Before having a kid I never realized how powerful of a tool a TV or an iPad was in terms of (essentially) free babysitting.
Families where grandparents can afford to retire and / or move closer to their grandchildren are operating on an entirely different level financially. As are families where the parent or parents can work from home. As are families that can afford childcare which can easily cost as much or more than a mortgage in California at least. Even after public Kindergarten or TK becomes available these are mostly only half day coverage (again in CA) and you are completely on your own to figure out how to cover (pay for) the rest of the time if both parents work and there aren't other family members in the picture.
So in summary, I never would have realized that regardless of how much screen time you want your kid having the reality has shown itself to be that there is a direct correlation between relying on screen time and the financial standing of you and your extended family, for better or worse.
I was very lucky to have remote work when I had a kid, but my parents couldn't / can't afford to retire and that has had a huge financial impact on us. If I had an in-person job we would have had to rely a lot more on screens to fill in the gaps.
In any case no complaints I absolutely love having a kid and am glad to pay for good quality school / childcare and I don't really believe there's anything wrong with screen time anyway.
Watching 3-6 hours of TV a day after school while my parents worked and did whatever adults did in the 90's didn't seem to do as much harm to me mentally as I would have thought. It seems insane in retrospect.
It's crazy to compare my household now vs my experience as a kid in the 90s. TV was always on in the background, whether it was the news, or documentaries, sports, or cartoons, always something. As a kid I knew at what time different soap operas or TV shows would be on the program. We also had schools in shifts, and some weeks I would go to school at 2pm, so I had the whole morning without parents to do homework and watch TV, there was nothing else to do.
I do spend a lot of time online now, but the TV is almost always turned off in my house. Only occasionally will I turn on the TV and play a cartoon channel on cable (or disney) for my kid if I have something to do.
This whole post is spot on. Where I live the use of a screen as a baby sitter is a lot higher in the households where there is a single parent, or where both parents work jobs with very low flexibility, often in combination with no grandparents able to help out.
It's hard not to give a smartphone to a kid if you have to work or just can't spend a lot of time with the kid. Kids are demanding of time and attention. So either you have enough time or you pay someone to play with your kid or you have to endure a lot of chaos a kid without a smartphone and a lot of time without attention can do (from screaming and crying to wreaking havoc in your household). Or you give them smartphone and they keep quiet and still and you can do what you need to do.
imho we're completely missing the problem. It's not so much that kids need our attention, it's more that adults have 0 fucking free time, both parents have to work full time (or often even more) to afford what people could afford on a single salary not even 50 years ago.
Giving a phone to a 5 years old solves the symptom but it certainly doesn't fix the problem.
I don't think that's true, at least for Americans. Even in the sub-population of full time working parents, more time is spent on watching TV (1.45h mother, 1.98h father) than on child care (1.41h mother, 0.91h father, where units are hours per 24h on average): https://www.bls.gov/tus/tables/a7-1519.htm
Worth calling out that's for "children under 18". If you scroll down to specifically "children under 6", since people talking about "screen time" are usually more worried about 6 year olds than 16 year olds, those hours go to 2.42/1.54 childcare against 1.17/1.79 TV.
But I think I'd look at it the other way. The only category on here that's really "discretionary time" is "Leisure and sports". Across the board, parents are averaging about 12% there. The average across the population (including parents) is 22%.[0] This is also averaging everything across weekends as well. Expectedly, people have more free time on the weekends[1].
I'd also point out the footnote:
> NOTE: A primary activity refers to an individual's main activity. Other activities done simultaneously are not included.
There is nothing I do while my kid is (1) home and (2) awake that doesn't involve her taking up a large part of my time and attention.
When it's a dark evening in the middle of winter and I'm setting up a ladder in three feet of snow to climb up on the roof and run an auger down the sewer vent on the roof... I'm still spending probably a third to half of my time on her.
When I've got two pans on the fire, something in the toaster oven, and I'm trying to mind a pot I'm filling up with water to turn into supper... I guess, yeah, running back and forth to try and clean up some spilled juice and get her changed out of the wet clothes while I don't let anything burn or overflow is still technically mostly "food preparation and cleanup".
I don't even know where "planning child's birthday party" fits into this whole thing, but it's not something I'm doing _with_ my kid so it doesn't seem to be caring for household children by the general phrasing of these options. (And you might think "yeah but that only happens once a year" and you'd be right... but it's always something.)
And yeah, after she was asleep I did a bunch of "housework" and at some point I sat down for an hour and "watched TV" while I poked away at a bunch of other smaller things that needed doing. At some point I feel asleep in a chair so I'm not sure whether my primary activity was "sleep" or "watching television".
So that's a rundown of a recent evening of mine which had around 0 hours spent on childcare and an hour on TV.
Obviously "lived experience" is not "data", but that's at least _a_ perspective--yes, by the numbers I probably spend more time watching TV than caring for my kid but no, she's still the main time sink on my day outside of sleep and work (and sometimes not even sleep) and I certainly do not have a bunch of free time I could be allocating to childcare so she spent less time watching TV.
I feel it's easier with with more kids since you can let them play together. It's hard with one kid or kids that are not of similar age, since they have nobody to play with them at home. Of course, there are some kids who can play alone with legos or dolls. I know when I was growing up me and my brother where a year apart and we could play for hours together with legos or toys, we did also watch a lot of TV, this was the early 90s.
My sister is out of work 50% of the time, her husband is out of work 90% of the time. Their combined yearly earnings are well under the median wage here.
They have 5 kids + 1 foster.
All have iPads. The eldest kid does double duty as nursemaid and has done since she was 7 or so.
Poverty = Kids iPad for me too. I dunno why. Its cheaper than childcare I guess.
I think low income family parents have to work more, sometimes multiple jobs to pay the bills so the kids end up with more screen time because maybe they have someone else watching them or they're alone depending on the age. If someone else is watching them it's easy to just give the kid a screen and they're not as concerned as the parents about the long term effects.
Also if you're a kid in a low income area where maybe it's not safe to go play outside or you need constant supervision to be safe you don't go out much and therefore screens become the default indoor play. My kids have a big backyard they can go out and ride bikes around and swingset and spaces to dig and play and get dirty in the backyard because I make enough to buy a house like that.
