Reply to I worked at a daycare for 5 years, nannied for 5 years and have now been a SAHM for 5 years. AMA.

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Reply to "I worked at a daycare for 5 years, nannied for 5 years and have now been a SAHM for 5 years. AMA."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Do you see a different in what kind of parent sends their kid to daycare versus hires a nanny versus stays at home?[/quote]

Mostly class differences.

In my experience, parents who send their kids to daycare are working class, parents who have a SAHP are middle class and parents with a nanny are upper class.

A lot of the decisions with what to do for childcare depends on income, not wishes or wants, unfortunately.[/quote]

NP here. I haven’t seen this to be true in my experience, at least not for “upper middle class” or whatever class you’d call well-educated biglaw/consulting/GS15 types in DC. From my experience talking to other working moms coworkers at two biglaw firms and as in house lawyer, plus living in an area full of these types (think North Arlington), it seems like a huge percentage send their kids to incredibly expensive daycare centers. I did as well. While I am sure that the super wealthy hire nannies, I didn’t see a ton of people in this UMC demographic going with a nanny or becoming a SAHM. Unless you’d call people making $200-500,000/year who send their kids to daycare working class, the take above doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen. Plus, what truly working class person could afford infant daycare at a Bright Horizons in downtown DC?

I agree with a PP who said that working class people seem to often use in-home daycares, and it does seem to me that many more middle class people I know moved to become SAHMs.

I’m not convinced that the well-regarded and very expensive daycare where I sent my kids was necessarily the right choice in hindsight, although they seem to be doing perfectly fine in early elementary now, but I do think that this analysis is missing a huge chunk of the DC area population. [/quote]

+1 We are UMC -- 2 GS-15 Feds, both Biglaw refugees - and we sent our kids to day care. So does/did nearly everyone I know professionally. I was sent to day care myself as a kid, the child of a doctor and a teacher. The only person I know well who had a nanny was my cousin, who makes way less money than we do, but also lives in a much lower cost of living state (Michigan). All my siblings and other cousins used day cares. Most of my neighbors use day cares, at least before covid. I've talked to a few who say they weren't comfortable sending the kids back to day care during covid so they got nannies instead.

The difference is UMC folks can pick really good day cares. Our day care is insanely expensive. Probably still less than a nanny but it's hardly the cut-rate institution a lot of people seem to think of when they think of day care. The other thing is that we had long parental leaves, or at least could take them, even if unpaid. Our agencies didn't pay for leave but they'd let you use your own and then leave without pay. So we saved up when I got pregnant and I took six months off with each kid -- mostly unpaid, doable only because we had planned for it -- and DH took a few weeks too, [b]so we were able to send our kids to day care for the first time at 7 or 8 months old. Which feels much, much different from sending a 3 month old, I am sure. They were sitting up, crawling, interested in other kids, etc.[/b] [/quote]

It’s much easier when you have an older baby who is mobile and more aware.  Was your center lower ratio based?  I assume this center did shove 4 tiny babies in a room with one nervous 22-year-old.[/quote]

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