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For the results of a different survey, 10 years ago, asking similar questions: https://reason.com/2014/08/20/helicopter-parenting-run-amok-most-ameri
Nearly half of respondents think it should be illegal for a 12 year old to play solo at a park. It's over 2/3 for a 9 year old. Those are tough numbers.
I'm glad this worked for you, but would your thought be to use unique signs for each kid if each had a multi-month signing phase?
In particular, I would not use this approach too extensively if your kid may want to be able to communicate with others who work with kids - teachers at daycare, speech pathologists, many nannies, other pediatric medical professionals etc. I do agree that straight ASL isn't quite right either. Our kid's speech pathologist uses a lot of signs but chooses for example to use "car" - a fairly easy sign - for all vehicles since bus, train, etc. are more abstract or complex. This approach has allowed our kid to communicate with a range of people over the relevant time period, not just our household.
I'm fairly surprised to read this, as I continue to be surprised by the number of my friends and acquaintances who have flown home with COVID despite having the means not to. Every flight I've taken since the pandemic started, I've taken the time to game plan what would happen if I or someone in my party were to test positive during the trip. Did you not do this? On the scale of the incomes you have posted on your blog previously, $2000 or so is not very much.
And from the JetBlue policy you linked to, I guess you bought Basic Blue fares?
It seems like you chose to be your own insurance policy and then decided not to pay out.
Several airlines, at least as of a few months ago, required me to check a box confirming that I had not tested positive for COVID in some recent amount of time, or had a fever. Is this no longer the case, or did you choose to check that box?
Maybe the risk numbers make sense here, but planes/airports are one of the hardest places to avoid to be able to participate in society normally and I am surprised by your choice given all the other posts in which you seem exceedingly concerned about not spreading COVID.
I think you are maybe also not thinking of the degrees of privacy people value.
For example, I used to have a job where it was valuable to be able to present to new professional acquaintances as politically neutral or at least politically agendaless. I have a very Google-able name. And Google really likes Facebook results. Therefore I kept anything publicly available, including on Facebook, fairly neutral - no tags in public contra pictures, for example. My bar was, if someone were to see they were going to meet with me, search my name, and read whatever struck their interest for a few minutes, they wouldn't have significant information on my politics.
That's a very different goal than keeping my information private from, say, the law.
I can't find it right now, but I distinctly remember you posting about BIDA having a similar "kids excluded" policy, I think back when under-5s couldn't be vaccinated. At the time, you said it was no/low cost, and someone in the comments pointed out that the cost was the entire cost of attending the dance. I didn't see an explicit revision to your thinking posted. Can you articulate your revised cost-benefit for under 2s, who can't do basic things like cover a cough or wash their hands after touching their mouth?
Possibly scarier: the federal government and national lab system has not identical, but very similar barriers.
Not wanting your kid to be at minimal age to start school is a totally valid counterargument. Perhaps there's a middle ground - prioritizing the spring for example.
Had anyone I'd been discussing this with brought up this counterargument I would have had a very different takeaway from the conversation. The point I was trying to make was that even people who are thinking some about the economics of pregnancy and parenthood don't seem to be thinking about it very comprehensively in my experience.
That said, IIRC from your blogs, 2 of your 3 kids have June-ish birthdays, so I take it your concern about being in the youngest quarter of the year wasn't something important enough to you to actively avoid.
| as you start looking for a house
We've been keeping our eye on houses in our area for several years. If the right one showed up on the market we would likely try to buy. I know people who have spent their entire careers in this state. Maybe it's not the most typical approach, but I don't expect there will be a concentrated 6 month period of "looking for a house" for us.
For a more concrete example, we nearly lost our housing last year on very short notice (<1 month), and so had to secure a new rental. Most rentals require income to be a certain percentage of the rent (often 300%). We would have ended up living in a hotel.
The idea that you should in other circumstances be able to have while choosing to make lest rings as fairly naive and not based in reality to me.
