To ask if you couldn't imagine leaving your baby and then young dc with strangers?

People are not reacting to your life choices.

They are reacting to the very unpleasant statements that you have made about those who have made different life choices to you.

God forbid a father look after their daughter, hey?

I’m convinced this post is click bait or a troll.

Surely, no one is that naive to think anyone actually wants to leave their kids. It’s not about choice it’s about earning money.

If this post is genuine. The OP is a tosser.

How nice to see you mention (female) against close friends! I thought I was the only woman who wouldn't trust men with a little child (especially a girl).

I'm sorry you suffered abuse.

But it's worth saying that most cases of child abuse are committed by a child's relatives or family friends. Statistically, a child is less likely to be abused in a formal childcare setting than by their family/friends.

Regardless, most parents don't have a lot of choice. Even pokey flats are so expensive in many areas (to rent or buy) that both parents have to work. Many parents don't have an extended family living close by, or close friends who are able to care for their children.

Imagine if every other nurse, doctor, train driver, teacher, computer programmer stopped working for 4yrs and then worked only PT for another decade once they/their partner have a child. It'd be madness.

Parents have to make a million choices and parents can only do their best in their circumstances. I respect your choice to do what's right for you, but that isn't necessarily workable or right for others

It's quite bizarre to shame people - even if that wasn't your intention - for working to provide for their families and employing qualified, regulated, DBS-checked people to care for their children while they do so.

I love being a parent - DT’s are our greatest accomplishment. However DH and I have careers so we used a nursery with highly educated professional staff- two of which became our babysitters. DH is a doctor - would you prefer he stayed home with DT’s ?

I sm MUCH more comfortable leaving my children with professionals than leaving with friends or grandparents...

I hate that thought. We can't survive on DHs wage alone without massively uprooting ourselves to a much worse area. And we have a small house. I earn a decent wage, so we are better off after the astronomical childcare fees. Doesn't mean I'd rather be at work. Just how it is.

Posters like that also forget that if we jacked in work we're preventing ourselves from being independent, potentially from having a good retirement income or being able to go back to the same decent job we worked hard to get later on.

But as long as we're at home with the children like good little wives it's all fine.

Seems this thread is just an opportunity for OP and some others to be goady, judgemental and sanctimonious.

Totally understand your POV in that your feel your babies were too small and nursery felt unsafe to you. Also I’m sorry you had a terrible experience growing up.

I think you need to understand that that is your POV, and not everyone shares it.

I think people have strong reactions because we all want to do the best for our children, and everyone has a really strong opinion about what that “best” looks like, but it actually isn’t a “one size fits all” scenario. So people feel frustrated to be told they are “doing it wrong” (often in very emotive terms!) when they are doing the best they can and what is actually “right” for them and their family.

Add into that the endless judgementalism and misogyny (see my previous post for an example of what appears to be unconscious judgementalism on your part) and it can all get a bit heated.

FWIW, I feel zero guilt for sending my kid to nursery. He loves it (he gets really excited when we pull into the car park), they are trained professionals and know much more about his development and playing with him, and feeding him than I do (no matter how many books I read or hours and hours I spend googling it all), and I get to carry on with my career and provide for him. He’s happy, I’m happy, it’s all good! :)

I've trained for 25 years plus as have my team. We deliver outstanding care and individually tailored learning plans enriched with love that make each child's happiness and success our daily focus.

we are not strangers.

we are caring, trained professionals who do a wonderful job of making children's Early Years magical for those parents that want/need to work.

You sound very judgemental about nursery parents' choices and there's no need for it at all. You do you.

How to take sex equality back generations in one comment. So us ‘little women’ are just meant to stay at home and look after the babies?

Read back some of your own posts as if you were someone who had no choice but to go to work to keep a roof over your kids head.

Or as if you were someone who had worked incredibly hard for many years to get to where you were in your career, and to stop working to be a SAHM would have meant you couldn't get your foot back in the door later.

Or as someone who is living in a tiny house and working their ass off to provide for a family, but sees you saying "I can't imagine why people would work when they could be home with their children. Thank goodness it's not too many".

You sound sanctimonious and judgemental.

I don't care if you're a career woman or a SAHM. Genuinely happy for anyone who is doing what's best for them. But you have made a thread judging people who's choices differ from yours. That's why people react.

@A2J

I think you’re going to get a lot of heat for this. I, like no one else wants to leave their child in nursery but how the hell do you expect me to work?!

You said yourself you didn't work with kids, so you did.

Many nurseries are running on the bare minimum of qualified staff so I don't assume they are all trained and professional childcarers in the slightest.
I would go for a childminder every time.

You are being very judgemental and sanctimonious.

With no thought for the parents who really didn't have ANY choice.

** The OP has just written:

I'm just someone who couldn't have left my tiny babies with people I wasn't close to. I did bf too which would have made it difficult. But I couldn't have done it.

Well clearly she managed to give up work and still have a roof over her head and food on the table. Perhaps she would have found that she could actually have learnt to use childcare if it was necessary. Oh and thousands of mums continue to bf long after their children are in childcare. My own children kept bf until they were toddlers!

My DD can tell me about her day and she's younger than your child. She can tell me what she's done, who was there, what they've eaten, if someone did something (so n so pushed me, etc.).

It's the right age for you and your child. Not everyone is the same.

Good for you, some people actually become self employed so they could be home AND work and not even rely on family members. I think that pedestal looking down on yours will be having even better weather.

I couldn't and I'm happy I didn't until my DCs were 3 y old. Even if we say that all nursey staff are qualified (not all are) and that they are fantastic they still have too many children to deal with. The thought of my DC standing crying in a corner because noone available to comfort him would break my heart. I have worked in a nursery when younger and I know that I was stressed out having to leave some crying while changing diaper on another etc etc. One woman was not tender with the small ones (no abuse but cold and distant) but always lovely with the parents so they thought she was great. Children under 3 are extremely vulnerable because they can not tell you if something is off...

I think OP is feeling guilty that she didn't home school her kids, but is comforting herself with the fact that she's still a better parent than many because she never 'left her child with a stranger'.

Part of being an adult, and a parent, is doing what's best for your family. We all have regrets but I think we just make the best choices we can at the time with the information we have and in our particular situation.

Some parents choose to stay at home with their kids because they want to and can afford to, some do because they can't afford child care or they're in an abusive relationship, and some parents just don't want to work but dress it up as being 'what's best for their kids' so they can stay home.

Some parents work because they need to financially, others have a job they love, or just do not want to be at home with the kids 24/7 and need a break.

All perfectly valid choices and just families doing what they need to do. It's not rocket science and you're not the Oracle OP.