AIBU to think that once you have paid your childcare, its not really worth working.? Is it that you just don`t want to look after your own kid. prefering to stick them in daycare as soon as the shine wears off, it really bugs me!

[discusturd]

Some go from 7-6 and never see there parents, I know I will get slated but in the nursery I work some kids hardly know who their parents are.

TittyB

The variables that come into play on examing children's lifestyles are so huge and complex, it is nearly impossible to nail one reason (i.e.FT nursery) on subsequent behaviour.

Common sense says that we evolved in a hunter gatherer setting for millions of years where children were raised by the 'tribe' and women looked after other womens children all the time.

It has to be the quality of childcare that matters not who is doing it. I wonder if these surveys consider the children being plonked in front of the tv, or left to their own devices while mum does housework (er true for many of us!) compared to fun and stimulation of chilcrers paid to focus their attention on their charges.

Thats why these surveys just CANNOT take in all the variables and circumstances.

or to summarise if that was too boring.....

a good nanny on nursery is better than a bad parent at home.

Though considering OPs ability to critically think, I wonder if I would want her near my kids at all!!!!!

TeacherSaysSo you are right there are a number of variables but there are a huge number of longitudinal studies involving 1000s of children and settings across the whole spectrum and the common factors identified are

The qualifications of staff
The adult child ratio
The number of hours a day spent in day care
Staff turn over

Those that compare different types of child care recognise that "home based" child care (nannies/childminders) are usually more socially and emotionally competent.

I reviewed the subject as part of my MA studies as a result of my own experience as a SENCO.

I am writing this as a working mother so have no cause to promote.

And plenty of parents are not good with children 24.7. I have never wanted to be with mine all day. It's too strenuous and dull and it doesn't suit me nor many women and men. A few hours a day is great, long enough to cuddle, talk, bond, breastfeed, if you're doing that, chat, but allowing yourself time to work and do other things.

I certainly found when I was 21 and just married over a year and commuting into the city 24 years ago leaving the 2 week year old and expressing milk hard but she then got the chance at 2 weeks to bond with the daily nanny who stayed 10 years and to ensure no sexist patterns were established at home as her father was often home first as much as I was.

When the 5 children ask me whom I love best (silly question, genuinely love them the same) I say love isn't something you have in limited quantities and share out. It's the same with babies. A baby can love and bond with a father, mother and nanny (or granny or in our case 3 much older siblings) just as my father with his dementia bonded to those who were caring for him changing his pads etc day in day out.

You give them a gift by allowing them to bond with more than one person. You benefit them by allowing them to see mother isn't God but just someone who might often be wrong and frequently does not know best.

But even so I like babies at home with care at home. I think that's a lovely dynamic if it can be achieved and worth the price paid and it's cheaper any way if you have a whole load of children as we did.

mrz: "Those that compare different types of child care recognise that "home based" child care (nannies/childminders) are usually more socially and emotionally competent."

Assuming your sweeping statement has sound basis (although I question whether a statistician who has thoroughly researched and correctly interpreted the data would dare to generalise to this degree), the operative words are 'usually more'.

Those 4 factors you quote are meaningless when applied to a specific nursery and a specific child.

So what if 1,000s of nursery children are less socially and emotionally competent (smirk) if I feel my dcs are developing normally. Cognitively, I believe research shows they might even have the edge! But I don't hang my hat on any research whether or not it justifies my life choices.

Research is fine for government policy. It is less helpful for individual situations.

blueshoes I could attempt to add all 10000 words of my thesis but doubt you would be bothered to read it as you obviously don't care.
Unfortunately in my job I would be incompetent if I didn't care and said "so what?" and didn't try to pick up the pieces when faced with the consequences.

mrz, the ability to summarise 10,000 words in one sentence is enough to impress me. I don't know what SEN you are involved in, the age of the children, in what context you are advising on nursery care v. home based care and what pieces of nursery children you are picking up.

I don't doubt that you care, just as I care for my children and make decisions based on real life factors.

The quality of care offered in different types of non-maternal child care was compared and factors associated with higher quality were identified.
Observed quality was lowest in nurseries, except that at eighteen months they offered more learning activities. There were few differences in the observed quality of care by child minders, grandparents and nannies, although grandparents had somewhat lower safety and health scores and offered children fewer activities.
Cost was largely unrelated to quality of care Observed ratios of children to adults had a significant impact on quality of nursery care; the more infants each adult had to care for the lower the quality of the care she gave them. Mothers' overall satisfaction with their child's care was positively associated with its quality for home-based care but not for nursery settings.

Blueshoes I am involved in a whole spectrum of SEN with children in the 3-11 age range with my specialism being in the Early Years Foundation Stage. I care very much for the children and parents that I work with and can assure it deeply affects me when parents cry because they don't know how to deal with their child's social and emotional problems.

discuturd
am hiding this thread because:

it's guff

and

you need to go and learn to spell properly before you're left in charge of children

How mrz would I be able to show you I care?

