Lol I don't even know what this thread has devolved into. I agree that a 4 month old in daycare is way different than 18 month old. I was going beyond that to say that I personally think a 3 year old in daycare is great. But there seem to be people on these forums (maybe the same one for all I know) who think that even a 3 year old should stay home, or at least only go for 3 hours a day or 3 days or week or something, and are eager to shame parents who have chosen to send this child to daycare. A 3 year old - for goodness sake! |
Suggesting daycare is only something people do if they have to because they don't have enough money for a nanny does suggest to me that person thinks daycare is bad for children. And to clarify, people are not discussing a study. They are discussing a blog post that attempts to summarize the research on the impacts of daycare on children's cognitive skills and behavior. In its attempt to present this summary to a general audience, the author omits a lot of the nuance in the research and falls into the trap of claiming that observational studies can reasonably estimate effect sizes. |
Your post wasn't annoying, it was offensive. |
Those aren't mutually exclusive. |
Daycare is the cheapest option. For most people, cost is a central factor in their choice of childcare. I'll go one further and note that more expensive daycares are often a lot nicer than cheaper daycares. I know this because we were on a tight budget for childcare and we couldn't afford infant care at the centers I actually liked. All the places we could afford were questionable, at best. So when I say that daycare, especially for infants, is often a choice made simply because better options are not available, I say that from experience and not because I'm judging anyone who puts kids in daycare. I also know some daycares are better than others and that if you have the money, you can probably find a really high quality daycare that mitigates the negative aspects of daycare. No one in this thread is doing scientific analysis, if you want to combat some of the conclusions being drawn, that's fine, but the argument that the underlying study says nothing or that no conclusions can be drawn is a weird one. It's data, we can talk about it. |
I will admit that I haven't read every post in the thread but I haven't seen a bunch of people arguing that it's wrong to put a 3 year old in group care. It's really common to start preschool at 3 and many people start at 2 -- this just seems like a non-issue. If someone is shaming you for putting a 3 year old in a group care environment, they are a far outlier and you can just not listen to them! They probably think you should homeschool and avoid vaccinations too. I feel passionately about this issue because I had really poor choices for childcare when my DD was born and wound up quitting a job I didn't want to quit to stay home with her because we couldn't afford a nanny and the group care centers I looked at (both daycares and in-home centers) that we could afford were pretty bad and it was very hard to contemplate leaving an infant in them. So I think it's important to talk about the risks of group care for babies because what would be great is if we could find a way to create affordable options for families that don't carry those risks (whether that's more parental leave, better oversight of group care facilities and subsidies to make them financially viable without compromising infant care, or some combination of the above). I think pretending that the average daycare is great for infants, and equal in quality to a SAHP or nanny or nanny share, is borderline irresponsible. |
You're really twisting yourself into a pretzel to avoid saying what you think which is that you think daycare is bad for children. That's fine, you have your reasons. When I said "This is the real problem with these "daycare is terrible for kids" messages. It's only "bad" (less ideal) if the alternative is a mentally healthy, engaged caregiver in a stable home. It makes no sense to create an enormously stressful situation at home just to avoid daycare" - what I meant was it is all relative. We have been lucky to have had a good experience with daycare for our infant. Was it perfect? No. But never once did I feel she was unsafe. I actually felt more stressed out when DD was with my elderly mother. One piece of data not discussed in the blog post is babies are much more likely to be injured at home than at daycare. As with everything YMMV, but daycares are regulated in a way that the typical home is not. And I think it's really dangerous to present daycare as something to be avoided if you can, when in fact it may be the best option for many families. It's certainly better than a baby being cared for by someone who is working full time in another job at the same time. |
Ok, thank you! I never even thought to keep my kid home at 2 or 3 but there are people on DCUM who seem to think sending them to daycare is "bad" (and yes maybe outliers, but I've seen the comments and it wasn't just one). I don't know what kind of 2 or 3 year olds they have but I just don't understand it. |
Irresponsible to whom? We picked center based care at 6M because it was in the same building as my office and I could breastfeed twice a day. That doesn’t mean leaving my daughter with a nanny would have been “irresponsible” because she wouldn’t have been breastfed. Responsible parenting is leaving your children in safe care. Period. Pretending it’s more than that is just desperately seeking validation for your choices at the expense of others. |
Little children require: 1. Stability 2. Competence 3. Love Without all three, brace yourself for challenges down the road. |
It sounds like you just made that up. And what is your point? |
A quote from a study cited in the blog:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2214.2012.01421.x |
It sounds like you made the best decision for you which is all that matters. I can't deny though that having an infant in daycare can be rough. I sent mine to daycare around the same age but COVID started shortly after so I was able to keep him home. I felt terrible the whole time he was there because he took super short naps, got sick a lot and overall didn't seem too happy. |
We had my baby in 2020 and the daycare I set up 8 months prior shut down a month before I went back to work. It ended up being the best thing for our family. We sold a car to afford a nanny, cancelled two vacations, but having her home and re-budgeting our lives around it was a good forced outcome. |
PP here - we didn't get a nanny for a long time, just somehow took care of the baby while working for months. It was great though. I was able to breastfeed for way long than I intended and I loved that we could keep the baby at home with us. Plus we saved a bunch of money. |