Rimbo
1961
Also: We’ve done the at-home nanny thing, the daycare thing and the stay-at-home Mom thing. And by far the best is a combination of preschool plus stay-at-home Mom. Stay-at-home parents are good simply because (usually) no one else has the child’s best interests at heart like a parent. A little bit of preschool each day (my child goes from 9am to about 2pm 5 days a week now at age 4.5; younger kids should go less, older should go more) helps the kid to socialize, gain new experiences, etc. that help him/her develop.
But raising him has been a lot easier since my wife started staying at home. The money ends up being almost a wash due to the cost of child care, but the main thing is that our son is MUCH happier. When he’s happy, she’s happy, and when she’s happy, I’m happy.
Hey, Rimbo, you know those threads where you say some outlandishly stupid thing and everybody dogpiles on you for a couple of pages? Get ready for one of those.
I don’t know what this has to do with who stays home with the kid. That said, if you are going to start with the assumption that day care is going to do a better job of raising your kids than you will, you might want to rethink the whole kids thing to begin with.
Most people who are talking about needing a stay at home parent are, in my experience, assuming stay at home mom and will use the phrases interchangeably.
Daycares don’t raise children, parents do that. The assumption that anyone who puts their children in daycare, or advocates a daycare/preschool as a good environment for their children, is punting on the responsibility for raising their children is completely incorrect.
That said, if you are going to start with the assumption that day care is going to do a better job of raising your kids than you will, you might want to rethink the whole kids thing to begin with.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that trained professionals might know how to raise your child better than you. Or would at least be able to helpfully augment your efforts. People aren’t born innately knowing the best path to take with their offspring.
It’s actually a collaboration between skilled professionals and loving parents that works best, but yeah you are thinking along the right lines.
One of the real problems with this issue is that people bring a LOT of emotional baggage to their decision making and we all know just how sharp people are at decision making when there’s strong emotions at play . . .
Man, I get to have this debate often enough with other new moms. Anyway, I would have to be capable of making enough money after daycare costs that it would have a significant impact on the quality of our lives before I would be able to make the emotional commitment to daycare. I do not judge people who do make that choice. 99% of people in the games industry don’t think of QA as a career anyway, so having a several year gap (if I decide to go back to it when she is in school) isn’t going to have that dramatic of an impact on my earning potential. The hours required are a much worse issue, honestly.
But my kid isn’t going to be some uncivilized barbarian because I’m staying at home with her. She does socialize on a regular basis with other adults and babies in our playgroup. When I start working from home and she’s old enough to engage in cooperative play then partial-day preschool is an option.
Every family situation is unique and everyone tries to pick the solution that best fits their individual needs. Fighting about it just causes unnecessary bitterness.
This is absolutely true. I have some second cousins who are being raised by a stay-at-home mom who wants to be Supermom and so won’t take a lot of help or advice from older female relatives or, well, really anyone. Her husband is from Southern hunter’s culture, so he spends a lot of his time when he’s not doing shift work at an auto factory running around killing deer with his friends.
Basically when the kids are very young she wants to do most of the work and her husband is content to let her do that.
Funny thing: her kids are lagging developmentally behind some other kids in the same age range in the family right now who have working moms, and so spend time with a grandmother or other such people during the day. It seems she’s getting burned out trying to do everything herself and so just has less energy for teaching her kids how to talk or walk or other such things.
Also, it seems likely she just doesn’t know as much about raising children as she thinks she does… she seems shocked at some of the milestones other kids in those age ranges are hitting early.
Lorini
1971
Kraaze, I commend you for taking on this issue, very brave.
Has their pediatrician expressed concern about their development? Because kids develop at different rates. That’s why there’s a pretty wide gap for milestones to occur in before you’re supposed to care. I see too many pissing matches over whose kid does what first when it doesn’t mean a damn thing.
I’m used to this debate, had it a a few times before IRL :)
Hopefully my responses don’t sound too canned.
Nah, it’s nothing serious. It’s more just little things like the youngest one finally taking his first steps after a day spent at a family gathering… where the grandparents he’s usually not allowed to see regularly worked with him, doing the little things you do to teach a little guy to walk.
The kids are clearly not hurt-- nor is my point that Supermom is a bad mother or anything. My point is more that just leaving a mom in the house most of the time is not automatically optimal. Moms get tired and working with kids takes energy. There’s a place for outside help, I think.
I would argue that being in a new settling with new people might have given him the motivation, the bulk of the learning had already taken place, but that’s neither here nor there since I agree with the main thrust of your post. It’s just that every single mother I know does enough beating herself up about children not hitting milestones the very week that they might occur that talking about it kinda ticks me off. Especially since I am friends with a woman whose child does have extremely significant developmental setbacks.
Yeah the whole milestone thing honestly strikes me as pretty stupid and I’m not advocating pissing matches over it. It was just meant as an example of how a non-mother person could have a very positive developmental influence on a child as a caregiver. What bothers me mostly about Supermom is that she seems to think having read a bunch of books qualifies her to 100% raise her kids with little to no outside help and… ehhh.
Marged
1977
It’s really easy to suppress the biological clock. I have successfully done it for 10 years (I’m good at hitting the snooze button).
Here’s how
- Think about how much you make
- Think about how much you owe in student loans
- Think about the economy and job market
- Think about how much time you don’t have now
- Day care is 100-200$ / week
Is it gone yet?
This whole question of financial readiness for having children is really fascinating to me. I have a friend who makes much, much more than I do and doesn’t feel as though she would be ready in the near future because she wouldn’t want to make any cuts to their (high) standard of living. It strikes me as though sometimes people are on a treadmill and never get to “ready” for reasons other than money. There is nothing sadder to me than couples who postponed pregnancy because they didn’t feel they were financially ready only to end up in their late 30s and 40s and spend thousands on fertility treatments or adoption - sometimes hopelessly. I know other couples who had babies when they were broke grad students and found a way to make it work.
I had a momentary, non-reality based panic because I’m a few weeks late (I ran next door to the clinic to check - not pregnant!) and I knew we would find a way to make it work, by hook or by crook. extarbags was not so sure! That was fun - glad it’s over.
I don’t see anybody in this thread arguing that point. Just that the opposite claim that leaving your kid in the care of strangers is somehow a bad choice done for selfish reasons.
Every family situation is unique and everyone tries to pick the solution that best fits their individual needs. Fighting about it just causes unnecessary bitterness.
Of course.
People like that are never ready.
It’s not like you save up to have kids. Whatever you earn is what you use to your standard of living - whether that includes kids or not is hardly a financial concern.
I certainly wasn’t ready. But finally conceded that my then girlfriend was and since biology spoke against waiting too long and I knew I wanted to stay with her for ever, I went along for the ride, figuring we’d make it up as we went a long as well as finding the time and money.
Marged
1980
Do you just accept that you never feel ready? I feel ready, as in, ready as I’m gonna be - but I want to be married first and I don’t want to be pregnant at my wedding so I have to wait a year. According to extarbags, then I have to wait two more. So arbitrary!
