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

[Anonymous]

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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 actually did the math with my neighbor who was a SAHM and I did spend more 1-1 time with my kids than she did.

1st. My H's time counted and I know many of SAHP's who are the 1st to tell you that their H does nothing, works late, travels a lot.
2nd: She did not take into account napping, time in front of TV, time they were in the basement playing and she was futzing around.

I don't think a SAHP should be connected at the hip and I think that independent time is valuable but the reality is she was not spending more 1-1 time with her child than I was.

I think you are mistaken. There's just simply not a chance that you spend more 1-1 time with kids than a SAHP unless the SAHP is outsourcing a ton of childcare. Your kids never play in the basement or nap or watch TV when you're with them? And how much time during the day are the SAHP neighbor's kids doing that? 2 hrs out of a 8+ hour work day...your math isn't mathing.

And there’s the rub. I think because she is home so much she doesn’t even think about doing things with her kids.

I think because I’m not home all day as soon as I get home I want to get outside I take them to the park, Or we go for a hike, We hit a museum, Or walk around the zoo.

in fact when I get home from work the neighbor whose H was sick and she asked me to watch her kids, I immediately pick them up and take them with me to do these things.

The woman who is complaining that she wasn’t chosen to be the caregiver is like sure just send them to my house. They can watch TV or play in the yard while I make dinner or entertain my child in the basement.

Assuming this is all true, your neighbor is n=1. Your neighbor is not representative of the vast majority of SAHP. Nor does your post, however unnecessarily involved, get at the original question of whether it was ok for someone to say they didn’t want their kids raised by strangers.

You go hiking, biking, your kids tube on the lake behind your house every afternoon at 2 pm while you drive the boat before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discuss El Greco for six hours. We get it. You’re amazing! Tahoe by day, NYC by afternoon. You never go to Costco. You work 190 hours per week at work and get out by 3 pm to pick up your kid from daycare and play laser tag before you coach soccer and you make $280K!

Pretty much except I work 40 hours and my H the same.

It can work if you want it to.

But if you want to SAH and have a absent h and that works for you because he needs to work 190 hours a week to pick up your slack go for it just stop being so defensive about how other families have figured out how to work and be there for their kids.

DP here. Except the problem with your argument is that lots of families with a SAHM have a Dad who is not absent at all, works a 35 hour week and has tons of flexibility to be at events, coach teams, etc. I know many families like this, including ours.

Glad they figured it out too. They tend to be absent from these discussions because there’s a lot of … its impossible to work my H is big law or surgeon and I could only find hubs that had me out of the house from 6-6.

But I agree the majority of families working or with a SAHP don’t have these crazy situations where one or the other parent isn’t home most of the time.

The idea kids are in daycare 8 or 10 or 12 hours are just horror stories made up to justify not working. Most kids have about 3-4 waking hours in other people’s care until they go to school then it’s about 7 hours whether you work or not, unless you homeschool …Except teen athletes they are gone all day.

So many families have figured it out but I guess someone has to marry surgeons and big law partners. Actually they usually have a few wives throughout their life.

Lady, you’re officially batsh!t crazy. Or a troll. Or both.

Most working people have a schedule that vaguely falls around 9-5:30 plus morning and evening commute. How can you live in this area and apparently not know a single Fed, let alone dual Fed couples?

Feds can work a 6-2:30 schedule while the other parent works 9:30-6.

That means 1 parent does am and the other does afternoons.

Not all feds can do this. If you work with a lot of west coast or Pacific island folks in a national program, you can't get off at 2:30 (my situation). Plenty of offices have core hours starting before 9 and ending after 3. Some jobs require specific shifts (e.g. any law enforcement or customer facing job).

Shift work is perfect. No care or very little care needed.

I didn’t say everyone can do that but many feds do. The vast majority of feds and contractors who work at fed agencies. Also many time IT staff work shortened day and do upgrades after hours.

People who are doing research don’t need to read and write 9-5.

I agree don’t work for DOD.

Our core hours are 10-2.

If this is accurate, you’ll never get promoted or mange anyone. Working four hours a day is ripping off taxpayers and it’s lazy. I’m a fed and there’s no way this would fly at my agency or with me if I was your manager. Whatever you think you’re proving here about childcare you’re not. You’re just making feds look like they take advantage of WFH.

They never said the ONLY worked 10-2, but that those were their core hours. It's so hard to argue with stupid.

[Anonymous]

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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”

But working parents say this all the time to SAHP. "I couldn't do NOTHING." "I needed to use my brain." etc.

I've never heard this comment in real life.

