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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How many hours a day will your child be in care?  How old will he be when you start daycare?  Do you plan to have other children and if so how far do you plan to space them out?

I am a nanny FWIW, but I have worked in daycare and preschool (starting with 1yos) settings as well.  The pros for daycare are mostly financial for infants.  An infant needs time in a dyad (meaning an adult who is loving and responsive and bonded) and do not benefit from “socialization.”  Babies learn to socialize by modeling on the empathetic and responsive behavior of a bonded caregiver, not by interacting with peers.  Now depending on the daycare they can still do a good bit of this but you want to look at how they structure their day.  If the infant room has 3 caregivers, for example, each caregiver should be caring for specific babies as their primary charges.  For example, when it is naptime, you should see Sondra changing, feeding and soothing her 4 charges, and the same for Marta and Jennifer.  You should not see Sondra handling diapers, Marta handling bottles and Jennifer shushing and patting.  You want a bonded relationship that continues through each step, not an assembly line approach.

Nanny care can be a double-edged sword because a great nanny is WAY better than any daycare but a bad nanny has no real checks in place to prevent neglect or abuse (not saying daycares don’t have cases of abuse and honestly a certain degree of neglect is inherant in a 3-1 or 4-1 ratio).

If your baby is in care for a long time (9+ hours), then the quality of care matters more.  If your baby is starting younger, again, quality of care matters more.  If you are planning to have another baby soon, then the cost of a nanny for two kids goes up only marginally but the cost for two in daycare doubles.

Here are just some general pros and cons:

Nanny pros: 
logistical simplicity of baby being in his/her own home, having a consistent routine
Higher level of control over schedule, food choices, discipline choices, etc.
More responsive care, both in little things (diapers changed asap) and bigger things (day is tailored to baby’s personality and learning style).
You can hire a nanny with a higher level of education, who is a truly fluent English speaker, both of which correlate to language development.  Daycares often can’t command that at their rates, and even if they do offer that, there is no guarantee they won’t have turnover that changes is.
Your baby will generally catch fewer colds etc. in-home
It is easier to find backup care for a sick nanny/healthy baby than for a sick baby who can’t go to daycare

Nanny cons: 
baby is in your house so your house is occupied all day (making WFH and sick days hard) and it gets messy faster.
Nanny sick days/PTO days 
If you have a bad nanny it is harder to replace and hard to identify the issue up front.

Daycare pros:
Financial, obviously
Built-in backups
Your house stays clean
Community of parents can sometimes bond

Daycare cons: 
You have very little control over your child’s day
Baby is exposed to more germs
There is a ceiling on how well they can care for each child
You have to pack everything up every day and wake baby at a certain time
When baby gets sick, you will have to miss work.

Have you explored nanny shares?  I think those are a good midpoint for a lot of people if you can find a good fit.[/quote]

Thank you so much for your comment!!! So well thought out and very informative! We plan on having another in about 3-4 years. My baby would be in daycare 7:30-6 everyday and with a nanny the same amount of time. In the daycare there would be 2-3 workers who switch shifts. They said each workers have the same 3 babies to take care of each day.  One of the ladies has been there 3 years, the other 1 year and one for a few months I believe. So it seems that there isn’t much turnover for this ladies, but you never know. We have not considered a nanny share, and are very hesitant to do it because we’ve seen how They dissolve so easily. Our son would be 6 months when I return to work. I think we’ll consider a nanny share or a nanny. If the other family spilts we could continue paying our nanny [/quote]

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