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.

How?

Who exactly do you think should be paying for you women not to go to work for 2-3 years per child?

I have an incredible career thanks. I don’t regret investing time raising my babies. I would not have had children at all otherwise. We owe it to our children to take responsibility for them - both parents not just the mother.

Or we could look at the Scandinavian model, which doesn't seem to produce larger numbers of kids with attachment disorders or other issues than the UK and yet manages to keep both women and men in work and provide generous parental leave and excellent affordable childcare. Not everyone wants to be a SAHM for 2 or 3 years, and not everyone would be the best parent they could be in that situation. I agree that 7 weeks is very extreme, but there is a range of good ways of raising children.

DH is a doctor and I work in corporate finance. Both highly competitive careers. Not realistic to have time out to be a SAMP - we worked hard to make family and careers successful.

No, it's not right. That's why I mentioned levelling the playing field earlier (only to receive a snarky comment about "women like me"). It will never change unless women are in the decision making process. That means women forging on with their careers to change it. All this judgy crap on this thread is just setting us back.

Can you not join the dots between the various things you're saying here?

Yes, many women face discrimination for taking time out of their careers to have children.

Do you think every woman being paid to take 2-3 years off per child will make that more or less likely to happen? Will it make employers more or less likely to invest in the careers of their young female employees?

I think the government should provide funding for childcare which can either be used for a paid setting like nursery, or to enable a parent to stay at home with their child.

I really don't care if that's a controversial opinion, that's what I think. It breaks my heart that there are parents who would desperately want to stay at home with their children who aren't able to do so due to financial constraints. I'm a higher rate taxpayer now (yes! even after a career break!) - I'd happily pay more taxes for that.

Are you a man by any chance! You cant see the value in avoiding putting newborns in nurseries. Okay……

I wonder how many men are posting

So would I.

No, I'm not a man. I'm a taxpayer.

And I don't want to pay for you to spend three years going to Costa Coffee and doing baby sensory, and then have another baby and do the same for the next three years. Sorry.

My daughter went into nursery at I think 10 weeks old (struggling to do maths tonight, and it's a long time ago now 😂). I'm sure people would have looked at her and thought "poor baby should be with her mum", but had I not put her in nursery, people would have looked at us as a family and judged us much harder. We were two full-time university students desperately trying to push through and get our degrees after having a baby at the end of my second year, because we knew our prospects and her life would be much better if we did.

She came through her experience of the uni nursery totally unscathed, I finished uni at the top of my class and, as predicted, our lives following that were significantly easier than they would have been if I didn't get my degree because I was worried what people would think about a tiny baby being in nursery.

Yet again, I have not said every woman should be paid to take 2-3 years out. I said every PARENT. I strongly suspect that if this were the case you would get significantly more MEN who would take time out to care for their child. Again, I work in HR and it's becoming more and more and more common for men to make flexible working requests to care for children.

So why bother having children?

Well then perhaps all the people who believe nursery is tantamount to child abuse should volunteer to pay a special optional tax to fund all the women who would like to stay at home for three years.

You are clearly either a massive misogynist or a pretty crap parent if you think that's what looking after a young child involves.

I'm also a taxpayer. Do you think I'm a SAHM? I'm not.

My industry is fast paced and it is incredibly easy to fall behind, it's a reason why I went back after 12 weeks and will again this time.

Paying mothers to stay at home for 2-3 years would just make it harder for women like me going up against men in competitive, fast moving, male dominated industries.

I would absolutely love to do this, were I allowed to determine how my taxes were spent.

Why on earth do you imagine YOU are paying for me to raise my dc at home? 😂

But that's just wrong, isn't it? It shouldn't be like that.

And for the last time, I didn't say mothers. I said PARENTS.

1. Because they want to.
2. Because society desperately needs more smart, hardworking, financially stable people to have children.

Any more silly questions or have you hit your quota for today?

You can't win with these people, because either you're scrounging off the taxpayer at Costa Coffee or you're scrounging off your rich husband at yoga.

It's misogyny, plain and simple.

You keep saying society should support this.

What do you mean by that if you don't mean the taxpayer should pay for it?

There are so many misogynistic posts on this thread. Sad to think they are from women

Why do men who work in big, important jobs bother having children?

Do you think that stay at home parents aren't smart, hardworking, or financially stable?