I've heard it many times. Fully 70% of the new moms group I was in said some version of this in our meetings -- "I'm so bored -- I can't wait to go back to work" or "I feel like I'm getting stupid spending all my time with a baby." It's a very very common sentiment among women who have established careers before having kids and especially highly educated women.

I think people are expressing their genuine feelings when they say this stuff but I remember silently thinking how it didn't resonate with me at all and I loved being on maternity leave and had essentially zero interest in going back to work. I didn't miss my office AT ALL and I felt plenty intellectually stimulated at home (I found learning about child development fascinating and also had more time and bandwidth to read more widely than I had when working). I still wound up going back to work but was miserable and quit my job to stay home for the next two years because it's what I wanted to do.

When I hear people say things like "I couldn't do NOTHING" or "I need to use my brain" I simply know they are wrong. That's it. I know it to be a a false assumption about what it is to stay home with kids. Or sometimes I think they would do it wrong -- there is a way of being a sahm that involves being brainless and lazy but there's also a way of going to work like that isn't there. You get out of it what you put into it.

But I also think when people say stuff like this they are likely trying to quiet doubts they might have within themselves about their own choices. It's not about me even if they are trying to turn me into some kind of foil.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Except every parent with kids in school or preschool do this and you are saying only the SAH person is raising their Child, even though the working parent sees the child just as much.

This thread is largely about kids who are not yet school age.

Though also lots of preschools are not full time so are not meant to be full time childcare -- my child attended a half day preschool starting at age 2.5 which was great and helped her get ready for kindergarten. It was 3 hours a day.

And even once you have school age kids... my kid is off today and tomorrow and monday. He's been sick 4 days in the last month due to RSV and a bad cold going around his school. 10 weeks off in summer. Winter break (2 weeks) and spring break (1 week). Random PD days throughout the year. And the kicker -- school ends at 2:30pm.

Even once kids are in school SAHP see their kids a lot more than full time working parents. And I say that as a working parent. You can't deny facts.

This is why many people can't just get a job once their child is school age. It's cheaper and less stress to just have one parent on-call for all the p.i.t.a. kid related issues, especially if the other parent is a high earner. If we both worked, we have literally nobody to cover all the days when kids aren't in school and need care at home. I don't care who looks down on it. Half the families at my school have a SAHP because they have the same problem. Preschool is so few hours during the week we skipped it for all the children and just taught them to read and write and do math at home before they started K, also saved a lot of money there.

Before I had kids and was working, I didn't really feel I was doing anything all that important. So many of these jobs that people think are high status will be replaced by automation and AI. Might as well raise your kids and let the status obsessed folks do their thing.

And yet tons of working parents have figured out how to work and be able to care for their kids on sick days, etc. Sorry you couldn't, but that doesn't mean others can't.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Does anyone on here think it’s weird this thread has devolved into people saying they are working parents who never use daycare? Like, are all these people not validating that not have g strangers raise your children is better? Have we come full circle. Is the answer that everyone is actually with their child from birth to five and no one uses childcare?

Its weird that 1 person found a way to work a schedule with their spouse so they needed little to no daycare and many people are upset about it.

I work in finance and no one does this. You’re trying to say working parents never use a nanny or childcare and that’s incorrect. You’re posting a ton about your weird low rent schedule that perfectly illustrates that you’re an underachiever and you want everyone to clap for you. This thread is not about your weird core hours.

DP. I actually did this when I worked in finance! DH and I staggered schedules and I did my IC work at night. We had a nanny but she was only with DD for ~3 waking hours (11-1 and 3-4).

You’ve clearly never had a nanny. No nanny would work a schedule of 11-1 and then 3-4. You think a nanny would watch a kid from 11-1 then go home for two hours then come back for one hour. Obviously you’re a fake because no financial initiation would let you work an abridged day to be home with your kid at 1 (hahaha) but no nanny would take a crazy schedule like that either. You’re a pathetic liar.

And this nap schedule is for an infant. What about kids who are no longer napping? My kids dropped their naps before age 3. That is there one afternoon nap.

DP but my kids napped for at least 2 hours until they were maybe 4.5, and 1-3 was that nap time.

Also, you have comprehension issues because obviously the nanny wasn't going home between 1 and 3. The point was that no one was spending quality time with the child during those two hours because it was sleeping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is a huge difference to the kids though to have a more relaxed morning and to be able to come home and rest after school instead of staying in aftercare.

I stopped working when I had my kids, went back part-time when they started school and now that they are in high school I am increasing my hours close to full-time. I have always worked from home and have an intellectually stimulating job.

I realize that I am very lucky and not everyone has the same options as I do. I have no judgment, only sympathy, for those who would prefer to stay home with kids but have to work due to financial reasons.

