to think that people who don't approve of parents who put their children in childcare should not work in a nursery..

What makes you think I am a SAHM DB?

UN you have missed the point that the impact could be both positive as well as negative.

My DD was in daycare for 10 hours a day from 9 weeks and 6 days old. She is a bright, intelligent ,funny and gorgoeusly well rounding girl of 9.

As the squiff says earlier why do all you SAHM's feel the need to be so damn rude about those of us who work for a living.

Are you simply jealous that we for the most part can have it all ?

So if someone works in Macdonalds they have to automatically agree with obesity because some people gorge themselves with fast food?

No, of course not. The point is that because a facility is there whether it be to feed yourself or look after your children, you have to use it to the best benefit of those involved, be it yourself or your children.

Being in a childcare facility for 10/12 hrs every day will have an impact on the child. It is up to us as parents to recognise that and prepare for what that impact is.

Yes it is hypocritical to openly condemn a parent's choice of childcare whilst acually providing that same childcare service for them.

It is also naive and narrow minded.

I was a parent who used 10hrs/day of childcare for a 4mth old baby (on average twice a week - but enough I am sure to have raised eyebrows from some quarters). I would have be appalled if I had thought that my baby's carer didn't approve of me leaving him with her. It never even entered my mind that she might have disapproved. I loved her for loving my baby and taking care of him in my place. It was her job.

Often the field of work or life with which we are most expert and familiar is the one where we discuss subjects with the most passion and insight, and it is human nature to analyse and question both our own and other people's motivations.

But openly criticizing clients in any business - and expecially parents who use your childcare service - is both rude and unprofessional.

All I can say is a its a bloody good job there are those of us who pay huge sums of maoney to leave our children with you lot for 12 hours aday otherwise you wouldnt have any jobs!!!

AtheneNoctura,
Nurseries cater for babies and todlers, and for those who attend part time or full time. I think the OP of that thread didn't say she is against the idea of Nurseries in general but about very little babies who spend 50 hours there. Working hours in U>K> ARE very long comparing to other european countries. And to be honest when i was 20 years old and worked in a horible nursery we all the staff used to question that because we had some 3 months old babies who spend there 50 hours. We didnt discuss it in a bad way through.Anyway it is up to each parent to deside.
But, did anyone ask the OP WHY did she say that? Did you ever think that perhaps she witnessed smth in the nursery that made her sad about the babies and perhaps her sadness came out as agression?
And i m saying this because when i worked in that nursery i 've witnessed smth happened to a little girl and i ve cried that night. The next morning the father of the girl spoke to the manager and she managed to fool him so he told his little girl off for lying (!!!). I ve become so angry and started shouting at the poor man, it was my sadness for the little girl and my frustration for the naive father that turned into agression.
I wish we havn't attacked the OP and asked her calmly what makes her to say this, sometimes you learn useful things from people who work inside an idustry...it is just a thought.
And i dont think that the problem with nurseries is the staff. Most of them are very good at their job-and honestly it is very hard job. The problem is the enormous amount of paperwork they have to do.
I think there are few of them on mumsnet, why not we ask them and listen to them? (my experience of nurseries not very valid as it has been years ago and i m sure things have changed a lot, i hope so. But some others who work now in Nurseries they could perhaps tell us.
Sorry for long post.

YANBU

Aaah, now I see it. I used a nursery because I didn't love my children enough. Thanks for pointing that out Tori. Next you'll be decrying women getting the vote, because they obviously didn't love their husbands enough.

Desiderata, now you make an interesting and rather less rancid point. I work in Investment banking and am also seeing the most incredible attitudes coming across from new graduates and applicants - they all seem to think that work is one of life's many interesting options, rather than a raison d'etre, which is what I, and many of my generation grew up to believe. Graduates are saying that they want short hours and sabbaticals and so on, as if the firm exists to amuse them (and not run them into the ground. The Fools!). It will be really interesting to see how this all plays out (I think by the way that the long hours culture we currently have is wrong, but the graduates might be a little too extreme in their views)

But, I don't see any link between this current attitude and the childcare they have received; student children of friends I know who were brought up by mums at home say exactly the same stuff which leads me to think that there are other causes to hand - quite probably the materialism they have been surrounded in from the moment they were born.... don't know the answer to that one. But I don't think it is anything to do with childcare experiences - not least because I worked for 5 years for a Stockholm-based company and that attitude is definately not in existence there, even though nurseries are the norm and have been for a long time.

One thing I am not sure gets pointed out enough though on all of this is that this WOHM bashing is particularly vile when you consider that the people you are attacking are the very ones who have no choice. Every person I know who lives in a large house and could downsize has a committed experienced nanny at home, and we don't use nurseries on anything like the basis that is suggested. Where we do use nurseries (and we do, quite often) is to introduce our kids to a social setting and give them some variety and so on. The only peope who do use nurseries for 50 hours or wahtever a week are I believe those people stuck in the middle of society who really don't have the same downsize options and need to use these options to pay the mortgage and so on, not because they want to. And these are the very people who struggle most with stress - not the SAHM or the WOHM who work through choice (there is research to back this - I can find it if anyone wants). It kind of seems to be that some MNers are just kicking people when they're down. Which my WOHM, neglectful, less loving mum always taught me wasn't nice.

Mine had a nanny when they were little, and a couple of short bursts at nursery, but I would add that I didn't work long hours when I got pregnant. The long hours came shortly after I'd had DD1 when my career suddenly took off. I hope you'll agree that it was a bit late then to do anything about it.

