To thinkmits a bit crazy thst 9 month old babies are in nursery for 30 hours when a parent is ionly working 16 hours

Eventually nursery will be viewed in the same way as boarding schools are now. Of course parents will defend using them now, they have no real choice, once you are on the treadmill of work/ rent/mortgage as it is at this point in our society, social conditioning ensures we think its best for children.
No 9 month old is developed enough to understand mummy/ daddy needs to pay an extortionately priced rent/ mortgage so they are being 'looked after' by unrelated person. They don't know mummy will be back to collect them at 5pm.
Some kids will be fine, others won't, exactly like boarding was fine for some and not for others.

There is no amount of money in this world someone could give me to send my child to a nursery. I absolutely hate them. However, even I am quite certain that when it comes to a 9 month old baby, it would have to be an extremely rare case for someone to be doing what you're talking about.

I agree, the problem is we've been sold this as if its the perfect solution for everyone.

My parents didn't have a choice, no mat leave and no childcare so left work to have kids and didn't return until we were older.

My generation (im in my late 40s)were told we could have it all!
That wasn't exactly true though. We actually HAVE to work the equivalent of 40 yrs full-time to get a full work pension.
Childcare ended up costing us pretty much everything we earned so we've had to balance income, future pension, being a parent and running a home all at the same time.
The government have actually listened to women saying that the lack of affordable childcare is a huge barrier to work and career progression so now we have funded childcare.
Its fantastic on paper, makes perfect sense and solves all our problems and gers more people in work, paying tax and ni etc.

BUT Like op said, we will end up with a generation that have been in some kind of group/facility/institution pretty much full time for as long as they can remember.
It should be a choice but its really not, we have to work.
The cost to us is missing your child's first steps, sentences, lost teeth, new experiences, everyday bonding etc..
the cost to our kids is the confidence and emotional stability that comes from strong parental bonding. There is no way that group setting childcare offers the same emotionally supportive environment for our children as we offer. At a time when society is aware that we're losing human connection and mental health is suffering as a result we really should be considering whether we're actually making that worse for future generations.
We put our daughter in childcare 2 long days a week at 9 months old when I went back to work. I will never forget her telling me that sometimes she felt all "onesy" it took us a while to figure out she actually meant lonely. She was 19 months old and we talked with her about it, she told us sometimes boys and girls cry a lot but the ladies say mammys have to go to work to earn the pennies. It broke my heart that some of the kids were there 7.30 - 6pm 5 days a week 😭😢

If they are bringing up a child, how are they random strangers? Both things can't be true.

😂

I agree completely. Why have a child if you're going to give it to random strangers to bring up. It's awful

My children used to go to nursery on my day off in the week. Partly because they did better when in a routine, partly because I had no family or friends to help so it was my only chance to do things as an adult without the kids (dentist and doctors and other appointments etc) and partly because I needed a break that 6 hours a week was the only time I wasn’t either in work or with my kids.

How very dare a mother need a little time for herself ( mostly to do household chores) after working and parenting the rest of the time. And who the hell does she think she is taking some time out after having a job caring for others and then spending the rest of her life caring for small children. An extra few hours at nursery literally kept me sane when they were small. Isn’t it lovely how women support each other?

I have been incubating a plan for rmany years. I'm aiming it at secondary aged kids but it may suit.

When families go on holiday, they can leave their moody teen with me. I will purchase a big storage facility (Big Yellow Self Store style) and make a number of bedrooms which will each consist of a bed, a games console and a snack trolley.

Three times a day I will pass a pizza in under the door.

Happy families
Happy teens

my offspring are now adults. Dh and I always both worked for all sorts of reasons. Yes, to pay the bills, but also because work provided another form of mental stimulation, social connections etc. Plus of course, continuing to pay into our occupational pensions. And then of course there’s the teeny matter that I’d been to university (like dh), we were entering the world of work equally qualified and capable and I was just as effective and successful in my job as he was in his!

So, here we are now, in our late 50s. Our children have grown into happy, successful adults embarking on their own careers and relationships. We have a good relationship with all 3. Plus, dh and I have each achieved successful careers, we’re now at the point of planning retirement and I don’t have any of the worries of “will we have enough to live on in our older age?” Or “god forbid dh dies first because I’d be trying to survive on just the spouse fraction of his pension” And really importantly, no frustration at unfulfilled ambitions - I took my life as seriously as dh’s.

