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.

One day per week is not really enough for him to settle and feel comfortable with the staff and form a bond with the staff

Singing to them?!

Sure, that will work great. I'd love for the police officer taking a statement from me, or my heart surgeon, to be minding a baby and singing to them at the same time...

Or are we thinking about a world where no one has those types of jobs and at least one parent has a cushy part time job where their angelic child will just sit on the floor playing with a Grimms rainbow and listening to their parent humming Rockabye Baby?

I think the children’s centres have the best staff although this government is hell bent on closing them all.

childcare isn't a new thing - children have always been cared for by people outside the home - how do you think working class women worked?

OP maybe give up work - then you can really sneer at women who value their careers

I worked hard to get into the profession I am in, I am good at my job and I enjoy it - all 3 kids where in nursery - all managed to escape unscathed.

Would you pay my mortgage OP if I packed it all in - I am a single parent - no one here to share the bills - but you know that's what you get for being a career focused bitch!

In a way op I don’t think you are wrong, children being away from their parents for such long periods a day must have some effect, particularly if they are not in a nurturing environment.

FWIW I have run a few days nurseries and worked in a few too.
The problem is that they cost so much to run that the staff salaries are so little no one wants to do the job. There are no college leavers like there used to be 10 years ago, it’s all on the job training and nvq’s and when trainers are paid per unit the student is often fast tracked though with no real understanding of child development or what children’s needs are.
if a staff member leaves you are lucky to have 1 qualified person apply for the job so you end up taking anyone and crossing your fingers they work out on.
Large companies are the worse in my experience as they centre around a budget rather than the needs of the individual nursery.
Ofsted over regulate things to the point where we are almost to scared to try different things. There is so much paper work that no one look at but god forbid you don’t do it. I spend hours writing up ovservations and producing trackers when all parents want are photos and a chats

The answer as always is more training, valuing the staff and paying them a decent wages then we could pick people that truly deserve their role.

I think under 18m babies would much prefer to be at home. Mine was in nursery but I can’t really pretend as a baby it was the best thing for her. From 18m onwards she has flourished and loved it. Now at 3 there is no doubt in my mind that nursery for some days is giving her far more than she would have if she was with me all the time. I am a bit cautious about what I’d do if I needed to up my days - I’d be tempted to do a split between nanny and nursery rather than full time nursery as I think downtime is important.

I do think there are legitimate questions about the role of full time v part-time childcare and effects on wellbeing. My ideal set up would be for my husband and I do to 4 days a week each (and for that to not impact careers) and to use childcare 3 days a week. That is pie in the sky for us at the moment though.

My daughter is 3 and has been at nursery since she was 15 months old. Best thing we ever did for her. She did 2.5 days until last summer when we upped to 4 full days. Used to cry when I picked her up at lunchtime on the half day because it was so fun there!
No family nearby, DP worked full time, and she was BF for 18 months so was incredibly attached to me... probably too attached.
Nursery enabled me to have a break from the constant demands of SAHM life, and actually use my brain at work! So I was more refreshed and our time together was real quality time. It was also perfect for DD to have a safe place with qualified childcare professionals, while she adjusted to being with somebody that wasnt mummy.
She is (and will remain) an only child, so nursery has taught her social skills, and she is now brilliant at sharing, taking turns, and standing up for herself.
At 18 months, she said nothing but mama and dada, and (as an anxious first time mother) I thought she had a speech delay. The staff at nursery reassured me, and we tried other ways of communicating with the full support and encouragement of her key worker. 2 years later, DD doesn't stop talking, people comment on how clear she is and how advanced her speech is. Our HV is so stretched and I had no prior experience with babies, so god knows how little speech DD would have without childcare.
You're right to say that she is raised by other people more than me. But those people are incredible. They are kind, warm, interested and intelligent. They have a lovely bond with the children, and we are still in touch with her previous 2 key workers, and a few "special" staff, as she's moved up to preschool.
I always thought I would be a SAHM. I dont earn enough to benefit from work, nearly all my wages until very recently went on childcare. But it is the best money I've ever spent. We see it as an investment in DDs quality of life, and I think it's benefited my whole family's mental health!

Our entire lives are pretty unnatural - and you could argue that with such high levels of obesity, low levels of physical exercise, anxiety, narcissism and the way we are damaging the planet we live on, we're stuffing up on more than nursery provision. Cheers!

I assume you have the same concerns about children attending school, op.

