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

Well then make that choice for your family.

I did 🤷‍♀️

As an aside, I’ve had 11 emails this month about networking events - all breakfast so 7/730 starts, how on earth is it practical 🤦🏼‍♀️

Pigs, the most intelligent of domestic animals, make good parents. Indeed, they are one of the few species where the group - including the boar - take care of all the young. They also mourn the loss of one of their members, being low and unhappy for several days after such a loss. The sow eating her farrow is a religious item btw it is Ceridwen (a form of the Morigan, a moon diety) who eats her farrow - i.e. her children, human beings.

They aren't strangers.

Disagree sorry. Too simplistic and not telling the whole picture.

Right!? Only people who can afford to have one parent working and one at home can have kids.

This thread is absolute bonkers.

If only all this energy hating on each others choices/circumstances was spent being angry about the cost of living, inequality that women face when they become mothers, poor availability of quality childcare, shit wages childcarers are paid.......

A room full of nursery workers are not strangers? What are they then?

So who should be allowed to have children then? Just people married to the top 10% of earners? What about everyone else? Who is going to pay for them to stay at home? There isn't going to be much money when you decimate the workforce by 50%. What about the elderly? There won't be any money left to pay for triple locked pensions either after that. Nor will there be many workers to look after them. We already have an inverted population pyramid. If you say to people ' If you can't afford to have children on one income, don't have them' most people won't have them. That's happening already with people who can't afford to have a child on one income.

Yet ''Don't have a baby if you don't have a rich husband to fund you'' isn't simplistic?

You have several settling in sessions before they start. You don't just randomly hand them over and off you trott.

If you're going to go round telling people about the 'sub optimal' choices they're making, you ought to at least acknowledge the one thing that data is clear about - the role of household income in outcomes.

I've continually said on this thread people should make choices that are right for them and no one else has any real insight as to what that is. But if you're just going to push one side of the story, then of course people will push back.

Money should be given to new mums or dads in the form of maternity / paternity care to encourage a parent to stay with their young baby. Not the measly amount currently given.
Enough so that at least 1 year can be taken. Preferably 2.
Instead, because the government want you to work every hour to pay more tax, people are getting incentives to put very young babies into childcare earlier and earlier.
Soon we will be like the US where new mothers need (and it’s normal to) put their baby into full time childcare from 6 weeks old

Or benefits.

I know it’s bizarre, I’ve tried not to get too drawn in but I can’t help myself!

I suspect the poster isn’t actually interested in logical answers

The amount of stick I get for working very part time and getting a UC top up confirms that only the wealthy should have children and if the poor have children they should ship them off to nursery and work all the hours of the day instead according to MN anyway.

Covid was horrendous settling in sessions were stopped so you had to do exactly that.

Yep.

It's all very confusing.

I'm still not how sure nursery workers are strangers yet the babies spend 60 hours a week in their care and are ''raised'' by them too.

It's amazing.

COVID aside obviously! That must have been difficult but guess needs must.

Think my two year old will have two or three settling in sessions.

No, we don't want to go back to the days when women could not have a career, with fewer women doctors, solicitors etc. But most women do not have jobs like those; they are on check-outs, in retail, cleaners, carers in care homes or nurseries, teaching assistants (that one is quite rewarding), routine office workers etc. In survey after survey, 80% of women would prefer to work part-time or to stay at home with young children, but they cannot afford to. A better arrangement would be for government assistance for parents to allow the parents to decide the childcare they want, not make it so that a nursery is the only option - because that's the one that counts as part of the GDP. Other countries manage to make being at home with young children possible, why not the UK?

Choices that is right for who? Them or their baby? The two are often very different which is what gets me angry.
The whole county is set up to have both parents working now when the child is still very young. Grandparents often not able to help due to still working themselves in lots of cases.
Its all totally wrong.
A baby just wants and needs it’s mum. Why is that so hard to understand?

Choices that are right for the whole family, of which household income is a very significant aspect

I wouldn't be against it if fathers were expected to step up and take at least half of the leave on a use it or lose it basis so it didn't become yet another thing that women in the workplace would be discriminated for and have to battle against.

My eldest DS went to nursery from 6 months. He is about to graduate with a 1st from a RG university and is a lovely confident man with a lovely girlfriend.

I should probably thank the nursery workers who raised him reading some of the posts here.

A shame these nutters are still around trying to justify their own existence as SAHMs by spouting utter BS.

In bad taste too considering this tragic case.