I will never regret staying home with the kids when they were young. I truly believe that having one lovung and engaged parent stay home is the very best for the children. Those were also some of the best years of my life and I am forever grateful that I had the opportunity.

My husband and I both work full-time and our kids have never done aftercare, they come home right after school because one or both of us is home. Good for you and your set up, but stop acting like either kids who do aftercare are going to end up in group homes or that many working parents don't have their kids in aftercare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s rude. I have been both a SAHM and now work from an office four days a week, and I have always been neutral as to how anyone else chooses to conduct their lives and structure their families.

I got a little offended when a colleague said “when my daughter was born we decided my wife would stay home, and we were able to do that.” In response, I clarified that we *could* have me stay at home but that I *choose* to work. The implication of his statement was that he was financially able to support his family himself; I wanted to make it clear that my husband also earns enough to support our family, as well (and I believe makes more than this person). I found that grating.

I would have said that it's sad his wife doesn't make enough to financially support the family herself.

[Anonymous]

My mom went back to work full time when I was less than two months old. My dad also worked full time. I had a combinations of nannies and then preschool before starting elementary school. It would never occur to me to say that I was raised by anyone besides my parents.

[Anonymous]

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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”

But working parents say this all the time to SAHP. "I couldn't do NOTHING." "I needed to use my brain." etc.

I've never heard this comment in real life.

I've heard it many times. Fully 70% of the new moms group I was in said some version of this in our meetings -- "I'm so bored -- I can't wait to go back to work" or "I feel like I'm getting stupid spending all my time with a baby." It's a very very common sentiment among women who have established careers before having kids and especially highly educated women.

I think people are expressing their genuine feelings when they say this stuff but I remember silently thinking how it didn't resonate with me at all and I loved being on maternity leave and had essentially zero interest in going back to work. I didn't miss my office AT ALL and I felt plenty intellectually stimulated at home (I found learning about child development fascinating and also had more time and bandwidth to read more widely than I had when working). I still wound up going back to work but was miserable and quit my job to stay home for the next two years because it's what I wanted to do.

When I hear people say things like "I couldn't do NOTHING" or "I need to use my brain" I simply know they are wrong. That's it. I know it to be a a false assumption about what it is to stay home with kids. Or sometimes I think they would do it wrong -- there is a way of being a sahm that involves being brainless and lazy but there's also a way of going to work like that isn't there. You get out of it what you put into it.

But I also think when people say stuff like this they are likely trying to quiet doubts they might have within themselves about their own choices. It's not about me even if they are trying to turn me into some kind of foil.

eh.. that's you. I'm not interested in studying child development while being a sahm.

My brain did atrophy as a sahm. Reading about something is not the same thing as using critical thinking skills at work.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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”

But working parents say this all the time to SAHP. "I couldn't do NOTHING." "I needed to use my brain." etc.

I've never heard this comment in real life.

I've heard it many times. Fully 70% of the new moms group I was in said some version of this in our meetings -- "I'm so bored -- I can't wait to go back to work" or "I feel like I'm getting stupid spending all my time with a baby." It's a very very common sentiment among women who have established careers before having kids and especially highly educated women.

I think people are expressing their genuine feelings when they say this stuff but I remember silently thinking how it didn't resonate with me at all and I loved being on maternity leave and had essentially zero interest in going back to work. I didn't miss my office AT ALL and I felt plenty intellectually stimulated at home (I found learning about child development fascinating and also had more time and bandwidth to read more widely than I had when working). I still wound up going back to work but was miserable and quit my job to stay home for the next two years because it's what I wanted to do.

When I hear people say things like "I couldn't do NOTHING" or "I need to use my brain" I simply know they are wrong. That's it. I know it to be a a false assumption about what it is to stay home with kids. Or sometimes I think they would do it wrong -- there is a way of being a sahm that involves being brainless and lazy but there's also a way of going to work like that isn't there. You get out of it what you put into it.

But I also think when people say stuff like this they are likely trying to quiet doubts they might have within themselves about their own choices. It's not about me even if they are trying to turn me into some kind of foil.

You're making pretty ridiculous assumptions. FWIW I don't think it's true that you're not "using your brain" or doing nothing as a SAHM, but for many people (myself included) there simply is not a way to recreate the intellectual challenge that you get from working. It's just different and they're not doing anything wrong.

[Anonymous]

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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 actually did the math with my neighbor who was a SAHM and I did spend more 1-1 time with my kids than she did.

1st. My H's time counted and I know many of SAHP's who are the 1st to tell you that their H does nothing, works late, travels a lot.
2nd: She did not take into account napping, time in front of TV, time they were in the basement playing and she was futzing around.

