). And so you get a class system of
day-care - for example where I once worked, all the program officers and
above had their kids in centre based care (or private schools, starting
with pre-school at age 2 1/2) and the research officers and below in home
based care.
- Not sure the use of outside services
increases the cost of child raising since the cost of not using them is
one person's salary and people will usually not spend more than one person's
salary on day care since there is then no point in working. So maybe the
issue is more an increase of opportunity cost because (some) women now
have the possibility of working in reasonably well paying jobs and that
increases the (opportunity) cost of child raising. Also I suspect prices
in the market in general have adjusted to a level based on the two income
family as the norm, because it's now hard to raise a family on one average
income and somehow for some reason it didn't use to be.
- I think the state should bear
more of the cost of child rearing, but that would mean more reliance on
outside agents and more regimented/ uniform/ not-independent-thinking child
rearing. For example, the priority measure in Ontario pre Harper would
have been to have more day cares associated with kindergartens where the
kids go to a (physically close) day-care centre after kindergarten and
have educational activities there (at an affordable rate). Some kindergartens
have that now but they are in low income districts, and of course rich
people have their kids in private schools which provide all day kindergarten
for $ 1400 /month.
So much for my rambling,
Silke
Date: Wed, 09 Feb
From: "adam l"
Hey Dr. Phil,
I had a question to add for
the possible blog that started on, "Eggs reproduce by finding a chicken."
I was wondering that if society took on more responsibility of aiding those
students who do need financial help, will this decrease the amount of pay
that is distributed within the school and administration costs? If there
is more financial help, and it becomes more frequent, will this lead to
a rising tuition? Also, do you think that society should help pay for students
education, even if their intentions are to obtain a career which doesn't
neccesarily help society, but mainly the needs of the individual?
Adam
Date: Mon, 07 Feb
From: Ryan H
Hi,
To suggest that it's societies'
responsibility to support all children is a slippery slope, which we are
already sliding down.
The increased social disorder
and deterioration of society is in large part do to a lack of values being
instilled in our children. Honesty and hard-work are the two most
important values you can teach a child, but by "spoon feeding" families,
children have no appreciation for working hard; therefore, society slides
further down the slope because of the increased laziness and irresponsibility
of the people.
Obviously, there needs to
be some assistance giving to children and their families, but that assistance
should be as minimal as possible. People need to take responsibility
for their actions and stop relying on society to take care of them.
I realize my conservative
view on this issue is likely in the minority within the class, but thank
you for taking the time to read and consider my opinion.
Ryan
----- Original Message -----
From: Phil B
Sent: Sunday, February 06
Subject: socialization poultry
and fees
Just because I cannot see a relationship
does not mean it is not there.
I use the chicken egg chicken
egg process to illustrate that from the individual viewpoint, socialization
is how an individual becomes human, but the same process is also how society
and culture are reproduced. I argue that too much attention is paid
to the individual, which rightly belongs in psychology, whereas in sociology
we should pay more attention to how culture and society are reproduced.
The raising of children costs
us resources, not only money but time, energy, management decisions and
responsibility. Too often some decision makers, usually on the right
end of the spectrum, treat it as a consumer process, and think that those
who have children should pay all the expenses. I argue that the process
helps society to reproduce and society as a whole should pay some of the
costs, and that means higher state payments by those who choose not to
have children because they do not undergo their responsibility to the society
of bearing costs of feeding, clothing and sheltering children. This
is why I argue that the state should pay most though not all of school
and university fees.
I think that if some students
respond to this then we can create a new blog about it.
At 06:37 AM 02/06/
adam l wrote:
Hey Dr. Phil,
I was just practicing some
of the exam questions, and had some issues I had to sort out with my mind.
Is the psychological view of "eggs producing chickens", when people who
don't have children, don't want to pay for the education of other people
in society?
Thanks,
Adam
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