I think means testing goes in a lot of different directions. You may qualify for housing assistance and your kid may qualify for more financial aid in college, and I don't know that either of those would be questioned. However, my understanding is that court-ordered child/spousal support works differently and is unlikely to be adjusted downward based on a decrease in income, especially in this scenario.
On the other side of the coin, good luck buying a house.
I agree completely, and yet I am also very convinced that very few people enter parenthood having done rational economic calculations.
As an example:
(A) I've seen many folks TTC with an explicit intent to get the entire pregnancy + birth on one year's health insurance deductible, which I'd guess saves $7500 or so on a HDHP versus the worst case of meeting the full deductible in two consecutive years. This often results in a baby born in the fall.
(B) A summer versus fall baby requires ~10 months less childcare before public school (or combined childcare + private school if you want the really long view), a savings of easily $20,000 five years later assuming $2k/mo in childcare expenses. And the first three months of pregnancy with an unassisted conception are realistically going to cost under $1k for the vast majority of people.
When I've brought this up with friends and acquaintances considering (A), they often tell me that (B) had not crossed their minds, or that the benefit is simply too far away to think about, or variations on those.
These are all educated, planning-oriented people, and that is still the level of long-range economic consideration they are giving to having a child. They budget for a crib and later on they open a 529 to save for college, but I do not think that they, let alone all the less-planning-oriented people choosing to enter parenthood, can be considered fully aware of the economic contract they are signing.
What is your current approach if a kid wants to call someone just to talk (say, your dad)? Do you do it for them on your phone? Do they do it on your phone? Is this something that they just don't have interest in doing?
I'm similarly interested in how you are teaching your kid phone skills. Has your kid ever picked up the phone? At what age do you anticipate they will start picking up a phone?
We are considering getting a land line or a family device in a year or two, not sure which yet.
I'm curious if the ceiling fan is reversible, and if so if you tried it blowing up. That would give you something of a pressurized plenum approach and may more evenly mix the air.
We also prioritized sleep pretty heavily. Just as a datapoint, here are some of the ways that has looked for us:
- Both parents get 4+ hour chunks of uninterrupted, "both ears closed" sleep from the time the baby comes home. Mom sets alarms to pump and baby gets bottles of breastmilk when Mom is on her sleep shifts.
- As baby got older and more settled, taking dedicated shifts whenever we expect a more difficult night - e.g. switching at 2 AM. Parents sleep in different rooms, baby sleeps in room with on-shift parent, the first minute that parent is awake after 2 AM, they move the baby to the other parent's room. (Sometimes modified to first time they are putting the baby down after 2 AM). On less difficult nights, we did the same thing by switching sides of the bed so that the on-duty parent was close to the baby.
- From the beginning, each parent getting periodic off duty nights, sleeping in a room with no baby or monitor all night. Mom sets an alarm to pump if she's off duty. Our experience was that waking at a pre-determined time to pump and not having to monitor for or judge baby noises, or know which chunks of sleep would be long versus short, was overall much more restful than getting up to nurse, even if the two took the same amount of time.
We have in general lucked out with our baby being a relatively good sleeper and generally easier than average, but the above has been very important to us as well.
I'm finding this exchange strangely frustrating. I was trying to ask whether you planned to explicitly exclude children under 2 and/or 5, since my understanding is the local laws would permit an event with them and so your plan in this regard wasn't clear to me from your writeup. I expected there to be either a small additional risk in your analysis from including them or an included cost to not, since then presumably people are paying a sitter (or staying home). I don't have a strong opinion either way on the correct approach. But "I would not personally bring my small child" is not an answer to the question.
I will say that I, personally, have not returned to the dances ~one hour away because they will not permit my <1 year old to enter the building. It's not a principled disagreement, it's just that the cascading impacts mean that it is not worth it to me personally to attend. If my kid were to attend, I wouldn't do a carrier. Various people would trade off sitting out. One venue managed to accommodate this by having a space in a different room (not the one used for dancing) for the kid and the kid-minder, but the main venue that has resumed dancing does not allow entry to the kid under any circumstances. And that's fine! But it means it is not worth it to me to attend.
