But to be honest one does wonder how many of those 'newly freed up hours' would really be spent in quality interaction with offspring and how many down the pub, to put it crudely?
It irritates me how much of the school curriculum is given over to trying to civilise children because it evidently isn't happening at home!
Perhaps we need to examine that far eastern view that education is a 3 way process, an interaction between child, teacher and parent, not a battleground.
And to be fair I don't think it is as much about being fully socialised etc at 4- many who aren't socialised in any way, shape or form at 4 aren't at 11 either! I'd hope that many of our own more immature 4 year olds are a work in progress not left to get on with it.
Maybe there IS merit in later formal schooling- we all cite this when we speak of our (mainly male!) DCs starting reception but most of the world starts the educational process at 4, but doesn't 'formalise it' like we do quite so early. But bear in mind how many parents would groan at the loss of income if they had their DCs on their hands for more hours a day to say aged 6 instead of 4! And how much MORE 'lost' to civilisation some of those neglected DCs would be if they never encountered discipline til then!
As for:
"Parents were under tremendous pressure to do many things, she said, including earning enough money to support their families..."- well, THAT ain't new!
BUT we as an Anglo-Saxon society have shown great willingness to get paid rather than get time off from work. We haven't quite reached the eye-watering '2 weeks a year annual leave' of many Americans but oh how we heap scorn on those idle French trying to restrict the working week to 35 hours!
All this, surely, CAN contribute to our DCs being ill-disciplined and not ready for school.