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?

Yep, society is far from perfect. It would be great if it became the norm for dads to stay home to look after their children.

They have managed to move quite far in that direction in the Nordic countries. One way they did that was by extending paid parental leave and giving a set number of months to just the dad, a set number to the mum, the rest shared as the couple see fit.

They also, yes, increased funding for childcare but, crucially, encourage parents to wait until their children are a bit older (so at least over 1 year) before sending them to nursery full-time.

I think that would be a great start.

It does sometimes feel on these threads that there’s a feeling that nurseries are a new thing. They aren’t. My children are now over 30 and late 20s in age. They went to nursery (and from a considerably younger age than most children go now, with year long mat leave.)

There are enough adults who were in childcare that it’s pretty likely any clear link of poor outcomes would be evident! There is absolutely no clear irrefutable evidence of issues like poorer mental health, poorer education achievement etc

Where there is a clear undisputed link is that poverty leads to poorer outcomes for children.

I wouldn't be completely against that if it meant men were just as likely to take time out of work too and it didn't mean women would have to sacrifice their career progression.

One of the reasons why I went back to work at 3 months is because I have to keep up with the men who go back to work after 2 weeks as I work in a male dominated industry. If it was the norm for men to take months out when they become parents too and it was more equal, I'd have likely taken a longer maternity leave. Though probably still not a whole year.

Widespread nursery use only came about when the majority of women started working outside the home, so really only in the later half of the 20th century. It has been steadily increasing over the last decades, especially as families move away from grandparents and other traditional caregivers.

Also over the past few decades, rates of mental health difficulties have increased.

Now, I am definitely not saying that nursery is the sole of even main cause of various mental health difficulties. It might be one of many contributing factors, however.

There are studies (which I linked to) that have found a link between early nursery care and ADHD, for example. And many studies that show an impact on stress levels, which could well have long-term impacts on anxiety etc.

This is just total supposition though. Which of course you are entitled to hold, but equally no one else has any particular reason to agree with you.

Posts like this always make me smile a bit wryly, as if the first half of the twentieth century wasn’t fraught with problems. Two world wars, a pandemic, a global recession, a post war housing crisis and added to which corporal punishment at school and home, rife racism and homophobia, a justice system which dealt severely with even minor transgressions and an education system that denied all but the wealthiest and exceptionally clever a university education, I’ll take my chances with 2025.

In all seriousness, if we’re imagining a culture where devoted mothers tended to their little darlings 24/7 before wicked nasty nurseries came in, we’re deluding ourselves. The wealthy outsourced to a nanny while the poor struggled hugely. ‘Twas ever thus really.

Dd went at 3 and I didn’t feel any guilt at all. Before that I would have

You would seriously have preferred to have spent those years on benefits?

You would have condemned both of you to live just above the breadline. He would have had a far reduced quality of life. No treats, no holidays, no extracurricular. You would have massively reduced his life chances. You would have presented him with a role model that signaled to him that he could expect far less in life.

Instead, you did what you had to do. You went out to work to provide for him as best you could. You provided for him and gave him a stable and loving home environment. While you did so you also set him a good example of a parent being resilient and independent.

I was also a single parent who separated from my daughter's father and I had a couple of friends who suggested I "go on benefits" so I didn't have to work. I am so so grateful that I didn't do that (if it were even possible to do that, which I don't think it would).

I think its incredibly sad that you perceive the situation in this way. And also please please don't use the phrases "farm out" and say you didn't raise your own child It's incredibly offensive to other single parents who have been in the same situation.

I think you need to have more respect for yourself.

@nearlysevenoclock

Posts like this always make me smile a bit wryly, as if the first half of the twentieth century wasn’t fraught with problems. Two world wars, a pandemic, a global recession, a post war housing crisis and added to which corporal punishment at school and home, rife racism and homophobia, a justice system which dealt severely with even minor transgressions and an education system that denied all but the wealthiest and exceptionally clever a university education, I’ll take my chances with 2025.

I know. If mildly elevated cortisol levels in the afternoon at nursery are the worst problem that children in the 21st century have had to face, it does beg the question as to how more children in previous generations didn't all succumb to mental illness (the truth is a lot of them did but were poorly diagnosed and subject to social taboos, medicating with substances of various kinds and you can bet these children's lives had more stress than a few hours in daycare). Do people think that children who lived through the Blitz, or had to escape Nazi Germany all had stable cortisol with no stress whatsoever?

I don't want to glibly parrot one of those "it never did me any harm" responses. And I don't want to dismiss out of hand the potential for childcare to have some negative consequences. But people are very quick to draw correlative or even causative assumptions between this finding about elevated cortisol and the current mental health crisis which actually don't stand up to scrutiny.

In fact children being in nursery/childcare long long predates the current spike in mental health issues. There are other factors which have been identified (specifically I'm thinking of COVID and the government's handling of this) which are thought to have much more direct causal links with the mental health crisis and as for ADHD and other forms of neurodiversity they known to have a genetic cause. Claiming that daycare could cause neurodiversity is no better than the thoroughly debunked Andrew Wakefield thesis.

It's reasonable to explore this, but the arguments posted here are pretty thin gruel.

