Working, daycare, nannies, or staying home

I found this podcast episode and I recommend going down the rabbit hole. It's worth it. It’s all about daycare and nannies and what you should do with your baby, especially for the first year.

I don't regret sending my daughter to my school's daycare at 18 months old last year. It’s a rural district, one building, on-site daycare for the children of teachers. She had 1-2 caregivers for the entire school year and maybe 5-6 other kids there with her, all just about her age. I was 50 yards away all day long. She played all morning, ate lunch, took a nap, I picked her up at 3:30. This second year, starting at 2.5, she was excited to go back. The same 2-3 caregivers, maybe up to 10 other kids, depending on the day, but not all day long for most of them. Lots of babies for her to love. A very family-driven setting, everyone loves on everyone, etc.

With our first kid, we hired a part-day sitter when he was about 27 months old and she stayed with us for a few months and then he went to a little daycare with one other little girl (during c*vid, everyone pulled their kids from daycares) for about 2 months. At 3, he started preschool at a Christian school.

That's my story concerning daycare. But what Erica Komisar talks about specifically is that a mom should be with her baby constantly for the first year. A lot of moms do this and a lot of moms don't, but when I thought about it, I did exactly that: I literally had my first baby with me nonstop, never a break for more than 2 hours for the first 10 months of his life and then we took a trip for a few days, and then we took another trip for a few days when he was 12 months, and then he didn't leave my side again until he was 27 months old and I went back to work part-time and we had a sitter for a few hours a day.

With my second, she didn't leave my side for the first year and a half. I mean, immediately, she was with her dad or her grandma exclusively for the first week because I was unable to care for her. I couldn't keep tabs on her the way I did with my first as a newborn. But then, she didn't leave my side for more than 2 hours. She went everywhere with me for all that time. She did the dog walks, the preschool drop-offs and pick-ups, the preschool field trips, all of it.

I will say: no matter how good Erica Komisar claims it is for the baby, it's hard. Which is why, when she promotes the ideal, I bristle. I think almost all of us moms will if we listen to this podcast episode. However, I'm also not a proponent of sending infants into an institutionalized setting. I don't think anyone is to be honest. I really enjoyed this episode because it made me reflect on what I've done and what I should've/could've done. I will say, there's absolutely nothing like those first 6 months at home, doing absolutely nothing, with a baby. I recommend it if you can do it.

(Her thoughts on sleep, however, are crazy to me. I put my kids into cribs by 8 weeks old. I couldn't sleep with them next to me in a bassinet. And co-sleeping to me wasn't something I was interested in trying.)

By complete chance, as I was finishing up this podcast episode, I happened to be talking to my mom on the phone and she was with my aunt. My aunt is retired now but she worked in daycares for years. I was mentioning that, should we move to a new military base this summer, I didn’t think I would consider working again until my youngest was in school full-time in a few years. My aunt said that daycares were overrun and overworked and packed with too many babies. She said there were times when she had four babies, all crying, and she had to yell out into the hallway for help because she couldn’t soothe them all at once.

A comment on the Youtube video for this podcast episode said that a mom had left her 6 week old at daycare for the first day, drove to work, promptly quit her job, and drove back to pick up her (let’s face it) newborn. He was still in his carseat, strapped, right where she had left him. He had a bottle propped on top of him. Two hours later.

These are the reasons why I don’t think it’s best to send a baby to daycare. I also believe you should be prepared to make sacrifices to stay home with babies. I also (also) believe a husband and father should be able to provide for a family in a way that will allow his wife to stay at home for at least a year.

I’m speaking to this from the angle of a military wife; I entered marriage with the idea that I would work when I could but I wasn’t always going to be able to do so. That was always the plan. Sometimes I work, sometimes I don’t. In the case of our first baby, I had no choice but to stay home. That was all there was for me to do. He was also born over the summer and mid-PCS (don’t recommend), but had we been staying at that duty station longer, my choice would’ve been to give up a huge portion of my meager teaching salary to a daycare of some sort and send my infant to daycare. There was no family or community to care for him at that young age. Because we didn’t depend on my salary, I quit my job and didn’t go back for over 2 years.

With the second baby, again speaking from the perspective of military life, my options were to use up my FMLA time, as she was born in the spring. Or I could send my 6 week old (again) newborn to a daycare of some sort so I could go back to work for 4 weeks. To me, that wasn’t a choice. Especially with a husband deployed and a complicated delivery and recovery. In this particular case, I also felt that I had no incentive to return to finish out the school year anyway for other reasons; I wasn’t going back the next year. I could not, personally, deal with the idea of teaching and caring for a baby and handling daycare and managing a preschooler. Not even to factor in the cost of daycare and private preschool coming out of a teacher’s salary, plus a 45 minute commute. It would barely even out.

For those reasons, I stayed home again for about 18 months.

A positive: Something I do truly appreciate about Erica Komisar’s books are that she does believe in having kids go to school. I’m not saying homeschooling isn’t a good idea. I’m not saying public school is the answer. I’m not saying private school is a feasible option for all families. I’m saying that Komisar believes kids need to have a life away from their parents, in that they are able to stretch out and learn and grow independently. It’s about the independence, not the “socialization”. School is about teaching kids to function as independent humans in many ways. She insists that homeschooling is a fine option as long as it’s not done in isolation. “Community” seems to be the theme of her recommendations.

As a teacher, I’m seeing the effects of what we’ve done as a country and a culture in real time. It’s so hard to make the decisions with your own kids, but listening to thought leaders on the topic and reading the research for myself certainly makes me feel like I have at least some of the information. I’m aware this is a very sensitive topic, which is why I feel the need to share all my own thoughts about it. I don’t believe moms can’t work, I don’t believe moms shouldn’t work, but I also don’t believe little babies should be in daycare (personally). It’s a blurry line, I guess.