Are you offended when someone says they “didnt want someone else to raise my kids”?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Children who spent a lot of time in daycare as babies and toddlers have more behavior problems in school than children who were cared for by a family member or a nanny. It's important for babies to form attachments to their caregivers, which doesn't happen in daycares because of all the other kids around and the staff turnover. I feel bad for people who can't afford to stay home or hire a nanny or have grandma babysit all day, but I keep it to myself.

Our K-1 grade teacher said the kids who never went to daycare or preschool were such a nightmare to adjust to going to school.

They are clingy and insecure and unable to get along with others.

This isn't true at all. Just one of those old wives tales that circulates regulalry. Kind of like everyone knowing twins named Orangello and Lemongello

DP, a current third grade teacher told me this personally. It used to be irrelevant when Kindergarten was more like pre-K, but now the differences are stark especially in more affluent areas where kids who were in school had a ton of enrichment.

Because a lot of these kids are sitting at Grandma's house watching TV all day vs. Super SAHM who is taking her kids to the library and park and meeting up with friends. So don't take it personally DCUM.
Plus I can see where preschool would be important (learning to sit and be quiet, listen to a story and so on) but infant daycare? I can't imagine that having any benefits, especially that would be noticed by Kindergarten age.

[Anonymous]

Young children don’t need “enrichment.” They need a very small number of consistent , invested caregivers who understand the importance of offering more autonomy at each stage. They also need sunlight, good nutrition and to not absorb the stress of a dozen other toddlers all day long. Give me a sahm, grandparent or nanny over mandarin daycare any day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If anyone ever said that to me, I would probably say that I’ve sacrificed many parts of my career to be the parent I want, but I want to maintain a professional career to ensure I can support my family’s financial future. That is the truth, I’m not killing it per say in either category. I’m striking a careful balance between downgrading at work so I can be present for my kids on a daily basis, while also utilizing quality childcare as needed so I can help provide for them today and in the future.

This. I also had a SAHM and then a Dad who got cancer out of nowhere at 36. So I've lived through the stress I worrying Dad might die combined with Dad being unable to work and mom suddenly scrambling to get a job so we didn't lose the house.

So I'm never going to give up my job, I've got good life insurance and good long term disability insurance, as does my husband.

[Anonymous]

No one has said that to me. But I do not surround my self by closed- minded people.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Anyone who doesn’t realize saying this is potentially going to ruffle some feathers has low EQ.

So the choices are you knowingly say things that are going to make some people feel a certain kind of way and you don’t care or you have low EQ. So I’m not offended but then I form an opinion of you probably.

Yep it's this.

EQ shouldn't be a synonym for not being able to express controversial ideas, though.

Why do you need to express controversial ideas in this context? We’re in not HS debate anymore.

In what context? Day to day life? An Internet forum? The topic itself?

[Anonymous]

NP here. I like being at work! My job brings joy to me. I love my kid, but I'm not going to sacrifice myself to the altar of motherhood and re-arrange my life to give DC a little more marginal happiness... DC was born on third base and will do just fine in life, regardless of whether he goes to daycare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nah, I just pity them because I know they must be insecure about their SAHM choices and bored with sitting home with their kids and needing to justify their decisions. Yes, I have less time with my kids because I WOH, but I still raise them.

What if they’re not? What if they truly believe that it’s important to be their kids’ primary caregiver in those early years? What if they’re not at all insecure about being a SAHM?

Then they wouldn't say rude things to other people... It's not complicated.

17 pages in, and this tells me it is that complicated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think after a certain number of hours a day or per week, someone else is absolutely raising your children if you use care, whether it is a nanny, immediate or extended family, daycare, or a child care center.

I also think that some people will use the phrase to signal parental superiority while others may use it to signal despair.

or a tv or a playdate being raised by the TV or raised by a neighbor... or if you kid is just left in their crib, not being raised at all, just abandoned.

What?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Point being that when you work from home and have young kids, you are less efficient at work so something that may take 2 hours can get stretched to 5.

Not if they are napping.

Are you kidding? Kids do not nap all the time. Do you only have one kid? Give it a rest.

I actually used to cuddle with my toddler when she napped. When she was a baby, I napped when she napped.

Kids are mostly at school during their childhood and when they aren't they nap... a lot.

No I didn't nap during the day do you have narcolepsy?

I don't work when the kids are awake. I work when they are asleep or I engage with them, or they are at school or preschool or playdates.

Yes I have more than 1 kid but I don't have 3 under 5 that would make it hard.

No one with a reasonably demanding full time job is providing full time childcare and parenting young children at the same time. You can’t do both at the same time well. Remember? This was proven again and again to many of us during the pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Point being that when you work from home and have young kids, you are less efficient at work so something that may take 2 hours can get stretched to 5.

Not if they are napping.