Do I have to take my child out of nursery because of observations of groups of children in nursery v. homebased care? I would like to experiment on my dcs. Let's put one in nursery and one with my mother and see how each turn out 18 years down the road. At least I know we are controlling for social class, so that is one variable eliminated. Another 1,000 to go.

Maybe just don't (smirk)

mrz, thanks for the clarification.

Are these social and emotional problems only observed in children in nursery or do they cut across the whole spectrum of childcare arrangements?

The research indicates continuity of care is an important factor so a child who spends their time with the same nanny or the same childminder is significantly less likely to exhibit difficulties than a child who has had frequent changes of carer or as is in case in day nurseries a series of carers (part time /shift workers/high turn over of staff) also the ratio of adults to children and qualifications of staff and how many hours children spend there. My own daughter attended a nursery from the age of 11 months for 12 hours a week and I don't feel it did her any harm but there are nurseries now offering 24hour care 7 days a week and there are children who are dropped off half asleep on a morning and collected half asleep on a night. I am not suggesting anyone posting on this thread would do this but people do.

As Xenia says a home based nanny would probably offer the best compromise for working mothers but how many of us could realistically afford this option?

I agree, blueshoes, you can take the body of research into account, but at the end of the day we are all making decisions within the context of real life. It would be possible to read the body of research applicable to virtually every situation we find ourselves in before making a decision, but it would probably make us very boring people!! There's probably research which indicates, for example, the optimum age gap between children in terms of their development - but how many of us read it and act on it?! We don't - we just get on with living, using our common sense, intuition, as well as knowledge gleaned from a range of sources. Oh and of course life throws all the other unexpected things into the pot too - eg unplanned pregnancies, twins, reduncancies, economic recession..... so of course everyone gets on with life responding to the circumstances.
TBH I have yet to come across anyone on MN or in real life who uses nursery care for in excess of 50 hours a week for a little baby. I used a fabulous nursery part time, as did many of my friends, in fact I believe there were hardly any children there full time (and these were older children anyway). It's madness that this ever became a WOHM versus SAHM debate at all! The OP is clearly bonkers. Yes, many of us parents have gorgeous children who are confident and well adjusted. And we fit in exciting work lives too. Is it really that big a big deal? Sounds just like real life to me!

mrz, what you said is consistent with research I have generally read about before. But my question is not about research and extrapolations from that research.

My question is about the socially and emotionally disturbed children that you see in your role as SENCO. Do they all attend nursery or do they come from various childcare backgrounds?

Of the children I have had to refer for support in this area all have a background of attending day nurseries from an early age 8am - 6pm.
I would add this isn't a large number of children which is why I looked at outside research to see if this was a local problem (involving one or two local nurseries) but this doesn't appear to be case.

findtheriver the research indicates children who attend for 35 hours a week not 50 hours may experience problems.

Find - your last paragraph was exactly the point I was making yesterday. I agree with 90% of it until you made the point of saying you fitted in a working life too - miss out the working and I am with you all the way. For the purposes of this debates - if your children are happy and confident, does it matter how you spend your time and surely work isn't the be all and end all of your life? Plenty of other things can make it interesting and fulfilling too.

I think we are both saying - apologies if I presume too much - that extremes to exist (permanent SAHM, WOHM who works from when the baby is 2 weeks old and full time) they do not reflect the experience of the majority of the families.

There is a point at which any choice becomes a problem, e.g. SAHM whose children never mix or go to pre-school even at the ages or 3 or 4 and live in social isolation or WOHM whose children spend 50 hours a week at mediocre nursery. The difficulty is finding that point which must surely vary from child to child (probably even within the same family) and that is where you get varied results from the research.

Ignore the research in so far as it dictates a particular choice to you, use it for information purposes only and then do what is the best for your child in your opinion. Its the only way.

blueshoes I guess that is the point. If you took all those disturbed children and looked at their lives in detail, would you find other factors which contributed to their state which outweighed any impact of nursery care. I would bet my teachers salasry on it

Interesting mrz.

Is there any particular reason why you are not seeing children looked after by SAHMs, grandparents, CMs or nannies. Or are such children are never emotionally or socially disturbed?

mrz as a secondary school teacher the majority of emotionally disturbed kids we refer to SENCO are:

1. boys
2. parents are divorcing/ have a crappy home life.

Unless only mothers with boys are leaving them in f/t childcare, this does not stack up with all the surveys.

How many boys do yopu see? more than 50% I would guess?

TeacherSaysSo actually the young children I am seeing with emotional/social difficulties are in the ratio of 4 girls to 1 boy as I say small numbers. I do have issues of behavioural problems with older boys (which weren't present/apparent when they were younger) which possibly have other causes such as you describe.

I guess the surveys need to show what happens to these children with high stress hormones as they get older. Does it fade? Have any effect? mrz did you come across any similar surveys during your research?

Another question, mrz. How old were these 4 girls and 1 boy?

I know there is a current UK longitudinal study following children from birth which was begun in the late 90s but other studies are usually from the US so I'm not convinced of their value when applied to UK settings.