So you have a dependent....
What do you do with them while you're out on a run?
One choice is splitting the childcare with the other parent -- joint custody or all living under the same roof. If both parents are runners, they simply never go on missions at the same time.
There's all kinds of ways to foist your responsibility onto others as well: other relatives, the RoboSitter™, older siblings, day care, public school, sleep-over parties (at another parents' house), residential schools, etc. If you're running during the day, it's easy to put them in school. But given current trends, here's what's likely to be going on with schools by 2050+:
Schooling in the Future
The current school system is a failure for a wide variety of reasons, and here's some of what is being considered to reform schools (to solve disparate issues):
- Multiple school shifts - schools may not just be from 8am-2pm anymore, there may be a second shift to quell overcrowding and accomodate increases in younger populations. So your child could be in the 2nd shift from 2:30pm to 8:30pm.
- Schools are likely to be privatized. They're already talking about this issue right now. Online schools are for-profit organizations, where public schools are not. Our impending implosion of public schooling -- only made worse by goblinization and other changes in youth populations -- would translate to corporations in the Shadowrun universe having make short work of bribing governments to hand the billion-nuyen-a-year cash cow over to privatization.
- Medium-sized childcare/schools that are still technically "non-profit" run will come out of civic organizations (think the YMCA, sunday school, parochial schools, charter schools, policlubs, camps, etc.). Whether corporate run or "non-profit" run, you can bet that children are washing their brains along with their "education".
- That leaves the non-corporate choices to those run as smaller, private schools -- and a large influx of homeschooling (which is already growing by leaps and bounds today). Runner-class children are probably more likely to be homeschooled than the average corp-wage-slave's kids. The wage-slave may live in an arcology, and schooling-by-corp may be mandated within their boundaries.
- Technology issues. Face it, much of the workforce is using skillsofts of some type. So is "a college education" the goal of education for the masses? Probably not. Keeping young prematurely pubescent orcs in school and off the streets is the point. If you think the real purpose of education for children is to prepare them for college, do some research.
- "Online Education" -- with the acknowledgement that sitting all day in VR doesn't keep a child safe, sane, or out of trouble, this is a pretty popular option. However, combining this with a nannybot of some type could be sufficient, as long as your child is content being a shut-in and is an only child. ;) The more children, the more exponential the trouble they get into.