I don't think a SAHP should be connected at the hip and I think that independent time is valuable but the reality is she was not spending more 1-1 time with her child than I was.

I think you are mistaken. There's just simply not a chance that you spend more 1-1 time with kids than a SAHP unless the SAHP is outsourcing a ton of childcare. Your kids never play in the basement or nap or watch TV when you're with them? And how much time during the day are the SAHP neighbor's kids doing that? 2 hrs out of a 8+ hour work day...your math isn't mathing.

And there’s the rub. I think because she is home so much she doesn’t even think about doing things with her kids.

I think because I’m not home all day as soon as I get home I want to get outside I take them to the park, Or we go for a hike, We hit a museum, Or walk around the zoo.

in fact when I get home from work the neighbor whose H was sick and she asked me to watch her kids, I immediately pick them up and take them with me to do these things.

The woman who is complaining that she wasn’t chosen to be the caregiver is like sure just send them to my house. They can watch TV or play in the yard while I make dinner or entertain my child in the basement.

Assuming this is all true, your neighbor is n=1. Your neighbor is not representative of the vast majority of SAHP. Nor does your post, however unnecessarily involved, get at the original question of whether it was ok for someone to say they didn’t want their kids raised by strangers.

You go hiking, biking, your kids tube on the lake behind your house every afternoon at 2 pm while you drive the boat before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and discuss El Greco for six hours. We get it. You’re amazing! Tahoe by day, NYC by afternoon. You never go to Costco. You work 190 hours per week at work and get out by 3 pm to pick up your kid from daycare and play laser tag before you coach soccer and you make $280K!

Pretty much except I work 40 hours and my H the same.

It can work if you want it to.

But if you want to SAH and have a absent h and that works for you because he needs to work 190 hours a week to pick up your slack go for it just stop being so defensive about how other families have figured out how to work and be there for their kids.

DP here. Except the problem with your argument is that lots of families with a SAHM have a Dad who is not absent at all, works a 35 hour week and has tons of flexibility to be at events, coach teams, etc. I know many families like this, including ours.

Glad they figured it out too. They tend to be absent from these discussions because there’s a lot of … its impossible to work my H is big law or surgeon and I could only find hubs that had me out of the house from 6-6.

But I agree the majority of families working or with a SAHP don’t have these crazy situations where one or the other parent isn’t home most of the time.

The idea kids are in daycare 8 or 10 or 12 hours are just horror stories made up to justify not working. Most kids have about 3-4 waking hours in other people’s care until they go to school then it’s about 7 hours whether you work or not, unless you homeschool …Except teen athletes they are gone all day.

So many families have figured it out but I guess someone has to marry surgeons and big law partners. Actually they usually have a few wives throughout their life.

Lady, you’re officially batsh!t crazy. Or a troll. Or both.

Most working people have a schedule that vaguely falls around 9-5:30 plus morning and evening commute. How can you live in this area and apparently not know a single Fed, let alone dual Fed couples?

Feds can work a 6-2:30 schedule while the other parent works 9:30-6.

That means 1 parent does am and the other does afternoons.

Not all feds can do this. If you work with a lot of west coast or Pacific island folks in a national program, you can't get off at 2:30 (my situation). Plenty of offices have core hours starting before 9 and ending after 3. Some jobs require specific shifts (e.g. any law enforcement or customer facing job).

Shift work is perfect. No care or very little care needed.

I didn’t say everyone can do that but many feds do. The vast majority of feds and contractors who work at fed agencies. Also many time IT staff work shortened day and do upgrades after hours.

People who are doing research don’t need to read and write 9-5.

I agree don’t work for DOD.

Our core hours are 10-2.

If this is accurate, you’ll never get promoted or mange anyone. Working four hours a day is ripping off taxpayers and it’s lazy. I’m a fed and there’s no way this would fly at my agency or with me if I was your manager. Whatever you think you’re proving here about childcare you’re not. You’re just making feds look like they take advantage of WFH.

They never said the ONLY worked 10-2, but that those were their core hours. It's so hard to argue with stupid.

Why is this so confusing for you? 80% of employees adults work in office and 10% are hybrid and 10% are remote. And only 18-26% of workers are shift workers. You and your husband are NOT representative of most people who work. The fact that you think your lifestyle is appealing (it seems like you never see each other and drag all your kids around because you are never together) or normal speaks to your ignorance.

Not everyone has the option to flex their work schedule let alone flex it to accommodate their spouse’s schedule. Get out of your bubble and stop posting the same thing again and again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mom went back to work full time when I was less than two months old. My dad also worked full time. I had a combinations of nannies and then preschool before starting elementary school. It would never occur to me to say that I was raised by anyone besides my parents.