Are you kidding? Kids do not nap all the time. Do you only have one kid? Give it a rest.

I actually used to cuddle with my toddler when she napped. When she was a baby, I napped when she napped.

Kids are mostly at school during their childhood and when they aren't they nap... a lot.

No I didn't nap during the day do you have narcolepsy?

I don't work when the kids are awake. I work when they are asleep or I engage with them, or they are at school or preschool or playdates.

Yes I have more than 1 kid but I don't have 3 under 5 that would make it hard.

No one with a reasonably demanding full time job is providing full time childcare and parenting young children at the same time. You can’t do both at the same time well. Remember? This was proven again and again to many of us during the pandemic.

I meant is working full time and providing full-time childcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I get it, because it’s true, even if people don’t want to admit that’s what’s happening when children are in full-time daycare. But in polite society we avoid saying things that might hurt someone’s feelings, regardless of whether it’s truthful or not.

But it’s not truthful. My kids went to daycare, and, sure, their daycare teachers, who were all wonderful, provided care during the workday. But my spouse and I made the decisions on how to parent, which included finding great caregivers.

If your children go to daycare for 10-11 (7-6 or 7:30-5:30) hours a day for the first 4-5 years of life and sleep 10-12 hours a night then you are not spending 4-5 hours with them each day 70% of the week. How is this controversial? You are outsourcing a lot of parenting duties to other caregivers. Someone saying that they don’t want to do that is not wrong. And I’m saying this as a full time working parent.

I don’t believe you’re a working parent. My toddler is at preschool 9-4. During which she sleeps 2 hours. So 5 waking hours. She has a parent with her 7-9 and 4-7:30. So 5.5 waking hours. Plus weekends. Plus they close every single federal holiday, spring break, summer break, Christmas break, teacher workdays, and add in illnesses. I’d be shocked if she ever actually goes more than 25-30 hours/week and this is pretty standard for most dual working parent households I know. Plenty of us have 2 spouses with lots of flexibility and WAH. I work 7-3:30 and DH works 9-5:30 (sometimes earlier and he catches up at night if I need help getting a kid to an after school activity).

Also while our kids are at preschool/school I can squeeze in laundry, gym, grocery shopping etc. on breaks so we can prioritize family time during the evenings/weekends.

I really don’t care whether someone chooses to work or not, but I think it’s provincial if you envision most kids of working parents being in daycare for 10-11 hours, 5 days a week. This is not the norm for a single dual income household I know. I’ve thrown my kids birthday parties in the middle of a weekday off school and there’s tons of working parents able to shuttle their kids to laser tag at 2 pm on a Wednesday. Lots of moms and dads hanging out at the playground when school gets let out.

Being a working parent in 2024 means you can earn 6 figures, attend your kid’s school events, chaperone the field trips, and coach 5 pm soccer. Many of the DCUM working parents fall into this category.

First off, I don’t believe you are full time working parent because if your child is in preschool 7 hours a day and you have any sort of commute and do a bunch of errands and work out you during that period you are working a much shorter workday than a full time employee. You’re working part-time.

I’ve only worked in tech and finance, but in those industries it’s really common for people who say they work full time to work a full work day. That’s because you generally get fired if you’re not able to do your work in a timely manner on a regular basis, and anyone who only has 3-4 hours of work each day is not someone who is likely to advance or remain employed in the long term. That generally means that people who I work with either have nannies or decline laser tag invites in the middle of the day when their children are in preschool.

I have three children and I make $365K. I have a very flexible job that allows me to be present for my children a lot and allows me to minimize the number of hours that I’m not with my kids during the day, which is great because even though my husband earns significantly more and has significantly greater upside with comp, he has a far less flexible schedule. And we have an amazing nanny.

Working full time is a trade off. I’m very comfortable with that trade off because we have an amazing nanny and because I really love my work and don’t want to be a stay at home parent. However, I understood and understand the trade offs and I’m not offended when someone tells me that they also understood the trade offs particular to their situation and decided to stay home. Most working parents do not coach soccer at 5 if they have a demanding job. Most working parents use daycare for 10 hours a day (most working parents have commutes and work a standard work day of 8-9 hours so using anything less than 10 hours of childcare would be really hard). Life is full of trade offs: no one can have it all. Deal with it instead of trying to police what people say to you or what people should hypothetically say to you about something you already know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is not an acceptable turn of phrase.

But I am not offended because it shows the low character of the speaker. Just as if they had said they work FT because “I wanted to use my brain”

I mean, its rude. But there's also an element of truth to it.

I know that's a taboo opinion (albeit a more popular opinion that most want to admit).

Kids are meant to be with their parents during those formative years. Not outsourced.

I know one women who brags how she paid people to potty train her kids. WTF did she even have kids for

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not an acceptable turn of phrase.

