basically nobody besides grandparents or people you pay seems to be interested in helping take care of children in modern Western society.
I feel like this is more true in the Bay area than in other places. Not sure why. Anyways, if you are in San Francisco and looking to make parent friends where you can have play dates at each other’s houses and potentially drop off your kids at each other’s houses if there’s some kind of child care gap, we should be friends. I live in the Mission district and have a 3.5 and 1.5-year-old and want to build this kind of friend/support network locally.
I second this, but even people you pay for childcare aren’t that easily found (at least where we’re living—Germany).
The same with this type of network/friend circle—I absolutely love the idea, but my experience is, that it’s hard to build this up and it takes time. Every family is struggling, and have different rhythms (e.g. my kid’s nap time is 12-2pm we can meet afterward—oh but my kid is sleeping from 1.30-3pm and then it’s almost getting too late before it gets dark/dinner time/whatsoever...), you plan a play-date, and then one kid gets sick—just some examples from real life ;-)
I don’t want to sound too pessimistic. That’s just been our experience and I wish I’d had more realistic expectations on things like that.
Yes, I do think that most parents in the bay area are too nervous about taking care of other people’s kids (maybe it gets better when the kids are 6+ years old and people are more willing to e.g. drop them off at birthday parties where the parents leave). It also requires a certain type of personality to be okay with whatever parenting style your friends or loved ones have when they are taking care of your kids for free, and be OK with their diet, nap schedule, etc slipping while you’re gone.
I feel like this is more true in the Bay area than in other places. Not sure why. Anyways, if you are in San Francisco and looking to make parent friends where you can have play dates at each other’s houses and potentially drop off your kids at each other’s houses if there’s some kind of child care gap, we should be friends. I live in the Mission district and have a 3.5 and 1.5-year-old and want to build this kind of friend/support network locally.
And if you’re in Boston (Somerville area) and are interested in something similar let me know! (1.5y, 6y, 8y).
I second this, but even people you pay for childcare aren’t that easily found (at least where we’re living—Germany).
The same with this type of network/friend circle—I absolutely love the idea, but my experience is, that it’s hard to build this up and it takes time. Every family is struggling, and have different rhythms (e.g. my kid’s nap time is 12-2pm we can meet afterward—oh but my kid is sleeping from 1.30-3pm and then it’s almost getting too late before it gets dark/dinner time/whatsoever...), you plan a play-date, and then one kid gets sick—just some examples from real life ;-)
I don’t want to sound too pessimistic. That’s just been our experience and I wish I’d had more realistic expectations on things like that.
Yes, I do think that most parents in the bay area are too nervous about taking care of other people’s kids (maybe it gets better when the kids are 6+ years old and people are more willing to e.g. drop them off at birthday parties where the parents leave). It also requires a certain type of personality to be okay with whatever parenting style your friends or loved ones have when they are taking care of your kids for free, and be OK with their diet, nap schedule, etc slipping while you’re gone.