To have mum guilt over childcare situation

[ChamomileHoneyTea]

DP and I both work full time so I will have to leave DS in nursery when my maternity leave is over (when he turns one).

I know most parents rely on childcare these days but I just feel so guilty! Growing up my mum didn’t work when we were kids because they could live off one salary. My auntie had to go out to work but left my cousins with my grandma because she didn’t work.

Fast forward to now and I can’t afford to not work because we need my salary to survive. My parents are both still working full time so they can’t help. DP’s parents are retired but don’t want to help out.

Just feeling so down and guilty as if I’m abandoning my DS :( can’t help but think my DS is worse off than me at his age and me & DP are failing him :(

But even if you are a SAHP that stays off work, who really cares? If someone wants to be a homemaker and the working family member supports that…why does it affect anyone else?

@Mariposistaaa What a silly predictable post about stay at home mums!
You can offer support without belittling the choices other parents made.

I was a SAHM for years and absolutely loved it. Sitting around at home with toddlers? Ehh no. We had a great time doing all the things they wouldn't get to do if they were in a nursery all day.

That was my choice. There were sacrifices but it was worth it.
Exactly how a parent who chooses a nursery might feel.

My two are well beyond the nursery years & both their year groups are having assorted issues with not sharing, bullying, disrespectful chat. Mine have got a great grounding in not getting sucked into the nastiness & looking out for others - not because of any halo-polishing activity on my part! But precisely because they had a really solid grounding at a great nursery as well.

They were very big on kind hands, sharing well (which is much harder to teach to a first or an only at home on your own), talking about problems not solving them with hands & feet - and knowing who your trusted adults are if there's a problem.

I also benefit from being able to flex my career far more now as a result of not having a huge CV gap then.

It's a long game OP & all part of the balance.

We can all only do what we can do, but as others have said, there aren't many men who feel back-to-work guilt, so concentrate on the many benefits. For BOTH of you!

I disagree with this. It’s shaming mothers/parents who have to work and use childcare and blaming them for mental health issues later on, of which there’s no proof it’s linked to SAHP versus nursery care. I’m assuming you’re a SAHM, lucky for you but for the rest of us, we have no choice so how about some support rather than shame? This thread is quite toxic (not the Ops fault)

I agree that we can't really be sure that it's the use of childcare that is behind the rise in mental health issues. Especially when an increase can be seen in all demographics and not just the young.

I do think though that we have to be open to evidence about the impact that childcare/having a SAHP has on our children without automatically accusing everyone of 'mum shaming'. There is more than one way to crack a nut and if a study does find for example that childcare is causing some issues then this doesn't mean that it's a 'mothers' issue or that all WOHMs need to stay at home. It is a society issue and we all need to work together to find solutions that ensure our children get great childhoods and women are empowered to make choices that suit them and their families.

This is just pure confirmation bias re nursery attending children being better socialised / better behaved / better adjusted. It sucks that a lot of parents can’t be SAHP because they either can’t afford to or possibly just don’t want to for whatever reason.
No one should be suggesting that kids without experience of nursery’s are a certain way for the rest of their lives - such a load of nonsense purely said to reassure your own life decisions.

Agree. I was raised by a militant ‘women should never abandon their children in a nursery!’ type SAHM but I have severe social anxiety and my brother is also plagued with mental health issues, can’t hold a job and is a feckless father to multiple children who he doesn’t see so any claims of SAHM’s automatically being better for DC’s mental health just go in one ear and out the other for me as studies will never truly capture the full picture of people’s lives. I know my own experience so no amount of studies will change my mind.

But then I also grew up relatively poor and that also clouds my vision so it’s why I work, although I didn’t use a nursery until my DC were 3 and had the benefit of family help, I 100% would have used one if I had to.

When their primary female role model is staying at home....

Haha this is just ridiculous!

I was a SAHP - I volunteered at a charity specifically for women who were experiencing difficulties in their lives. My charity work was my passion, I raised hundreds of pounds fundraising, I helped many many women.... I'm sure that my daughter sees me as an inspirational, hard working, determined and strong supportive woman.
In fact I know she does because she's told me.

And me?! A SAHP who sits about all day setting a bad example! Who'd have thought it?!

You can do other things of value in life other than putting your children in nursery all day and going to work.

@Coffeeandtveasily your medal is in the post 🙄 I didn’t criticise SAHMs. I said I could see both sides.

Let's also not forget that the majority of people that work aren't doing inspirational, world changing jobs where they are being the best they can be each day. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise! Most of my friends (me included) do work that keep the wheels of life turning but isn't massively 'virtuous' or impactful to wider society. Some arguably work for organisations that actively detriment society (e.g. tax dodging Amazon, gambling and oil companies) so it really isn't the case that all working people are the making the world a better place.

Your volunteering has undeniable value and merit but a lot of what people do for money can be morally hazey and not necessarily the stuff you instantly think of when imagining a great role model for children. I think lots on this thread think that working for money in of itself is virtuous but I don't subscribe to this. The world isn't as black and white as this!

