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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If your infant takes a 2-hr am nap and a 2-hr pm nap, and sleeps like 11-12 hours a night, then your infant is only awake 9 hours a day.  All these folks saying, well my nanny only spent 3-4 waking hours with my kid...I mean, I get that "3" and "4" sound like small numbers, but it is a full 30-40% of your child's waking hours.  That's of course a meaningful difference in what you could be spending if you stayed home (and again, that's assuming you have a very good napper).

I'm a FT working mom, btw.  [/quote]

There are 168 hours in a week. 
Infants are awake for 63 of those hours. 
I see my kids 48 of those hours, you see your kid 63 of those hours.
I see my kids 28% of the time, you see your kids 37% of the time. 
It's 23% of their waking time... 15 hours.

Thanks for pointing out how little actual time is spent "raising" your kids.... lol 37% of your time. [/quote]

Well, first, like I said, I'm a FT working mom.  My kids are in ES now, but when my oldest was an infant we had a nanny.  I was gone from 8 to 4.  This DD actually was a "unicorn" napper who took an am nap from 9-11 and a pm nap from 1:30 to 3:30.  So I missed out on 3.5 waking hours of time with my DD M-F.  A lot of PPs (you included) think that is a small amount, but I don't think it is percentage wise.  It was like a full third to almost 40% of her 9 waking hours each weekday!  No one is raising their kids during their sleeping hours -- those 9 hours are all we have to work with and all that matter for this dicussion.  I missed out on a bit more than a third to 40% of them each day.  It's a lot to me.  (With my second I had a WFH job which meant my younger DD was with a nanny or later daycare more like 9 to 3:30, and I felt much better about that percentage of time away.)  But I guess it's all personal...[/quote]

I also had a similar schedule. A baby doesn’t sleep that much forever. Sure, maybe the first year. I can’t remember. I’m sure you spent plenty of time with your kid as did I. Theee people trying to calculate how much they spend with their kids are annoying.

I was a working mom and a SAHM. I spent more time with my kids when I was a SAHM. The end.[/quote]

NP. The point you're missing is "time" doesn't mean just hours of proximity. The point people are trying to make is quality time, not simply the passage of time, is what matters. Of course a SAHM spends more hours with her kids. She's home with them all day. But when you take out sleeping hours and hours spent doing other things like errands/laundry, etc., the hours of quality time spent are fewer than the hours of just time spent. If a WOHM outsources everything like cleaning/laundry and therefore spends all her non-working awake hours 1:1 with her kids, then that increases the number of hours of quality time she is able to spend. So the people saying WOHMs spend more time with their kids than SAHMs do are nuts and the people saying SAHMs spend all their waking hours 1:1 with their kids are nuts. The truth lies closer to the middle so just acknowledge that and stop arguing about these insane schedules and children who either sleep all day or never napped more than 7 minutes at a time. [/quote]

Nah, those types of arguments always wreak of insecurity too, and are wildly over-stated or concocted to fit some narrative.  SAHMs get lots of household chores done while their kids are napping and/or at preschool (errands also run during the latter).  (Also involving toddlers in household chores is fantastically good for them!) And UMC SAHMs have cleaning ladies for the bigger stuff.  And WOHMs don't outsource "everything".  They often have to run errands, etc. during weekends.  And by the time they get home for their "quality" hours they are exhausted from a full day of work, and their kids are at their crankiest too.  SAHMs get the quality time earlier in the day.  [/quote]

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