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?

It literally means ‘if you don’t mind other people bringing up your kids’. What else would you mind or have to feel guilty about? As OP said. Lordy you’re working hard to make sure your guilt is someone else’s fault.

Haha this is the funniest interaction with the professionally sensitive I’ve had on MN. Have you considered the possibility that you’re completely wrong? And flouncing about precisely as I said the guilty do?

That’s lovely. What a good job you’ve done

Ah. You’re just a cross person. Hope things go better for you all.

I’m confident that nursery has played a major role in my son’s social development. He was there about 40 hours a week so hard not to! And we kept him in during Covid too. He is confident to go anywhere and be cared for by anyone and I’m proud of that. I think it’s a really good thing.

I don't feel guilty at all but as pp said, some people will read that and feel like shit because they have no choice but to have their child in nursery.

Providing for your child financially is a big part of raising them and certainly not something that nurseries do.

If it looks like a duck it quacks like a duck. I am not sensitive about it.

Someone else obviously provides financially for her....

I think the phrase ‘someone else raising them’ is needlessly combative. No one raised my kids but me and my husband. We don’t have family here, we don’t have anyone else but we did have them in nursery 30 hours a week or so from 1-school. The other endless, endless hours at 2am and 4am and all the times they were sick or hurt or not asleep for whatever reason. Every morning, weekend, every decision to be made was us. And when my husband was working away a lot it was only me. The nursery looked after them physically of course and they cared about them - but nursery workers and nursery children come and go and we saw plenty of both.

so yes - the nursery had a part as per other families who have grandparents or an auntie or whoever else is in the village of options. But like any other working parents, we raised our own children. So that particular phrase is really troubling and could be quite triggering.

I know I posted on here ages ago, but can't remember what I said.

My kids are excellently behaved teens (better than I was). Articulate and bright. They were in nursery and childminder and asc from 9 months old.

If we're going down the 'other people raise your children in nursery' route, maybe all children should be in nursery from 9 months, so that schools are full of well behaved kids.

Or maybe my kids were well behaved in nursery because of the way we brought them up at home....

Your logic is full of holes. Why do people feel guilty for having their child in nursery at all? People do - most people do, OP thinks people do. So: why? If you have any answer at all…you’re just picking on me because your perception was that I judge you. Because I DON’T judge you, you must be judging yourself. Or you just wouldn’t care what I’d said. And you certainly wouldn’t be dressing it up as some faux defence of people who don’t have any choice about nursery. Why would they have any reason to feel guilty?
Rather than trying to persuade a perfectly innocent person on the internet that they’re doing something they aren’t, wouldn’t it be healthier for you to root out why you feel guilty? Because I guarantee you that you really don’t need to.

There is absolutely no need for anyone to feel guilty about sending their child to nursery. And sending them to nursery doesn’t mean that someone else is raising them.
it really is that simple. Anyone saying otherwise is just plain wrong.

Mine went for 2 afternoons when she was 3 and that was 13 years ago, still feel guilty even now. However I dont think others should feel that way. I think most children enjoy going.

What’s ’needlessly combative’ are all the guilty mums on here ruffling their necks because I used an example of WHY someone might feel guilty at having their children in childcare.
If you’re so convinced I’m wrong, and you’re all not just desperately projecting, find another reason why mums feel guilty at leaving their kids in childcare. Anything at all.

Exactly how I feel about you. Why start arguing with someone on the internet and trying to tell them what they REALLY meant if you’re not sensitive about what they said?

I am a bit on the fence about ‘other people raising them’. If your child spends significantly more daylight hours at nursery than at home, the biggest impact on shaping them is coming from nursery not home?

Okay? 🤷

Why? Two afternoons are very short and it would have been good preparation for when she started school.

She just hated it. She would cry and cry and staff told me they managed to get her to settle after I'd go and then one time I left and forgot to tell them something so I headed back and saw her sat on one of the staffs lap and she was shaking her and telling her to stop crying. She was a very chatty little thing and wouldn't talk for hours after I'd collect her.

Despite the fact that they will only spend a few years at nursery? Not to mention nursery workers come and go as the child moves rooms etc but obviously parents don't.

It would also mean that schools raise children but funnily enough no one seems to say that teachers raise children.

Because society tells mums that they should feel guilty for daring to want a career, it's called ''mum guilt'' for a reason. No one expects dads to feel guilty for wanting a career because mums are always judged far harsher than dads.

No one should feel guilty for having their child in nursery in my eyes.

I don’t think it’s just ‘society’ that makes mums feel guilty about childcare. Although that too. I think there’s something evolved in us to feel that we should be with our children at all times, for obvious evolutionary reasons.
Both those reasons can be safely ignored when you know they’re safe and happy. I struggled with being 1000% sure when they were too small to speak, but it’s like immunisations, a minuscule risk for a gigantic benefit.

Then there’s the guilt caused by ‘not raising’ your child. They’ll get lots of external influences once they start school.
They still spend more time at home. And ‘evolution’ would have had a tribe raising a child, not a mother locked at the hip. The child even gets some distance from mum which is healthy when they’re growing up. It can be less healthy during the teen years when you need a lot of influence to steer them away from trouble, but having money and a career can impress teens just as much. And of course you can have both internal and external influence if you both work and get quality time when you’re together.

OP seems to have got the hang of it. As long as kids know you love them and genuinely want to spend lots of time with them there are many more important things to worry about than some childcare. And if you’re not that maternal, childcare would be actively important to fill in the gaps so you can maintain positivity with your kids. And even the notion that you’re ‘guilty’ proves what a caring, loving parent you are. Win.

I've never felt that I should be with them at all times, even when they were teeny tiny I was happy enough to leave them with DH if we needed something from the shop or whatever and they had sleepovers with Grandparents from a young age too.

Maybe I evolved incorrectly. 😂

You develop the most under 5.

school days are considerably shorter than nursery hours 8-6pm or sometimes longer

Some children will go to wraparound care so the hours would be very similar.

But then at the same time, not all children go to nursery full time and even those that do, it doesn't necessarily mean every day or 8-6.

Mine go every day but 8-6 would be rare because DH and I flex our hours so one of us can almost always pick up early.