OP Seems to have gone but I’m worried about her child and would love to know if she’s going to re think her arrangements to something that suits him more. Poor kid

OP I don't know what your subject is but it clearly isn't either history or anthropology. You've already been told how historically inaccurate your ideas are. They're also untrue in your assumptions about what happens in other cultures (and, if I'm honest, I think you're approaching some 'noble savage' stuff in your assumptions). Here is the introduction to an essay from an anthropologist (I happened to post this on another MN thread yesterday so have it to hand, you can find the full essay on academia.edu - it's absolutely fascinating):

Skip to main content
Academia.edu
LOG INSIGN UP
"Who Minds the Baby? Beng Perspectives on Mothers, Neighbours, and Strangers as Caretakers"
Alma Gottlieb
Alma Gottlieb

•
6
•
Who Minds the Baby?
Beng Perspectives on Mothers, Neighboursand Strangers as Caretakers
Alma Gottlieb
Introduction
In the contemporary middle class of many post-industrialized societies, families areconstructed, at least discursively if not in actual fact, as what we call ‘nuclear’, and ba-bies are raised – again, at least discursively if not in actual fact – so exclusively by oneperson, generally the mother, that many are convinced that this must be a ‘natural’phenomenon with deep roots in biological structures (see Helen Penn, this volume). Yet at the same time that this discourse has firmly taken hold, anthropologists andother researchers have quietly but strikingly been documenting a notable array of caretaking strategies across time and space for even the youngest of children – strate-gies that diverge significantly from those that hold at least discursive sway in the con-temporary post-industrialized West. Elsewhere, these caretaking strategies routinely involve more than just the mother (or a single mother-substitute). A small but growing literature now explores the multiple options for caretaking of infants that exist in numerous societies across the globe and through time. Indeed,the model of a mother being the exclusive or even major caretaker of her own young children – a model that still exists as normative in the American public imagination,for example, and that is still enacted in at least some middle-class American families(e.g., Richman et al.1988) – is of decreasing relevance even in middle-class, Euro- American society (Harkness and Super 1992). It is far less relevant in other Americansub-groups, as well as in many other societies (Weisner and Gallimore 1977). FromPygmies in Central Africa (e.g., Hewlett 1991; Tronick et al. 1987) and peasants in

116 •
Alma Gottlieb
Cameroon (Nsamenang 1992) to the highlands of Ecuador (Stansbury et al. 2000)to small-town residents in central Italy (New 1988), data are accumulating that therelatively recent, normative Euro-American model of ‘mother taking more-or-lessexclusive care of her young children’ may be something of a statistical anomaly. In West Africa, the Beng pattern of caretaking fits in with this growing awareness that inmany societies, the care of infants is more a collective than an individual (mother’s)responsibility.

I definitely prefer a childminder and used 2 different ones for my younger 2. They both formed a strong attachment (which is supposed to be healthy) and the youngest actually cries for her CM when I tell her off

My eldest went to a nursery I was really pleased with from 1 year until school. So far (age 9), he seems fine. Time will tell.

I didn't have a choice financially. DH was studying to start a new career. No family nearby.

Now, I could financially be at home full time. But I'm not sure I want to be. I work p-t and I think I would be a poor SAHM. I have more patience when I have a break.

It is massively goady to name change and post something you know will evoke very strong opinion. Go ahead and debate, share your controversial opinions but at least have the courage to do in your real username.

I completely agree with you OP. But this does not fit the current socio-economic narrative. It will not be accepted by the vast majority who will naturally seek reassurance that their actions have not and will not damage their children. As researchers are also drawn from the general population (facing all the same childcare constraints) this bias is also built into the research as well!

I agree with you op. I've often seen groups of kids out with nursery workers just trooping along. It looks shit.

Yeah, me too. On more than one occasion I’ve seen little kids being walked up the high street, strapped to each other in a “Walk-o-dile” with two young nursery workers wearing hi vis standing at the front and back. It just looked really grim. No one was talking. And then there were the groups of 2-3 childminders and their charges at the local farm park soft play, who’d sit there chatting to each other and not supervising the children. The younger ones would be strapped into their buggies for “nap time” despite how incredibly noisy it was. Times like that, I wondered if the parents would be happy with the care if they knew what was going on.

I agree, OP.

my personal experience with paid-for child care was bad.

I would have sworn blind that she was amazing, as did everyone else, as she was very good at selling a story.

Reality was that she ran lots of errands (for others) and my DS got car sick and she wanted me to pay £100 valet. It then transpired she'd bundled the kids in the van, drove to her mum to have coffee and then drove to shop for her mum, then back to the mum. then errands for her daughter, kids were just transported strapped in, from place to place. Back home in time just for pick-up time, kids all upset when picked up as they had just started playing with the toys (after a day strapped in car doing errands) . That's why her place looked so tidy by the end of the day

Then again, I know the local forest school are amazing. I walk past them every day, they are always engaged with the kids, it seems a very happy set-up.

