To think nurseries are not safe for young babies

[Luxell934]

I've read about two very young babies dying in nurseries recently. One who choked after being given inappropriate food and one who was left to smother to death.

As a new mother it's absolutely terrifying to think about, I have also worked myself in nurseries for a number of years. It was a very well respected chain of nurseries and we were always understaffed and over ratio, I remember caring for up to 9 babies with just two staff and were told team leaders were "in the office, if needed" which basically meant get on with it and don't bother us. I also remember feeding 4/5 babies at a time. Looking back I was so young that I didn't speak up.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13438725/Nursery-nurse-Kate-Roughley-manslaughter-convicted.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqennjjllpqo

No, your baby really isn’t best at 10 months in a nursery. He is better with his mother or another primary caregiver. Your boredom is irrelevant. And no, there isn’t ‘only so much you can do’ what an awful attitude.
You chose to have your son. You or his father should have the responsibility of caring for him every day. Nurseries are never in the best interests of the baby. They serve the parents needs and wants only.

There is no substance in what you’re saying. Mother’s mental health IS important to their children. 2 days of childcare is pretty minimal and even the study posted says it’s provision over 15-30 hours that becomes detrimental.

Absolutely. No one saying ' a child needs it's mother' comes up with any ways for this to happen. Apart from ' we didn't have fancy holidays or Netflix or fancy coffees' trope. Well many people are working and still don't have fancy holidays. Nursery costs hundreds per month. So does rent and mortgages, and bills.
The bygone days of everyone having a stay at home mum also had many neglected children, children who were not properly cared for by their parent, depressed mothers spaced out on valium and inequality of work and educational opportunities for girls because they were expected to leave the workplace after a few years, so what was the point? In patriarchal traditionalist societies like Japan, women are choosing work over motherhood.

Just what I was coming on to say. I think it’s disgusting and ill-advised for the gov to try to up the hours that young children spend away from their parents. They’d be better off looking at paying some kind of allowance that permitted parents to stay home with under 2s (or even older).

I said on a previous thread that I didn’t believe that babies should be in nurseries. I’m not the only one. No-one wants to say it, but it’s not right. Babies should be with their primary caregivers in the majority of circumstances. Nurseries should only take toddlers upwards (I put “toddlers” to be flexible about the age, but 18/24 months maybe). The gov should be facilitating this financially.

And, back to this case. It’s not just two babies. There have been a number. I’m purposely not linking to stories, but we’re talking a number of fatal choking incidents and a child on child fatal injury, which was, of course an accident, but wouldn’t have happened at home.

The public want 2 contradictory things. A society with great public resources, generous welfare, excellent ‘free’ healthcare, long maternity/parental leaves, but such a system would mean there were far fewer taxpayers to actually fund all of it.

It’s fine to say you think society should be set up so we can live off one wage, but you would have to accept the natural consequence of that would be a step down in our quality of life. People would have to accept with fewer taxpayers there would in turn be fewer free* things from the state, accept fewer holidays, a less spendy way of life because we DO spend a lot more on frivolous and throwaway things than previous generations. We would effectively have to become on paper a second world country.

What you remember or don’t remember has no bearing at all on core childhood development and is completely irrelevant.
A child’s personality and prospects, empathy, attachments, how they are the world and their place in it are pretty much set by age 5 / 6 Well researched fact.
Children don’t need to know you have a career or will earn money for the future as babies. They just need the same primary caregiver giving good care and stability every single day.
A nursery can’t and won’t be able to give this.

Well she's wrong.

In the nurseries I used to work at, 3 of which were hospital-based, the parents (both doctors - there were quite a few parents where both were doctors at the attached hospital), would drop baby off at 6am, when our nurseries would open, and pick them up at 7pm, when we would close. I would counter with - they chose to have children knowing full-well they wouldn't be available to take care of those children. They just stuck them straight into nursery the absolute moment they were able to. Sometimes, those little babies (who grew into toddlers) would actually cry at having to be picked up by their stranger parents. They would reach for us nursery workers. So why bother having children. Genuine question.

I don’t agree @MaryMaryVeryContrary I think it’s largely the price of housing that’s the issue. My mum stayed home with us and we had a good life, a nice home and holidays. My older sister stayed home with her DC and had a nice house and stuff and holidays. Her DH wasn’t on a high salary.

