Reply to S/o Do you harshly judge parents withOUT a lot of outside help?

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[quote=Anonymous]As I posted in the other thread, I don't judge people with a lot of outside help (nanny, housekeeper, family help, etc.), I envy it.

But now I wonder if people judge me for NOT having that kind of help. Like we can't afford a housecleaner, we do it ourselves. We have to cobble together summer childcare from camps and taking time off and sometimes having the kids hanging out on their own while we WFH. When our kids were babies/toddlers, it was always a juggle to make childcare work. We have not family help and limited finances. I feel like we're finally getting to the point where it's not quite as painful, now that kids are in school (and schools are open!) but we've been stretched thin for years.

Do you judge people in this situation? It's not that we planned for it to be this way, we just didn't know. We knew generally how much daycare cost, but we didn't know how hard it would be to get spots, or stuff like how you have to spend a ton of money getting on waitlists just to be able to stand a chance to get into one. We didn't realize how much aftercare costs can vary from school to school (and quality too) or how hard it can be to arrange one-off care during random days of from school. We didn't realize how hard it would be schedule our own work leave to coincide not only with each other but with our kid's time off from school. And we didn't realize how hard it would be to not have family help. Most of our friends have local family but before we had kids, all we ever heard was how much they complained about dealing with their parents/ILs and how meddling and annoying they were -- we didn't realize that the part they weren't mentioning was how their annoying MIL also cooked two meals a week for their family and showed up randomly to clean the kitchen and was an essential part of their summer childcare strategy.

Anyway: do you judge me for not realizing how hard this would be without a lot of paid help or family nearby? Do you judge me when I complain about struggling to find childcare or struggling to pay for it? When I hire sitters who aren't amazing because it's what we can afford? When our kids are in mediocre camps in the summer because we can't afford more?[/quote]

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