To think we're deluding ourselves over childcare?

[aliteralAIBUforonce]

I have a child who goes to nursery one day a week. I am very lucky that I can go part time and family have the rest of the time.

He's been doing this since he was 11 months and I hate it. He doesn't dislike it but he doesn't look forward to it either. A couple of times o have dropped him off then had to duck back into the cloak room and I've seen him looking rather lost and alone at the breakfast table. Breaks my heart.

A few times when I've been out and about I've seen staff from nurseries taking groups of kids out. They never, ever engage with the kids. Just each other. Bloody joyless experience by the looks of it. Those are the better ones too.

AIBU to think that we're going to see an epidemic of adolescent mental health problems is the next few years?

This is a shit was to bring up our kids.

Nurseries have been around a long time. My dad was in one in the 1940’s. Women have always worked and children have been looked after for generations. It’s not a new thing. At all.

It's the elephant in the room of feminism- babies are better of with mother but mother needs a job..

No idea what the answer is, but it isn't what we've got!

There have been studies that suggest that time spent in childcare before a certain age (I think 2 years old) is linked to an increased risk of behavioural issues in adolescence. It's frustrating that people are so defensive about this, making what should be an important topic into something so difficult to talk about.

There is no need to be defensive. If you have to put your infant child into full time care just to be able to afford to live, you are the victim of a broken system. It is not your fault. You should be EAGER to discuss and know whether this is having a negative impact on your children. Not trying to kill the conversation because you think it reflects poorly on you as a parent.

Everyone should be financially able to take time off work to raise their pre-school children. Only in the last 50 years has it become necessary for most couples to HAVE to work to survive. In that same timespan, the richest 1% have increased their wealth dramatically. The rich are getting richer and the poor (by which I mean, 99% of us) are getting poorer.

I don’t think anyone on the thread has said nursery is actively better for their child than staying at home with a perfect loving endlessly patient mother with an inexhaustible supply of activities and disposable income.

But it’s sure as hell better for me that my DD is there 3 days a week, and frankly since the difference it makes to her is probably marginal, that’s what works best for our family. She’s happy, sociable and developing really well. Obviously I can’t do a scientific controlled trial on my own child, so that observation is good enough for me.

I don't believe childminders always give the perfect home from home experience that many parents believe. I regularly see a group of childminders who congregate together in parks and at toddler groups, gossiping together and slating the parents/children, whilst barely watching the children. They seem annoyed when the children approach them and hardly interact with them, even to the point of children sitting in swings waiting to be pushed. There are obviously many fantastic childminders out there, just as there are nurseries, but I don't believe the assumption that a childminder is always better than a nursery, particularly based on my own experiences as a child where I was in a terrible environment at a childminders, that bordered on abusive.
I think there are fantastic childcare options and my child attends a lovely nursery; I guess each case is unique to each child and the options that are available to you at that time.

Nurseries have been around a long time. My dad was in one in the 1940’s. Women have always worked and children have been looked after for generations. It’s not a new thing. At all

But the point is that as the number of young infants in full time daycare has risen, so has the number of children with mental health problems.

But the point is that as the number of young infants in full time daycare has risen, so has the number of children with mental health problems.

Is there evidence that this is causation rather than correlation though?

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/children-nursery-home-parents-study-develop-oxford-london-school-economics-a7420986.html%3famp

This is a shit way to bring up our kids.

I can't decide if your post deliberately comes across as smug or not? Not all of us are so lucky that we can work part time and have family help and so our kids are in childcare full time

Most kids i know who are in a nursery or childminder setting are actually more advanced with speech and socialisation and more confidant than other kids. The odd child I've come across with mental health issues as it so happens actually never attended nursery so I think your theory is a bit short sighted

Your child doesn't settle because he's only there one day a week so doesn't have the chance to form any real attachments/friendships etc - you'd be better off putting him in for a few days a week

Only in the last 50 years has it become necessary for most couples to HAVE to work to survive

That's not true at all.