I think the public would like to feel they have choices.

I do get frustrated with people who use full time childcare and tell me they had “no choice” when the reality is they couldn’t continue in their current role, but were free and perfectly employable in a different role. The truth is they don’t want to comprise their career, which is fine, but don’t pretend it’s not a choice.

Or maybe her experience is different to yours?

This is why I chose a childminder over a nursery.

Most nursery staff are young girls, who are not Mum's themselves. They've learnt what's in the books but not real life scenarios.

The staff turnover is often very high so there's no ability to form connections with their key workers.

My childminder is a Mum of two. Has a lovely (safe) home and is in her 50s. My DS is thriving with her.

I was fortunate to afford a full year off for maternity. I feel awful for these young babies who go to nursery/childminders.

So why bother having children. Genuine question

A genuine question @YouJustDoYou but you’ll be leapt on for it. Lots of women here seem to sneer at SAHMs as inferior to women doing ‘proper jobs’. Internalised misogyny and sexism, I think. If parents can’t cope with staying at home caring for babies and young children, they shouldn’t have them.

Absolutely. Heartbreaking that money is being poured in for parents to spend time away from their babies earlier and earlier.
It’s just all about taxes and squeezing more and more work out of the masses, never mind future generations being completely screwed by no stability as babies and young children. The government don’t care about that as they only care about pumping you for money now to fill their own pockets.
Children centres not only all gone but parents being paid to leave their babies.
I despair of how things are now. All wrong and it doesn’t benefit mothers or babies at all in the long run.

Completely agree.

So women need to choose between babies and careers they’ve worked their arse off for? Seems fair.

Yanbu, there is a reason nursery age starts at 3. Babies should not be anywhere near a nursery. It is just not natural.

I believe you can’t have both whilst your kids are small so you either:-

1. accept your career will at the least, stagnate whilst you have young children and focus on being a Mum; or
2. accept it’s not optimal for your children to be raised by other care givers whilst you maintain your career.

I honestly think if you can’t accept that then don’t have children.

I planned to have children when I was senior enough to be able to earn a decent salary PT and also be a desirable employee (and so can demand flexibility etc). But I know I have stalled. I’m comfortable with that though whilst I raise my children.

The key thing I always think in these kind of threads is:
Does the key person(s) you are leaving your baby with all day love them? Genuinely love them?
I would never ever want to leave by young baby with anyone for hours on end or for days even, with someone who doesn’t love them. A baby or very young child can feel that- they need that love and loving care poured into them constantly.

Who on Earth are you to tell her that, incredibly rude!

Do you expect men to make the same sacrifices?

What about those of us single parents who have been left by our partners when our kids are still young, are we meant to foresee the future? Or parents whose partner passes away or becomes too ill to work?

My ex left when my youngest was one and I was still breast feeding. I had to up my hours at work so I could afford to house myself. The alternative of going on benefits and potentially having to move away from where we live and change schools would have been hard on my eldest. Whatever choice I made at that point wasn’t ideal, I could only do my best to muddle through.

No doubt those of you judging doctors with children at nursery will nobly refuse medical care so they can be at home, where they belong. Ditto the people who clean the public spaces where you have all your mummy baby groups and keep your public utilities running and generally enable your lifestyle where you sit sneering at them on the internet in the middle of the day.

When you say ‘fair’ fair to who? You or the baby?
Life isn’t about fair. That’s a very immature view.
Its about choices.

1. you have a career and don’t have children
2. You have a career and take a break to look after your baby
3. You have a career but know there is a constant family member ie father or grandmother to be a primary caregiver
4. You continue your career and put the baby in a sub optimal setting that is not best for their development and welfare.

Thats it. It’s choices.

How do we reduce the price of housing, though? The reason housing is so expensive is because of shortages. The shortages are in large part not caused by immigration( because most of them live in HMO because housing is so expensive) but because of the massive increase in single person households. So we need to build more housing, but can't because people object to it being near them, incentivise older single people to sell up and move to smaller accommodation, but they don't want to, stop people from getting divorced ( how?). We can't go back in time. We have to deal with life as it is. And life as it is is that most families have two working parents. So they need to be supported better by the government or their employers to ensure that they can work flexibly and have safe, decent and affordable childcare.