Yep, which is why I think we should take a careful look at the short and long term effects of nursery. People who are claiming it does absolutely no harm in any situation are also basing that on total supposition. I'm suggesting we read the research that has already been done and also do more research to see if the results are borne out consistently.

All people are saying is that there is no clear, unequivocal evidence which shows that nursery leads to poorer outcomes. And therefore people will use it (or not) depending on their own personal circumstances.

Of course, I'm all for more research.

But it's not just nursery in isolation. It's nursery in the context of all the other things nursery enables.

This… and above that, given how speculative the evidence is for childcare being harmful, no one should make women feel guilty about using it.

I think society likes to make mothers feel bad whatever their choices. Mine both went to a lovely nursery and thrived. I’ve kept my career going so when my husband has had health scares or job issues, we’ve had the reassurance of my income to steady the ship at home. I don’t feel guilty because my kids are happy and now doing well at school. I’ve never heard a man say he feels guilty about his kids going to nursery.

The spike in mental health issues predates COVID (for example, tragically, suicide rates amongst teens had started climbing well before).

I freely admit I'm basing my comment on ADHD on only one small study, which could definitely be wrong. My point in mentioning it at all was simply to refute the earlier claim that "there are enough adults who were in childcare that it’s pretty likely any clear link of poor outcomes would be evident!". Actually, no one here has linked to any study that proves that full-time childcare at a young age ( around 2) is not harmful and it is not evident that there is no link to poor outcomes. In fact some case studies point clearly to harm being done (https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pol.20170603).

The current nursery system is a very modern phenomenon. Previous generations had relatives looking after their kids, or looked after them themselves, or asked a neighbor to do it (similar to childminding), or paid a servant to do it (similar to nannies today), or even brought their babies to work with them. Large-scale nursery childcare simply didn't exist, unless you count orphanages (which I personally wouldn't, they were generally horrific places).

I have said many times before that nursery can be the best choice for a specific family and I certainly wouldn't compare the potential harms of nursery to serious trauma like living through a world war. However, if we want to establish what the ideal situation is for looking after very young children (all other things being equal) then the current evidence points towards remaining with family (mother, father, grandparent or other relative) until around 2 years old.

Talking of the first half of the 20th century, my mum was born in the 1930s and had me and my sister in the 1960s. She was a bright, capable woman who was never able to reach her potential because of the restrictions facing mothers in the workplace and the lack of regulated childcare on any sort of scale. I thank my lucky stars that I didn’t face those sort of limitations and was able to return to work after having my dc. And if my ds or dd decide to have kids they’ll be even better off than I was with up to a year parental leave.

And who knows, your grandkids might be even better off with 2 years paid parental leave.

Or 3 or 4 or 5 years…, or maybe one of their parents not working and home educating them?!

no point drawing some arbitrary line which happens to suit you and extrapolating from it that this is the way the world should operate.

The important thing will be raising happy, well adjusted young people. As my ds and dd are.

My whole point is that the line shouldn't be arbitrary and instead we should base it on facts. I'm a broken record by this stage, I know, but multiple research studies have shown negative short and long term effects for very young children in full-time nursery. The same is not true for older children. Above the age of around 2 there are in fact a lot of research papers pointing to nursery being beneficial.

@gattocattivo

Talking of the first half of the 20th century, my mum was born in the 1930s and had me and my sister in the 1960s. She was a bright, capable woman who was never able to reach her potential because of the restrictions facing mothers in the workplace and the lack of regulated childcare on any sort of scale. I thank my lucky stars that I didn’t face those sort of limitations and was able to return to work after having my dc. And if my ds or dd decide to have kids they’ll be even better off than I was with up to a year parental leave.

Same here. My mother's life was pretty much ruined by the fact she had to give up a job she loved to have children and she never really got her career back afterwards. She was openly bitter about it for the rest of her life: frustrated and irritable and although she was a loving mother it was very apparent that she resented the fact she was only allowed to be a mother when she was capable of so much more.

I didn't want this for me (which is why although I had to work I would have done even if I hadn't) and I sure as hell wouldn't want it for my daughter. So the argument that a marginal improvement in cortisol levels in infants is any meaningful trade off for the sacrifice of millions of women's ability to find financial independence and fulfilment makes me raise an eyebrow.

Of course if it was financially possible for women (or men) by default to have two years maternity that would be optimal. We can debate the reasons why it isn't currently possible now (and I can see pros and cons). But it isn't. And I'm not convinced that the possibility that childcare could be mildly suboptimal to being at home for an additional year is worth the serious financial, emotional and mental damage that would be done to millions of women of derailing their careers.

There were nurseries in the bloody 2 nd world war that babies went to while parents did war work. My own dad was one of those babies. Hardly new.

My brother was at nursery in the 70s/ 80s on full day as was my mums best friend s kids ( she was a single parent)

Not that new a phenomenon

https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/content/news/bbc-investigation-into-safety-of-nurseries-claims-children-are-in-danger-as-settings-able-to-manipulate-ofsted-inspections/

bbc documentary about nurseries

Easy for someone who can afford private healthcare and private schools to post again and again about not using nurseries. Check your privilege.

Yes, I said it started around the 2 world war. That is recent in the scale of things.