I’m struggling to see what’s sad, frankly!

Honestly, don’t you just wish you could invite this person to shadow us for a week, ffs I’m on annual leave this week while my baby has very happily gone been at nursery for 2 and a half days and done all
manner of super fun activities and kids at school, I have at last got the bathrooms done, the floors mopped, the carpets vacumned, carpets washed of the slime and other concoctions our 10 year old has spilt over her carpet, not
to mention from when she had a vomiting bug the other week, our Christmas tree bought, some presents wrapped, my hair cut etc etc and I still didn’t get half the jobs done I hoped to. On a normal week when I’m working - I’d love to give her the challenge of keeping up with the housework, cooking and everything else for 3 children on my days off with the baby. Oh yes plus being up 3-10 times a night with the baby, me and hubby don’t even get chance to sit on the sofa until 10pm and then usually just want to get to sleep What planet is this person on??

No it’s not sad - loads of people want to work and manager own money, be independent and not have to rely on another adult for everything.

Ooo I’ll rock your boat! I went back to work after five months so he went to nursery full time, but when expecting my second had to stop working for medical reasons and never went back. I was a SAHM but my son still went to nursery two full days a week. Then when baby 2 came along he went three days from 20 months and she went two days from a year. Kept me sane. And it wasn’t ever free we paid. I adore my kids but having him in nursery allowed me time with the new baby, he was a very active social toddler and thrived there. My DD did too.
@OrangeCatKittenit’s not sad. I have done everything for my kids. But I needed time for myself and fortunately could afford to put them in daycare. Your vision of the future is a ridiculous idea.

i think the cause is learning. A baby needs to learn more than anyone else at any other age.

Laughs in toddler twin mum, who only finally started getting ANYTHING done when they turned three, and got their 15 hours

Going downhill? Features of British life during my childhood 1960s/70s: unmarried mothers were sent to special homes or the baby was taken from them at birth; notices on properties for rent saying 'No Irish, no blacks'; many women got married knowing nothing about sex; women could not get a mortgage; rape in marriage was not illegal (we had to wait for the 1990s for that); children were caned at school for major and minor misdemeanours; lots of grown-ups said 'Spare the rod and spoil the child' and took it as doctrine; in many working class households, children left school at 14 and went out to work to contribute to household expenditure; physical relationships between men were illegal until the late 60s; many men died soon after retirement, exhausted by manual labour and dangerous workplaces; trains and buses were foggy with cigarette smoke; the three-day week meant millions of households were lit only by candles and paraffin lamps; many households didn't have a car; many households had no fridge.

It's all relative, OP, and perspective does wonders when you're trying to work out whether your opinions are reasonable.

On the other hand, your warehousing-by -generation idea is a seed that may grow and make you the next Margaret Atwood.

What’s a thinkmits?

Nope. I went back to work when my DD1 was 12 weeks, I couldn’t afford to take any more maternity leave, that’s just how it was in 1995 I’m afraid. I had to work to keep a roof over our heads, I think it would have been a much worse life for us if I hadn’t gone back to work - I wouldn’t have been able to afford the mortgage!

Honestly what are you getting from judging other people. What does children in childcare have to do with discrimination. Totally bizarre. It's actually pretty sexist to judge other women for how they are getting through life. You have zero idea of what's going on for them such as postnatal depression, a baby that doesn't sleep, the rest of the household crappy up the place all the time and not taking care of it so they are constantly cleaning up, disabilities, lack of support network or just life being a bit tricky sometimes. Or hey just because they want to. If it helps keep a parent going and the child happy why not. In a good nursery they can try all sorts of different activities that might not be practical to do all the time at home. And as they get older expand their social skills

Oh I loved those days where my school (workplace) was shut but nursery was still open 💃🏻 no guilt or shame on my part. I don’t think it’s sad to want some time to yourself for whatever that may be - self care, exercise, cleaning up.

So you are talking about one person you know who is doing this but somehow that means that babies and elderly people are going to be rounded up into warehouses? Right.

What on gods green earth are you talking about, some sort of government led handmaids tale farm for babies?

I agree with you OP

💯