To ask if you couldn't imagine leaving your baby and then young dc with strangers?

[A2J]

As in nursery/childminder etc?
I was OK once they could talk but before that I couldn't have left them with anyone except very close friends (female) or family.

It probably stems from my own childhood although any abuse I experienced was when older. Weird friends of my parents.

Luckily I was bolshy and stuck up for myself. More than I can say for my parents.

Your sentence “I don’t like babies in nursery generally which is why mine are at home with me.”(sic) is why you are getting backlash from people. You could have said something along the lines of, your one experience with one nursery was negative for you and therefore, you felt the best decision for your family was to be a SAHP. That would have been completely non judgmental and perfectly understandable. Instead, you have deliberately (?) chosen provocative language.

(Edit for bad formatting.)

I would love to see someone trying to explain to a 9 month old that this is a quiet time so they should be quiet 😅. Let’s not pretend that a room full of babies will ever be quiet unless they happen to all be asleep at the same time. Also the separation will be 0-24 months or 0-12 at best. 6 months old baby’s need will be v different to those of a 1 year old. A 6 month old will still be on 3 naps a day for example, I would imagine that’s quite hard to achieve in nursery even with the best intentions. But I’m happy your children gained so much from their nursery, good for them.

I’ve said it numerous times now that my decision is not based on my experience with that one specific nursery I used. I just think small babies belong with their family at home. That’s my belief. It’s clear from this thread that my belief is not shared by many and is even causing upset but I’m not responsible for how my opinion makes other people feel. I’m not going to change it and pretend I meant something else to make people feel better. Please can everyone who doesn’t agree with my opinions just ignore any comments that I’ve made about nurseries. It’s not meant as a personal attack on you. The OP asked if there were other people who could relate to her which I did so I commented. If you don’t relate, why even comment in this thread?

The qualifications of the staff were posted on their website - all qualified as nursery staff, teachers, nurses - could also see when they started working there

@HJA87

I'm happy with my choices. Which is why I don't have to lecture people.

You are not happy with the choices you made which is why you've now changed them. Which is fine, but don't lecture people.

Your nursery is a poor one. Ofsted, waiting lists and costs don't make it good. And yes, I know the qualifications of the staff at ours because they are open about it. And they all have them or are training for them while being supervised. And our ratio is over the legal minimum.

Everything you've said just shows that you were unhappy with the choice you made for your eldest and therefore you've decided to do it differently now. But to justify that to yourself you're telling everyone possible why nursery is bad. If you were truly happy with your choices, you wouldn't feel the need to.

My child is happy. She's not damaged like you think she will be from attending nursery. Maybe you think your eldest is, seeing as you sent them to nursery and don't like nursery AND had a poor experience. But that's just you. No one else.

Umm no. There are quite a few people who are better off financially at work and may also benefit from free childcare hours.

Most parents try to do their best for their children, be it looking after them themselves, or earning more to give them more opportunities in life. We need to be empathetic about the choices people make and not judgemental.

The back pedalling from “everyone who puts their kids in to a nursery just wants a break and is damaging their children” to this was really an absolutely wild read. Good job.

I feel like people are slightly over invested in this thread. You are all clearly more than happy with your choices so take no notice of strangers’ comments and move on with your life.

@TheAlchemy i didn’t really back pedal on anything, just came to the conclusion that we are not going to agree on this and that it doesn’t affect me in any way what other people do with their kids. My opinion about nurseries is still the same.

Ok whatever you need to tell yourself to make you feel better.

No worries good to know you still think we’re all damaging our kids. Best of luck to you and yours.

It's not meant as a lecture. It's something I didn't realise at the time, and it's not something any of the SAHMs I know think about, they are thinking of the next couple of years and not the future. We don't talk about it enough. It's not to say women shouldn't stay at home if they want to and are able to, it's that we need to think about what this means in the longer term and if you stay at home, think about making pension contributions during that time and how you are going to go back to work if you need to. I know some women will find it easier, it was harder to get back to work than I expected it to be and my kids have struggled to adjust to not having one of us here all the time, but it's not financially feasible for us to have a SAHP when they are school age.

For me, it would've been easier to work p/t all the way through than to take time out as the kids would've been used to it.

Ok whatever you need to tell yourself to make you feel better.

What a shitty comment 🙄

I've given up replying now. I'm genuinely ok with my choices for our family, and she clearly isn't with hers, which is why she needs to keep telling us how much better hers are. Even though until she was on mat leave for the second time, they were actually the same as ours...

Something I've always found interesting....

I work at a university in a department which offers childhood studies and early childhood development degrees. The academics running these courses are the people doing the research into child development. All of them used childcare.