I do bring my kid to other indoor places (e.g., shopping, buses) which I understand is not the cultural norm in the Boston area currently.
While most dancing children will be covered by the recent EUA, many younger ones (and therefore likely one or both parents) will not. I understand that you yourself have a <1 year old for whom the vaccine availability timeline is unclear. She would not be welcome at the dance events hosted in my area.
It isn't now, which means the inclusion of those people isn't counted a loss. When you revisit the analysis in six months or two years, will you remember to put them in then?
I also think that ignoring the loss of people who can't reasonably dance in masks is a mistake, but that's strictly my opinion rather than a shortcoming of your writeup.
People sweat while dancing. Some people sweat a lot. I have heard that wet, even damp, cloth masks are essentially useless. Does this hold true for surgical type masks as well? If so, many folks will be effectively unmasked for much of the evening, even if they do something reasonable like get a fresh mask every 2-3 dances.
On an entirely separate note, my community has re-started some of its dances with mask and vacc required, no exceptions. This has excluded several families with children who were active participants pre-pandemic. What is your plan regards to families with children? The "I" in BIDA perhaps makes it extra un-pallatable to exclude them.
It seems like what you really need is walkie-talkie technology in a watch form factor. I'm kind of surprised I've never heard of such a thing.
Those are only useful while the kids are in boosters or carseats though. They don't really add an extra seat in a general sense.
Another relevant childhood memory: my parents added an additional lap belt to the back bench seat of our minivan in around 2001, making a 7 seater into an 8 seater legally. We fit four accross a few times (mostly kids/tweens 6-12 YO, no booster seats). Also not the most comfortable but also an adventure. I would be curious what the cost is to add a seatbelt to a 5 seater car nowadays, as it would likely need to be a shoulder belt. With kids in boosters to a much older age it would be more complicated to fit 4 across and I wouldn't do it in a Fit, but there may be other cars where this would be an option.
I got put in the middle front seat fairly frequently growing up (1990s). It wasn't comfortable, but it was an adventure and for half hour rides it sure beat there having to be two trips which would have been the only alternative. Comfort isn't everything.
I presume safety standards have a lot to do with the decline of smaller 6-7 seaters. Today I don't think it would be legal for me to be in the front seat at all at the ages I was sometimes sitting in the middle front seat (5ish-10ish) due to passenger-side airbags that can't be turned off*. The minimum size of a front crumple zone has gotten steadily larger in recent years (ie the distance from the furthest front point of the car to the furthest front point of a passenger) - I imagine rear crumple zones also have some sort of increasing minimum requirement. I also imagine that new standard safety features like side-curtain air bags are difficult to implement in many of the older car configurations.
On a completely different note, I am very curious whether, Jeff, you will amend any of your thoughts related to parking and zoning after you get a car. My understanding is you will now have 3 cars at your house, and 2 off-street parking spaces, meaning your house will require an on-street parking space. I think you've had your house about 5 years, and have said you plan to have it a long time. If even your family previously car-averse is likely to have a car for half or more of the time you are in the house, some of your assumptions about the correct car: housing ratios seem to need revisiting. I feel that the parking situation in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville generally supports that parking and housing are not yet ready to be as decoupled as you've proposed.
*My understanding is that in a 5 seater car with a driver and four 6 year olds, it's perfectly legal to put one in the front passenger seat today - and you still can't turn off the passenger-side airbag!
I have yet to see anything convincing me that a vaccinated person is unlikely to give me COVID, even 2 weeks after dose 2. Especially because right now, the vaccinated people are the ones most likely to be exposed to COVID (e.g. nurses, grandparents living in group facilities). I would not be comfortable being unvaccinated and unmasked around a vaccinated unmasked person for this reason. I am eagerly awaiting information to change my mind on this, but I have not seen it yet.
If I were also vaccinated, I would feel reasonably good that even if I got COVID, I would make it through OK. There's still some uncertainty about long term effects from mild cases that worry me, but I haven't seen anything on long term effects from asymptomatic cases. So, at that point I would probably be OK being unmasked around other vaccinated people who were unmasked, and possibly around unvaccinated lower-risk people who were unmasked.