But I am not offended because it shows the low character of the speaker. Just as if they had said they work FT because “I wanted to use my brain”

I mean, its rude. But there's also an element of truth to it.

I know that's a taboo opinion (albeit a more popular opinion that most want to admit).

Kids are meant to be with their parents during those formative years. Not outsourced.

I know one women who brags how she paid people to potty train her kids. WTF did she even have kids for

Let me start by saying that I pottied trained both my kids myself, but c'mon.. people aren't having kids just so that they can potty train their kids. I've also been a sahm, wfh mom, work PT, wohm.. so, I've done pretty much all of it.

There are some aspects of parenting I don't enjoy, and some where I'm perfectly fine seeking help from others to help me with, like childcare. I taught my kids to read, to walk, songs, played games with them.. but others did, too. I don't see what's wrong with that. Their circle of caregivers was wider than just me. I didn't live near my family so I relied on daycare and a nanny, who btw, absolutely adored my kids and treated them like her own (better, I think because her one child was grown).

My kids are teens (college/HS), and they're doing fine.

This is the age old daycare vs sahm argument that's very tiresome.

If someone said this to me, I would say, "I was happy to have help caring for my kids because I needed a break by going to work." It's not like the daycare provider or nanny were horrible people. We do vet people, you know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mom of two teens here with two observations:

1) my kids friends are all really great, smart, well mannered, kind kids. I couldn’t tell you which ones had SAHMs and which ones had WOHMs if I didn’t know their parents (I know many but not all and it’s a mix of both working and non working parents - they all raised awesome kids).


2) this concept of raising your own children is a relatively new phenomenon. Ever heard of the term “it takes a village”? I also have seen some studies that say that working parents now spend significantly more time with their children than stay at home moms did 20-30 years ago. Probably because there isn’t really a village anymore.

Interesting how everyone is just passing by and ignoring this post. As a mom of older ES kids, I agree - all of my children's friends are wonderful kids. Some of them have SAHMs, some of them have two working parents. They're all great kids. If it makes you ladies feel better to put down working moms and tell us we're ruining our children forever, then fine, go ahead, but my kids have turned out great so far, even with a mom who sent them to daycare.

I agree that there are great kids of working parents and great kids of stay at home parents. But the topic isn't about outcomes/how the kids turn out in the end as a result of who raises them. The topic is about who IS actually raising the kids and, although I'd never say this to anyone and think it's totally rude to do so, you can't really argue that parents who both work and whose kids either go to daycare or have a nanny or a grandparent or whoever take care of them are being 100% raised by their parents. They hardly even see their parents. They spend most of their time w/ someone other than their parents. It's just not possible that their parents are the main ones raising them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not an acceptable turn of phrase.

But I am not offended because it shows the low character of the speaker. Just as if they had said they work FT because “I wanted to use my brain”

I mean, its rude. But there's also an element of truth to it.

I know that's a taboo opinion (albeit a more popular opinion that most want to admit).

Kids are meant to be with their parents during those formative years. Not outsourced.

I know one women who brags how she paid people to potty train her kids. WTF did she even have kids for

I mean I was a SAHM and potty trained my own kid and would have happily outsourced it. Actually that was the single worst part of being a SAHM to a baby and toddler-- potty training.

No one has kids because they can't wait to teach them to sh** in a toilet.

My ideal world would be working part time (4 hours a day) in a fulfilling and rewarding creative job (novelist, portrait artist) while the world's most brilliant nanny with whom I have a wonderful collaborative relationship takes care of my kids. And then I get to spend lots of time hanging out with them, reading to them, going to the park, and teaching them to cook and bake and garden. But also the nanny is on call so I can also exercise or meet a friend for coffee or whatever whenever I want. Also DH has a flexible 6 hour a day job that he also finds fulfilling but comes home at 4 every day to take the kids to the playground or whatever he wants to do.

In this scenario my kids spend all day with living and attentive care givers exploring the world and being safe and beloved. And a lot of that time us with me (not just whatever we can squeeze in before and after an 8 hour workday). But also I have plenty of time away from them to pursue my own interests and take care of myself. And DH has the same. Also we have enough money to make all this work without sacrificing college savings or retirement plans and not having to scrimp and save.

Since obviously I can't have this I make choices that get me as close to it as possible. I on my had one kid to ease the burden. I took off 18 months to stay home with my baby and then went back part time because I couldn't afford not to work at all. My job is not horrible but not super rewarding and can be stressful. I have a lot of flexibility and get to parent a lot. DH has a little flexibility and tries to make the most of it. We don't have enough money to outsource much and have always had to get by with the bare minimum of child care. Life is far from perfect but it's not bad. I "have it all" in the sense that I have a little-to-medium amount of everything I want, though also a medium amount of crap I would prefer not to have.

Anyway, I potty trained my own kid and it honestly sucked and I would have happily let imaginary nanny do it instead!