[bena]

This one is complicated.

Until relatively recently, married women didn't really work, not at the rate they do now. So, if the child was home, there'd be a parent, typically the mother.

But the public school system isn't all that old either. From about the early 1900s. Before that, there was no compulsory schooling. Kids would be home. Once again, typically with family as life itself was very different. Children living on a farm did not have daily interaction with large groups of children. You'd have your siblings and that's it for the most part.

And none of these changes happened in a vacuum. So the school thing and the work thing and the child care thing, they all happen because of each other and around each other. And now we've put ourselves in a situation where we use school as child care. And we realize that we've painted ourselves in a corner.