A colleague summed up the research for me and said:

• the quality of childcare is key.
• in a good childcare provider the research shows that the impact on babies is neutral . It's not beneficial but it's not detrimental either.
• children aged 2+ do see benefits from good childcare settings.
• poverty is the biggest issue with regards outcomes for children

She also said that parents should be mindful of who has carried out the research they are using to inform their choices. Some research is carried out by pro family/marriage/religious groups with the intention of promoting traditional family values.

I've actually seen people post such research on similar threads to this in the past, when you dig a bit you can see that the research is intended to keep women in the home.

I don’t feel comfortable with it personally, which is one of the reasons I decided to be a SAHM. This isn’t an option for everyone though so sometimes it’s necessary.

The professionals mentioned so often on this thread, aren't professionals. I've worked in nurseries. Usually young girls with a qualification thats easy to get. Paid very little. Overworked too. Doing a job a lot of them shouldn't be doing.

The professionals mentioned so often on this thread, aren't professionals. I've worked in nurseries. Usually young girls with a qualification thats easy to get. Paid very little. Overworked too. Doing a job a lot of them shouldn't be doing.

But that clearly isn't everyone's experience.
The nursery we used had staff who were a range of ages, had continuous professional development and very little staff turnover.

I have friends who used different providers but their experience was similar.

The nursery my DD went to had no staff under 22. The two youngest staff when she was there were degree qualified, lived within walking distance and were doing it as a stop gap for a year. One went abroad and other has moved on to do other things in education.

The nursery I live next door to used to mainly had very young bored staff. However in the last two-three years they are clearly employing staff who aren't under 25. Their staff turn over appears to have gone down as well. (Some of the staff have children who go to primary schools in the local area and their children are older than my DD.)

• in a good childcare provider the research shows that the impact on babies is neutral . It's not beneficial but it's not detrimental either.

This is not talked about enough. You only have to look at this thread where everyone claims their baby „got so much out of nursery” to see that people falsely believe nursery is beneficial to babies. Nursery is there for the parents so they can work, it’s not to benefit the babies.

But the important thing is it isn't to the detriment of babies which so many people seem to believe it is. And while it may not be seen to be beneficial, I do believe my son who has been at nursery from 10 months has benefited from it due to the fact they do more activities with him and a new range of experiences from him that I wouldn't do with him at home.

Plus he benefits from me going to work to help keep a roof over his head, clothes on his back and food in his tummy which is the biggest benefit of all.

It’s also not damaging for them like you were so insistently claiming upthread.

For someone who apparently now doesn’t care what other people do with their kids you seem to really care.

I agree.

Maybe overall it's not beneficial or detrimental. I can see my child has benefitted from it. Being a COVID baby, (and an "only") there were very few baby groups running when she was small, so it has helped her with socialisation etc. that she wouldn't have gotten being at home with me until the groups started up again. And if I'd been at home, DHs income would have literally covered the bills and nothing else, so even things like messy play, painting etc would have been limited as we wouldn't have had spare cash to buy the resources.

Some babies may also be at a detriment for a variety of reasons if at nursery. On balance, there's not positive or negatives on babies. It's likely an average.

Which basically feeds into the thing most of us have been saying, that everyone's experience is different, it's theirs and they're all ok. No one is intentionally damaging their children, they're just making choices based on what their needs & lives are, and adjusting them if necessary.

Well there is research showing it is damaging especially for under 1s.
https://criticalscience.medium.com/on-the-science-of-daycare-4d1ab4c2efb4

First, here are the effects of 15–30 hrs of daycare a week, broken down by age.

• For ages 3+, there are few downsides and substantial advantages. Daycare boosts both cognitive skills (literacy and mathematics) and social skills as measured in the first few years at school.
• For age 2, the findings are more mixed. This is the best age to start in terms of boosting later cognitive skills, but children are more likely to act out and be angry when they reach school.
• For age 1, childcare may improve cognitive skills a little, though certainly less than starting at age 2. But it also has even larger negative effects on later behavior in school.There is no boost to social skills.
• For children aged 0–12 months, daycare likely damages cognitive skills and children’s later behavior at school is even worse. There is no boost to social skills.

Compared to 15–30 hours, 30+ hours a week before 4 or so doesn’t give any cognitive benefits but makes children more likely to act out and be angry when they reach school. For children from “middle class and affluent families”, that much time in daycare has about two-thirds the negative effect on behavior of having “a moderately depressed mother”. Children spending long hours in any kind of out-of-home childcare have been found to be three times as likely to have “elevated levels of aggression”.
Note the age and long-hours effects are separate: putting 6-month-old children in daycare for long hours has a particularly large negative effect on later behavior.