Those two options are part of a much larger picture, that seems really simplistic. Most places aren't doing any real contact tracing right now - the white house certainly isn't. We might be 'saved' by a vaccine, we might not. I don't think that any of us thought, two weeks in, that we'd still be here seven months in. I figure it's 50-50 that dancing is a significantly lower risk (say a factor of at least 2) two years in than it is now. There's no coherent plan, no coherent timeline for how long you have to endure this. Right now it's people's employers that mostly decide what risk they get stuck with. Seems reasonable to me that people should get some say themselves, too. Some people may choose to live very careful lives for as long as it takes, others may not.
First, I am very curious what the results would have been with enforced mask-wearing.
Second, at what point in the pandemic to we start accepting that to some people, risks similar to this may be worth it and should be their choice? It's been seven months and it's about to be winter. If safe options for socialization aren't available or aren't meeting people's needs, they are going to go for unsafe options. I expect that by two years into the pandemic I will be ready to go to a dance weekend and then do my due diligence to quarantine strictly for two weeks to make sure I don't expose anyone who didn't choose to be exposed. Now, at 7 months, I would consider the same for an outdoor event with compulsory masks but no distancing. Some people cannot find what makes them feel human through virtual events only.
Alright, I'll push back a little.
I think your numbers are off. My understanding (mostly from this NYT piece) is that WIC also renews the first of the month, at least in many areas. Many people were hit extra hard in March (less income, less support available from community orgs, less food from work or supplies from daycare). I would expect that on Apr 1-2, it could easily have been 1 in 25 shoppers who were WIC-eligible, or even much higher. And, making up numbers, I am going to say that for any given WIC-eligible SKU, maybe half of WIC participants and 10% of other shoppers would want that item. So of people who might buy that can of kidney beans, I could easily believe 1 in 5 or even 1 in 3 were WIC. WIC products are often *more expensive* than similar non-WIC options, because they have built-in, non-price-sensitive demand.
Yes, it would probably be better if we could set aside 3 hours on Apr 1 for WIC and EBT shopping only. It would come with tons of its own issues, but it is at least theoretically possible. But, I think individual actions those couple of days, in parts of the country where those were the relevant days, have more impact than you are guessing.
I do think that it can be a problem when the government or grocery stores try to determine who 'deserves' masks, or delivery slots, where there isn't a litmus test like WIC or EBT. The availability of these things have not been able to keep up with demand, and there is no way I can see to allocate them appropriately short of some application process that will take a lot of time to set up and probably still miss-allocate.
Should all masks go to medical workers? As a first priority, probably yes. But what about our friend whose kid came out of the NICU a month ago? Does that family not 'deserve' masks to try to keep their baby alive, too? What about immunocompromised and asthmatics who are performing essential jobs outside of healthcare? Or those that take care of senior citizens? At some point 'think twice, and then a third time, before ordering masks that might save someone else's life' starts to look like about as good as we can do at allocation.
Similarly, I would love it if there were a system where when doctors order a quarantine, they can put that person's name in a database for delivery priority. Same with high-risk individuals. As it is, many folks under medical quarantine are relying on friends and neighbors - often elderly friends and neighbors - to deliver groceries. Or in some cases they aren't eating well because they can't get groceries for weeks.
Until these shortages are over or these systems are set up to address them, I do think there is non-negligible marginal benefit to pushing a 'to each according to need' mentality. Many people are looking for small ways to help those hardest hit, and I think this falls into that category.
When accurate, of course. If someone posts encouraging action based on information that is not locally valid, there is no reason not to gently correct that!
It seems very likely that in 2-4 weeks the critical bottleneck to care won't be PPE or ventilators, both of which have some hope of increased availability in that time frame, but skilled medical professionals who are still healthy enough to work, whose number is infinitely harder to scale up in a month. Shouldn't we be doing everything we possibly can to protect our medical professionals now?