To feel sad seeing a 7 week old baby at DC's nursery today

[comfysketchers]

Dropping my 15 month old off at nursery today before work and there was another woman there at the same time handing over a 7 week old sleeping baby.

He was absolutely tiny and I just felt so sad looking at him thinking that he barely even knows he is out of the womb and his mum is dropping him off to spend all day with strangers in a noisy nursery environment.

I should also add that I live in a country that has excellent parental leave from the government plus most private companies pay at least 10 weeks of full pay on top of that, with many paying much more than that.

YABU - It’s perfectly normal for a 7 week old baby to spend 8 hours per day in a nursery.

YANBU - A 7 week old baby should be at home with its mum.

What a horrible judgy post. You should be ashamed of yourself. You have no idea on the circumstances here....

How does it feel op. This poster thinks nursery is a baby factory and judges you just as harshly as you do that poor mum.

All the ‘Commanders’ wives on here judging others is shocking. We don’t all live in the same reality where Mums can stay at home with their babies! How hard is it to understand that?

Well indeed - but the irony of her post is that she is putting a very young child into nursery herself!

When I worked in day nurseries we had a baby that young, come in to our room. Mum was on a college/training course that she could not just drop out of, she needed it. She was also absolutely heartbroken to drop him off to us each morning. I did not judge her at all.

I'm with you OP, but I always wanted to be a SAHM and wouldn't have had a child until I could afford to be one.

But on MN nothing anyone does is ever anyone else's business and you're not allowed to even have an opinion on it.

I thought the OPs opening post was going to be about how sad it is that we live in a society where any mother has to do this. I was extremely disappointed by the actual post. None of us know that woman's circumstances, there are a million reasons nursery might be the better option for this family, its not always an un-feeling workaholic desperate to climb the career ladder (and no, I'm not trying to justify my own choices either, I stayed at home with my first for 18mnths and my 2nd for 2yrs - because I could, because I was both financially and emotionally able to do that, I don't imagine everyone's circumstances are that fortunate).

That’s not true. Illness has been mentioned just as often. It’s you that’s focussed on financial reasons.

Absolutely.
Yes, we shouldn’t be judgemental bla bla but as a bystander, a mother, your instincts naturally kick in as part of survival skills in nature, to protect your baby at all cost just like other animals do for their babies. The OP is not being judgemental she’s following and voicing her instincts, we all have the same instincts but many have been programmed to suppress them and not voice them because it’s a private matter (?!) Reading few posts here shows that.
She might be having some difficult circumstances and the need for childcare is warranted and the best option in the situation, but feeling sad for the baby is a very legitimate concern and feeling anyone would have regardless of any situation the mother is going through.

I know someone who put their baby into nursery at 6 weeks because the father was dying and needed care too and she couldn’t do both all the time and needed some respite for herself too.
it was sad for all of them.
i know I don’t know the situation here but I guess there could be a lot of reasons why it’s necessary.

YABU for being nosey.

the parents probably don’t love the situation but maybe it’s a willing choice but it’s theirs at the end of the day.

personally i think 15 months is too young for nursery so didn’t send mine at that age but i didn’t judge anyone who made different choices

There are loads of reasons why someone may need care for a baby that young.

And why does nobody ever judge fathers for working?

It really is time we moved on from this nonsense! It is not the 1950s.

You can find research that says positive things about working mothers too.

Having a Working Mother Is Good For You - News - Harvard Business School (hbs.edu)

I spent years frequenting playgroups, NCT coffee mornings etc and you could always tell which children spent time at nursery and which children were looked after by their parents. The latter were less aggressive, more confident, and far more articulate - and these were all middle-class, educated families, so the bar was already high

of course you could.
And when you met all those children again at 20, what were they like?

I bet you don't know, do you?

What an awful op, there could be any number of reasons the baby needs to be in childcare , none of them are your business

Op in an ideal world babies would be at home with mum until about 6 but you know what we do not live in an ideal world.
I don't think many mums would choose to put their baby in childcare so young but needs must.

It doesn't matter if its illness, work, trying to keep clients happy, the mum needs to do what she needs to do.
I pity her that circumstances has it her tiny baby is in nursery. I bet she was counting down the hours to pick up time.

Well the problem with this is that only certain people (middle class and up) would be able to have kids and also circumstances change - death or job loss of a breadwinner etc ...

So you paid for that privslege yourself? Well done. Genuinely, very few people can save up years and years of money to do that.

Unless your husband/partner has an affair, then it’s EVERYONE’S business!! 😂😂😂no-one says ‘well, I’m not judging, it’s nothing to do with me!’

In this "ideal" world, women in unhappy or abusive marriages would not have the finances to get themselves out of that situation. Not a world I would want to live it.

This.

Would I judge a woman who had to put her very young baby in nursery because she couldn't care for them due to chemo or PND and had no family support? No, funnily enough I wouldn't.

Would I feel sad for both baby and mother being separated at a crucial age, and for the tiny baby being in institutional care rather than solo or family care? Yes, obviously.

Surely in an ideal world, parents would have a choice. It certainly wouldn't be my choice to give up my career and financial independence for 6 years.

well obviously if the mother is too ill to care for the newborn then nothing can be done.

we still can be sad for the baby (and the mother) and agree that it will suffer and not shrug and look away. And not normalise it by pretending that there’s nothing that can be done about the drift to childcare for younger and younger babies, even though we have known for a very long time that young babies don’t benefit.

We’re sleepwalking towards a mental health timebomb and a general lowering of empathy in our society because so many of us feel so personally criticised and defensive that we cannot acknowledge that this is not progress, but some kind of dystopia. neither women or babies should have been put in this position in the first place and we should all prioritise making our voices heard so that the drift stops now.

No comment on original post content as has been well covered by others. However the fact that the nursery staff are discussing one of their charges with other parents would concern me. Surely that’s a breach of confidential information- not sensitive under GDPR but none of OP’s business who the parent of the child is if they don’t know, and not for disclosure by nursery staff!

Why on Earth would you think I wouldn't know?

I have known all these children right the way from birth to 23/4 (as the oldest of them now are). So I know exactly how they have all turned out.