We certainly don't have a life of luxury and lots of material things. I am the breadwinner. We couldn't have survived on DH's salary if I had stayed at home to be with the children. And I would have gone round the bend and neither I nor the DDs would have enjoyed me being a SAHM.

Tori and Desiderata , you have said exactely what I have been trying to convey - especially about working in a profession like childcare you do get to see and know too much and this def puts you off.

I know that this makes uncomfortable reading but many people working in childcare are young, inexperienced and badly paid, i am the latter but I do have the experience of being a mum and I feel that this makes me react to the kids in a dift and more compasionate way to some of the youngsters I work with. They havent been mums themselves and can't always relate.
They may think a child is playing up, when the child is actually hungry or overtired or something

I agree with Tori.

I think it is fundamentally wrong to put your child into care from 8 in the morning until 6 at night.

If you think you have to do that, then you should think again. That's a long day for an adult, let alone a small baby/toddler.

My step mother is a university lecturer in law. Interestingly, her pupils (in their early twenties now), had that type of up-bringing .. and they hated it.

They are, to a man/woman, vehement that they will either work from home or work part-time. They are equally vehement that, however their careers go, they will either stay at home or employ a child minder in the home, and work as little as possible in the 'office.'

This is probably the first generation of kids speaking out about their experience of 'child-care' in the modern age.

They don't like it, and you can kick up as much as you like about that, but it's the truth.

There is a huge difference between parents needing to work to put food on the table and those that choose to work for a life of luxury in material things. To me the latter is just shallow and is of no benefit to a child. What a child needs are parents that do things with him/her. Have fun, enjoy being with them and love them more than their selves IMHO.

I did walk for 3mths on the other side of working I found exactly what Lupo has said and my dd was with a CM. She was 7mths when she started and hated being dropped off and cried with relief when I picked up. Literally throwing herself at me I decided it was too much for her to be in CC for 40hrs per week and missed so much of her development in 3mths My view was I needed a career but my dd would only be little for a short time and it is my responsibility to shape her as a person, not someone elses. My dd needed me more than I needed a career, careers can be reclaimed when children go to school, childhood is lost forever. You can't relive those years.

I think the OP on that particular thread had valid opinions, tbh. She's in the front line .. maybe she saw things that unsettled her.

There's room for every opinion on here.

And for what it's worth, if I was a nursery teacher, I probably wouldn't want my kid in a nursery all day either. Most nursery teachers I know are not preparing to put their kids into nursery full time. I think that is quite telling, actually.

I worked as a courier on coaches for fifteen years, and I'd never get on another one now.

Sometimes, you can know too much.

lupo, walk a mile in someone else's shoes before you judge, please

I am not a troll, i work in a nursery part time and my child comes and stays with me. I think that babies and young toddlers should not be doing a 8-6pm in nursery everyday, it is way too much. I know circumstances dictate etc etc, but it breaks my heart to see these youngsters who are upset or crying for their mums or being dropped in when they are sick.

I work there and else where part time at the evenings and weekends,as i want to be there for my child, some parents hardly see their little ones and its only a few years before they are off to school.

Children due benefit from social interaction etc from pre school age, before that is way to young.

Yes you can call me a hypocrite because i work there, but it is a way to earn money without leaving my child, if that makes me a hypocrite then so be it.. i am not the one sticking my child in care day after day.

PS I did have a fantastic relationship with most of my parents, the only one I didn't was not because of their working hours but because the mother chose to ram her pay down my throat and boast about what she had bought for her dd (only child). This was also a mother who when asked in general conversation if she had been somewhere where I took her dd on outing always said 'no' All the money in the world can't buy time or fun which in MHO is what children need above designer outfits and nice possesions. . These where the same parents who never collected early to spend extra time with the child and took loads of annual leave but still paid for the child to be in CC. I just think that is

I don't disapprove of parents working at all and I agree that without parents I would myself have to go back to nursing and wouldn't see my dds much at all if I worked F/t. However, I do have to question why parents who work ridiculously long hours chose to have children and then put them in childcare all the time iyswim. I know for lots of people it is necessity and they live on the breadline, however, for me personally, if I lived in a 5 bed house with a huge mortgage and had to work 70hrs per week to pay bills, I would downside to a 3 bed and have a smaller mortgage to enable me not to have to work and be able to bring my children up. Nobody can substitute a mother or father in bringing up a child and inevitably children will aquire habits which are learned from the setting, not from family because parents literally pick up and put to bed or the young child has to stay up later to accommodate the parents desire to see them, get up early and are tired lots of the time. This is long hours only, not where children are in CC for normal full time hours 40ish per week iyswim.

AN - some childminders too think this, I think. But they (and those nursery workers who subscribe to this POV) must be faaaarkin thick - if we didn't use nurseries and childminders, but stayed at home going slowly mad baking cakes and making lovely things from cereal packets with the little dears, they would be out of a job, no?

I am out of the house 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. We have a great relationship.

You have to have a relationship with the parents too surely? I honestly don't think I could if I was thinking how appalling it was that were leaving their children with you.

My CM was endlessly understanding of me, of my worries and my reluctance sometimes to leave my children. I couldn't have born it if I thought she was secretly disapproving of me

Who suggested they love their children less?
YABU because everyone has some aspect of their job they tolerate and don't like. Just because nursery workers love the children doesn't mean they have to approve of children being left for 12 hrs per day. I CM and enjoy my job, however, I also see how upsetting and tiring it can be for children being left for long hours and have been a parent who had to do it when I went back to work after dd1 for a few months.

YANBU.

I think I'd find another job tbh.

yanbu