I guess it just varies. Hugely. And parents (like me) believe what they want to believe, so they do not feel guilt

But I really gave up on the idea of childminders, I felt conned

I work in a Nursery and would say that it's probably due to the fact that if he only goes 1 day a week then it's very hard to form relationships with the other children and staff. I bet the majority of the children are there between 3-5 days and that makes a huge difference. My DD only did 2 mornings and I still think she felt a bit left out.

I have to say that’s why I wouldn’t use childminders @SolitudeAtAltitude. You don’t know what they’re up to. At least nursery had a management framework to ensure staff fulfill their role as expected (of course this can be badly managed too though)

But children don't need to be interacted with all the time! And I see SO many mothers just chatting with each other whilst their children play, or mothers not talking to their children in the street whilst they get from place to place. They are sometimes on their phones, too. In fact, I don't think that any of that is a bad thing to do per se, as long as it is supported by periods of by ime when interaction does happen. It is OK to let children go off and play with each other without an adult helicoptering around them. And as for young infants needing to sleep, I have also seen plenty a mother of young children having to juggle a sleeping child in a buggy and a couple of older children too! Honestly, what do people expect, these childminders aren't robots or octopuses! Chill out people!
Oh, and I know plenty of people who were brought up by a stay at home mum who suffer from mental health issues. Genetics and factors out of the family's control can trigger mental illness. And the same people are also lovely, successful people who manage their conditions through daily life.
I feel that thread is a bit judgey.

How can leaving your child in an institutional environment from baby hood, for most of their waking hours, not negatively impact on them?

People like to band the word ‘institutional environment’ about as though a nursery is the equivalent to Bedlam or a Romanian orphanage. Children are put in a child friendly environment, with other children to interact and play with and adults that are very qualified (despite being highly underpaid) to look after and nurture them, and often providing activities and experiences that would be tricky for some parents to give at home. I quite frankly don’t see the negatives.

Are people really suggesting that consistency of care, from a main caregiver (usually the mother, lets face it) is totally irrelevant in child development? Really?

We’re not discussing general relevance though - your talking about a direct negative effect. I suppose you could compare it to the breastmilk vs formula debate. Breast is best according to many (I would agree to a greater extent, but not entirely), but that does not make formula bad - formula is a great thing, and babies thrive very well on it. Some may argue being looked after by the main caregiver all the time is best - perhaps? I’m not convinced though - but even if that’s true, that doesn’t make nurseries or childminders (formula) a ‘negative’ alternative - they are still a fantastic alternative when needed, providing great care, nurture and support to children’s development and we’re very lucky to have them. You’re also assuming that all primary caregivers are great - they’re not, and plenty of children are lucky to get a nursery reprieve from them.

Nursery was definitely beneficial to DD.

She thrived. I did not have the energy to do what they did with her each day and she LOVED going. It brought her out if her shell in ways that we’re a privilege to see. She asked to go all the time. I was very grateful to how much they brought her on.

So yes I’d say that for some children nursery IS beneficial.

Yours won’t be a popular view because people all want expensive holidays ,expensive area housing ,the new I phone ,i pad ...All this requires 2 salaries and for both parents to work ,people need nurseries. People expect so much more now ,possession wise .it will only get worse

I have to slightly agree with this, obviously not in all cases, but in many I feel this is right.

Op I'm dreading putting our DS in nursery at 3.5ish all the ofsted ratings are great, but you never really know where your child will be happy.
I would definitely take your child out if they are unhappy, maybe a childminder would be better if you really need to use someone.

This thread is judgey, from both sides of the coin

Childcare should be not for profit
It should be provided for everyone to get back to work
It should be a job to be proud of and be well paid
Parents should never have to worry if their kids are happy in childcare, it should be a given

I agree with you op. My kids are grown and I have hindsight, also I've been a nanny, a childminder and am qualified to work in a nursery.
Things should be better for parents and children.
It's not fair.

Our nursery is awesome. I often have to drag my kids out of there in the afternoon, and I don't get a backwards glance in the morning. It's bloody expensive, but you get what you pay for. They have experienced staff with very little staff turnover, massive grounds with their own woods, animals, gardens - they wouldn't have the experiences they do there at home.

I'd suggest your mistake is sending your child somewhere 1 day a week. It's going to take them much longer to settle when they are there that little. A lot of nurseries won't take children for less than 2 days a week for that reason.