Througout history, women - other than the very rich - have always contributed to the household economy. It could have been by helping on the family farm, working in factories, taking in sewing, but mothers have always worked. It's actually the 1950s ideal of the economically inactive stay at home wife which is a blip in the historical context.

I think you have made a false extrapolation from the comments on this thread (but not perhaps from what you had already decided).

Babies are better off if they are in a loving environment. That can be with their mother or their father or a child minder or a nursery.

Surely anyone can see this must be largely driven by social media issues? The mental health effect this has is devastating.

Is there evidence that this is causation rather than correlation though?

From what I remember, there is at lease some evidence that further investigation is warranted. The problem is that most people don't want to do so because of the negative reactions.

If you look into Laconian psychoanalysis OP he argues that the child needs to feel the absence of the mother to understand the relationship with the mother and that he is not the mother himself. Nursery childcare may be helpful in that regard.

There is also research out there that language skills develop quicker in those in no kind of childcare. I do find that a bit black box, but apparently the research is there.

Let's be honest though, AP is exhausting and quite difficult to achieve after the first year unless you have loads of money and time to do it. We all muddle through how we can. There is no ideal. Op. We are all doing our best.

Are mental health problems better diagnosed because of advances in medicine, less stigma etc? I have mental health problems (I self harmed as a child) and my parents would never have sought medical advice.

They have always worked, but they generally took babies with them. It was the industrial revolution that made this less possible.

It has accelerated in recent decades.

www.familyandchildcaretrust.org/long-term-study-following-4500-children-links-childcare-better-outcomes

When women 'didn't work' they weren't sitting around with their babies all day. They put the babies in prams outside while they scrubbed floors, cooked from scratch, washed clothes in a boiler etc.

A tiny number of women have ever been able to sit around in leisure with their kids, probably many of those who were able didn't do it because full-time preschoolers can be boring and awful, frankly.

Choose your childcare better and get rid of the rose-tinted glasses, OP.

With automation and technological advances, we should be more financially able to take time off work for childcae now than we could 50 years ago. But we are less able. Why? Because the rich are getting richer and the poor (by which I mean 99% of us) are getting poorer.

There are good and bad settings (nurseries and childminders) and good and bad parenting. There are naturally sociable and introverted children. It is impossible to sum up what is the right way generally, each child, family and setting is different. When you find something that works well for child and parent that's great but it is so hard when it doesn't.

I think the OP is being deliberately goady and nasty . Best ignore rather than debate anything with this one.

They have always worked, but they generally took babies with them. It was the industrial revolution that made this less possible.

Even if they had their babies with them, do you seriously think they were singing "Bah Bah Black Sheep' or reading stories to them? Of course not. They would have been doing often backbreaking work which didn't leave much time or attention to nurture children, who would have been looked after by their older siblings.

I do think it is the 1 day that is the issue here. Dd has been attending her nursery since she was 8 months old (now nearly 2) and in that time has only had 2 different key workers. She loves it and her speech has really come along, she loves reading (well, being read to) and I always walk in and she is sat with her keyworker reading. But, when we go away on holiday, or there is a bank holiday, or a school holiday where I only have her in 2 days a week, I notice she becomes quite unsettled and needs to get back into the swing of things.
I don't think nursery is the main cause of teen mh issues. I think it is how society expects teens to grow up too fast. Girls wearing make up to make them look older (all for social media), exams getting harder, taking away their free time etc

Age 3+ is where most of the research says it becomes actively beneficial. Younger than that it depends on the individual family circumstances...that’s why some disadvantaged DC get 15 free hours from age 2.
But yes, there’s also research showing increased cortisol levels in under 1s in group care.

The ever increasing pension age doesn’t help, lots of dgms are still in full time work.

There are more options than a single childminder or a Big nursery. My child goes to a setting that is 2 registered childminders and 2 childminder helpers they have a maximum of 8 children in and it's like a mini nursery setting. The children are all in together so the older ones bring the young ones on as they copy. It really is the best of both worlds for us. They get the care and attention but they also get to interact with more children and adults.