That's a pretty rude attitude toward child care providers.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Does anyone on here think it’s weird this thread has devolved into people saying they are working parents who never use daycare? Like, are all these people not validating that not have g strangers raise your children is better? Have we come full circle. Is the answer that everyone is actually with their child from birth to five and no one uses childcare?

Its weird that 1 person found a way to work a schedule with their spouse so they needed little to no daycare and many people are upset about it.

I work in finance and no one does this. You’re trying to say working parents never use a nanny or childcare and that’s incorrect. You’re posting a ton about your weird low rent schedule that perfectly illustrates that you’re an underachiever and you want everyone to clap for you. This thread is not about your weird core hours.

DP. I actually did this when I worked in finance! DH and I staggered schedules and I did my IC work at night. We had a nanny but she was only with DD for ~3 waking hours (11-1 and 3-4).

You’ve clearly never had a nanny. No nanny would work a schedule of 11-1 and then 3-4. You think a nanny would watch a kid from 11-1 then go home for two hours then come back for one hour. Obviously you’re a fake because no financial initiation would let you work an abridged day to be home with your kid at 1 (hahaha) but no nanny would take a crazy schedule like that either. You’re a pathetic liar.

And this nap schedule is for an infant. What about kids who are no longer napping? My kids dropped their naps before age 3. That is there one afternoon nap.

DP but my kids napped for at least 2 hours until they were maybe 4.5, and 1-3 was that nap time.

Also, you have comprehension issues because obviously the nanny wasn't going home between 1 and 3. The point was that no one was spending quality time with the child during those two hours because it was sleeping.

At 3 and 4 they are in preschool during the morning and napping in the afternoon for 1-2 hrs.

Also we paid our aupair the full pay for the little bit of time she actually worked. It was nice since we could do date night since she had so many extra hours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom went back to work full time when I was less than two months old. My dad also worked full time. I had a combinations of nannies and then preschool before starting elementary school. It would never occur to me to say that I was raised by anyone besides my parents.

That's a pretty rude attitude toward child care providers.

and teachers... clearly your children are being "raised" by teachers.

[Anonymous]

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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”

But working parents say this all the time to SAHP. "I couldn't do NOTHING." "I needed to use my brain." etc.

I've never heard this comment in real life.

I've heard it many times. Fully 70% of the new moms group I was in said some version of this in our meetings -- "I'm so bored -- I can't wait to go back to work" or "I feel like I'm getting stupid spending all my time with a baby." It's a very very common sentiment among women who have established careers before having kids and especially highly educated women.

I think people are expressing their genuine feelings when they say this stuff but I remember silently thinking how it didn't resonate with me at all and I loved being on maternity leave and had essentially zero interest in going back to work. I didn't miss my office AT ALL and I felt plenty intellectually stimulated at home (I found learning about child development fascinating and also had more time and bandwidth to read more widely than I had when working). I still wound up going back to work but was miserable and quit my job to stay home for the next two years because it's what I wanted to do.

When I hear people say things like "I couldn't do NOTHING" or "I need to use my brain" I simply know they are wrong. That's it. I know it to be a a false assumption about what it is to stay home with kids. Or sometimes I think they would do it wrong -- there is a way of being a sahm that involves being brainless and lazy but there's also a way of going to work like that isn't there. You get out of it what you put into it.

But I also think when people say stuff like this they are likely trying to quiet doubts they might have within themselves about their own choices. It's not about me even if they are trying to turn me into some kind of foil.

eh.. that's you. I'm not interested in studying child development while being a sahm.

My brain did atrophy as a sahm. Reading about something is not the same thing as using critical thinking skills at work.

Pleas stop putting down childcare and early childhood development work. It’s really hard and it takes a level of calm and focus that many screen obsessed adults can’t muster. This narrative of not thinking complexly screams misogyny. This is why so many people think it’s acceptable for the US to provide almost no quality universal childcare or education in the early childhood years. There is very little value placed on children or early childhood development and subsequently, the individuals who teach and care for them. We live in a truly sick society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom went back to work full time when I was less than two months old. My dad also worked full time. I had a combinations of nannies and then preschool before starting elementary school. It would never occur to me to say that I was raised by anyone besides my parents.

That's a pretty rude attitude toward child care providers.

Why? It's pretty normal for kids not to remember their early caregivers. Why would they feel they were raised by someone they don't remember. I'm not knocking the job because it's incredibly important, but don't expect most kids to remember and feel like they were raised by a non-parent.