I love this post. When I think of the things I admire about my parents, it's not the things they do for money. It's the things they do for nothing! The thousands of hours unpaid care work my mum has done for friends that need help, the time my dad has spent helping my kids with their homework, the kindness they have showed to us in times of need.
My dad did well in his career and my mum was mostly a SAHM, but I absolutely don't look up to her any less for it. She was absolutely integral to our happy family home.

It’s sad that modern life is so expensive that parents don’t get the choice often to stay at home. Ideally it would be nice if a family could survive comfortably off one income and everyone could have freedom of choice (men included)

This 👏🏻

I think we all feel this when maternity leave is over and have to pay for someone else to look after out LOs. Those working in nurseries will feel the same, unless they have their DC there. We get to cherish evenings, weekends and holiday time even more. Not easy but unfortunately that's what we have to do to keep our houses, pay bills, treat them and pay for a life they can enjoy in the long term. Living on one wage is more difficult now with so many more things that cost more, mobile phones, WiFi etc. Life has got much more expensive, expectations also, as I said, not easy. Xx

My child goes to nursery as we both have to work full time to afford to live. He is way ahead developmentally, of my friends children the same age and who stay home with parents or grandparents every day.

I feel you. I'm also beyond annoyed at how much it costs. We have 2 kids and it's half my partners take home pay monthly for 7 days between them a week (1 does 3 and 1 does 4). If they were full time it would obviously be closer to 65%. He's a high earner and even combined it's more than a quarter so combined with mortgage and bills I really don't see how they expect people to cope.

@Midwinter91 this is nonsense, you have absolutely no relevant or accurate gauge of this just a finger in the wind type measurement based on your wish to believe that your life choices are correct.

What nonsense @Midwinter91!

@Midwinter91 why can’t you just say that your child is at nursery and doing well instead of implying he’s more advanced than children receiving care at home. So passive aggressive! People caring for children at home don’t just plonk them in front of the telly - I spent many years in a SAHM circle of friends. We did countless activities with our kids, took them on day trips, weathered all the behavioural developments, socialised endlessly, took them to preschool when they were older and we loved each others kids to bits. We were a village and they were my best days! It’s not for everyone but please stop putting SAH carers down, they put every bit of effort into the care of kids as a nursery might.

Slightly off topic but the fictional set up I love is JoJo and GranGran. Granny looks after her grandkid for a great deal of time and they have fabulous adventures and learning. I’m lucky my folks do one day for me but it would be ideal not to need nurseries as much as we do - working our socks off and seeing our kids is a tough balance. Sigh.

Really?
A child in a nursery with a ratio of about one adult per five children who can never receive one to one care from the nursery staff is way ahead of the children of SAHP?
Interesting......

@Coffeeandtveasily yes but you’re forgetting that the only true virtuous and honourable path in life is paid work…you couldn’t possibly inspire your children by choosing not to work and skipping the paid child care…also I think a lot of people take it literally and assume a SAHP is someone that cannot leave the confines of the house and no one is allowed to enter the house 😆

Wow I didn’t expect so many responses!

Before having our baby we knew I couldn’t ever afford to be a SAHM, we would lose our (modest 2 bed) home. We live in London- not through choice but because we both grew up here, all our family and friends are here, so moving somewhere cheaper would isolate us from our circles. We are also young millenials who didn’t get on the property ladder until early last year. Basically our options around having a child were either: 1. have a child and put them in childcare or 2. not have a child at all!

I don’t expect my in laws to provide any childcare- DP & I chose to have a child, his parents didn’t ask for a grandchild. I did hope they would offer one day a week but when DP asked they declined. Initially I was a bit bitter as my MIL was a working mum who left DP full time with her own retired mum, so she had benefitted from free childcare but wouldn’t provide even one day to her own grandchild, despite being healthy & retired. But anyway that’s not the point and I’ve since made peace with it.

Thanks to all the lovely comments about children in childcare being socialised and doing lots of fun activities! Bedtimes and weekends will be cherished :)

You have a great attitude. You child will love nursery and their time with you. We do what we can, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a SAHM or not, love is love.

We are in a small house in London and - while we try to give her as free rein of the house as we can - our daughter absolutely loves having a bigger yes-space than we can offer her full of different toys at daycare. We thought she’d cling to my husband during her first settle session, but she just crawled off immediately into the big room of toys and left him in the dust! She’s a contact napper at home, but they somehow get her to sleep on a little floor bed with no problems at all. It really assuaged a lot of the worries I had (despite knowing staying at home wasn’t for me or my husband) about her starting at daycare.

I’m not going to say there aren’t still some tears at handover point, but they are over by the time I get back from putting the buggy in the storage shed and she greets her key workers with a big smile every morning. I’m really happy with the daycare we chose so far, and don’t regret the time she spends there.