To NOT feel guilty that my kids are in childcare?

[Kanfuzed123]

Inspired by the childcare eating a £45k salary and the anti nursery sentiment from a few posters on there as being inferior for a child.

anyone else not feel in the slightest guilty that there kids are in nursery and have been post maternity leave?

yeah when they cried at drop off was rough and I called into the check out they were but that soon settled. They do lovely events for the parents and upload lots of amazing activities they do, they’ve made fantastic friends.

I could’ve reduced my hours but I didn’t, we could’ve maybe managed on one salary (glad we didn’t when rates shot up) but I went back FT when dc 1 was 15 months (used annual leave for part time before then) and dc2 was 13 months.

anyone else just not feel guilty? I like the lifestyle we can get when we’re working, especially since the 15 funded hrs and now 30, it’s so affordable. (Eldest is in school and youngest now has the 30 hrs) bill is less than £400 a month inc club etc. I like having something else to focus on too.

im not alone or am I?

if you have the time, I highly recommend this. This woman dedicated her life to researching child development/attachment.

You seem quite defensive for someone who feels NO guilt. I’ve got a feeling you do, in fact, feel some guilt and this is why you posted on here.

I actually despair of the concept of mum guilt, and on here it’s often like we’re all meant to be
crippled by it and wear it like a badge of honour for loving our kids so much.

Fuck that; I love my work, the kids loved their childminder, what’s to feel bad about? Don’t see any dads guiltily slinking off to the office to chat to the other dads about how bad they feel for paying the bills.

Gabor mate is not qualified to make the claims he does and attachment theory has long been debunked.

Attachment theory has not been debunked. What are you talking about?!

a child without an attachment is a very serious (and uncommon) situation arising from trauma, neglect or abandonment. Using this research (which is from studying children in Eastern European orphanages in the 70/80/90s) can not be reasonably applied to an attached baby being being in childcare for long hours

eta- and that’s is what has been widely debunked since the internet forum misapplication of it that seemed endemic in 2010 ish

You don't need 'research' to know that babies are better off with mum (or dad) as the main carer in the early months. It's just basic common sense.

When I worked in Child Protection we would go to great lengths and massive expense to keep mums and babies together in the early months. This was in even in extreme cases where the mum was an addict, or had serious mental health problems. There were specialist foster carers who take both the mum and the baby in the first six months, so there need be no separation. Or, in very extreme cases, residential mother and baby clinics where they receive extra support and monitoring in the crucial early months. Teams of psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists and social workers would be involved in all cases. They don't do this for nothing!

YABU for lumping in all nursery together. Sending a 4 month old to nursery full time is very clearly not ideal, all the research backs that up. Sending a 2 year old to nursery a couple of days a week can be beneficial. Sending any child (including a 4 month old) to nursery could well be net positive when balanced with parental stress/lack of money if parents have to stay home to look after them instead.

That’s totally different though, that’s a baby who will never live with or see mum again if it doesn’t work.

@AquaPeer - yes, but what I'm saying is, when babies are born in extreme circumstances (eg unsafe home environment, mother with addiction or serious mental health issues), social services don't put the baby into daycare 8-5, and then facilitate contact with mum for a couple of hours in the evening and weekends. They bend over backwards to keep both the mum and baby together, which may mean mother and baby foster homes, residential clinics or a home support worker moving in. It costs thousands per week.

Yet in 'normal' cases (ie none of these issues), the govt are quite happy for families to potentially put babies in childcare from 6 weeks old for 10 hour days - ie. the vast majority of their waking lives. It makes no sense really. Well it makes sense from a GDP perspective, but not from a baby's perspective.

No I don’t actually but I’m pretty resistant to those who try and manufacture guilt and put it on women.

what id actually feel guilt about is if I couldn’t afford to take my kids on holiday or spoil them because I chose not to work

Are they? Very few babies in the UK go to nursery at 6 weeks old, let alone for 10 hours a day.

All of this

Okay, so you don’t feel guilty. That just makes me think even less of you as a person.

You can pretend the research doesn’t exist if you want, come up with whatever excuses you can muster as to why they don’t work, but staying at home with a parent for a child under 3 is more beneficial.

But of course to acknowledge that you would have to actually think about what you’ve done to your child’s important early years, and you won’t, so 🤷‍♀️

It’s weird to me that people think their children could be genuinely better off in an institutional setting for full time hours, only seeing their parents for a couple of hours per day and weekends and perhaps five weeks annual leave a year. Do you have so little faith in your own parenting that you genuinely think that balance is best?

They don’t actually think that. They’ve convinced themselves of it to hide the guilt they would feel if they actually realised what they’ve done to their child.

There is far more research on attachment than the famous study you just cited. A quick search on Google scholar will demonstrate that.

Yeah. It’s weird. I say this as someone who has to use nursery but has bent over backwards to flex hours etc to ensure my DD is in there the minimum amount of time possible.

It's only beneficial if a parent wants to and is happy to stay at home, not to mention if it's affordable. It's also beneficial for a child to have a roof over their head and food in their stomach.

When babies are born, they are obviously already familiar with mum and dads voice, sounds in the home etc and have been familiar with these sounds snd rhythms for some months.

Before the age of 6 months, a baby is in the paranoid-schizoid phase, meaning that they have no sense of themself as a 'whole' being and no sense of mum as a whole being either. They cope with feelings of disintegration by their relationship to familiar 'parts' of the mother - eg. the breast (if bf), her voice, smell etc. This is the only thing that helps them to 'hold themselves together.' They have no sense of separation to the mother, they only exist in a world of 'part objects.' Eventually, by 6-9 months, babies acquire a coherent sense of the mother as a sum of parts - a whole body - and by extension, they realise they are a whole body too. But with this comes the realisation that the mother, as a separate body, can actually leave them or be separate to them. This is why, separation anxiety can only really set in at 6-9 months. It's why babies, who may have seemed fairly settled in childcare, might suddenly become highly distressed at drop-offs or pick up times. Before this, they have only a disorganised sense of self so can't organise a reaction to anything, if that makes sense.

So a 10-week old baby going into a nursery, all day, is a highly stressful and disorientating experience. A bit like being suspended in space, without any familiar reference points. They have to build up defences to mitigate against the sense of disintegration because they don't yet have a concept of object permanence.

My children have a wonderful attachment with me, thank you. They also love going to nursery and all the fun things they do there.

That “research” you’ve quoted is, in our case, a load of complete bollocks.

Of course you aren't unreasonable.
The only people who are unreasonable are those who tell sahps that it's not a "job".
whilst paying someone else to look after their dc
🙄😊

You're entitled to your opinion of course, as am I. But I don't understand why post the thread if you're so guilt free about your choice. As I said, for many it's not a choice but I can't fathom those who have a choice but choose to send their child to be cared for by young, badly paid, over worked (often disinterested) carers. I certainly could never have entrusted my precious babies to nursery staff.

Do you feel better about yourself and your choices now? You’ve come onto a thread primarily aimed at working parents, and made comments trying to make them feel shit about themselves. “What they’ve done to their child” is judgemental, sanctimonious bullshit, especially given most posters on here have said they send them part time.

I find nursery incredibly good for our DC. They have learnt new skills, become far more confident and they've barely ever cried being dropped off.
Of course they are so happy to see us when we pick them up as are we! Thry don't go full time though, but that's just because of our circumstances.