Thursday, June 24, 2010
Some Personal Thoughts on Putting Your Child in Non-Parental Care (Confessions of a working mom)
10:24 PM | 
Posted by
Amanda J. Moreno
Before you read this post there are two things you need to know about me:
1) My professional position at the Marsico Institute for Early Learning and Literacy revolves primarily around finding ways of improving the quality of experiences that children receive in child care and preschool;
2) My older child started part-time center-based child care by 17 months and full-time by about two, and my younger child has been in full-time center-based child care since the age of eight months, and is in full-time/full-day preschool currently.
My name is Amanda, and I’m a working Mom.
So clearly, both professionally and personally I am the opposite of a child care opponent. But, I’ve had C-sections too, and I don’t go around promoting them as the best way of delivering your baby, because they just plain aren’t. Similarly, despite my wishes to completely assuage my guilt and yours, putting a child in full-time non-parental care isn’t the best way of raising your child. There – I said it.
Wait – before you accuse me of going all Dr. Laura on you – hear me out. There are a lot of BUTs here, and I’ll try to mention every one I can think of (and hopefully you'll add plusses of your own). But before I do, I want to explain why I use the term “non-parental care” as opposed to “child care” or “day care”:
The decision to put our second baby in full-time care as in infant was an agonizing one. I had applied for a job months prior and forgotten about it by the time they called me for an interview. I clearly remember explaining to the woman who called, when she asked if now was a good time to talk, “Actually, no, I’m in the middle of nursing.” I was not really on the job market actively wanting to change what I was doing. I was my own boss, and could come and go as I pleased, and work at home as I pleased. At the time, Waverly was 7 months old, had never been in the regular care of anyone but myself or my husband, and never tasted a drop of formula. But the position was unstable and grant-funded. The offer of stability, not being primarily responsible for others’ salaries, and of course, my own salary eeking itself just beyond the laughable range was enticing. They told me I could pump breastmilk at my leisure.
At the time, my sister (who lucky for me lives close) was still in the middle of her extended leave from teaching, which she did to be at home with her second child. Naturally, those I agonized with about “putting my baby in child care” suggested that I ask my sister if she would watch Waverly. She was more than willing to help, but as we continued to work out the logistics it became apparent that the situation would not work for us. So I agonized some more about the fact that she would have to go to **child care**.
But then I realized, even care provided by a loving aunt or grandparent is still not ME. They would be the ones caring for and enjoying her. Their love for her is certainly a valuable and precious thing that we'd be unlikely to find as easily in a non-relative, but child care from family members is still multiple hours of not parenting. That is my long story for why I use the term non-parental care. But the story also leads to what I did next when I realized (or, more accurately, had the punch-in-the-gut brand of revelation) that anyone besides myself or my husband was really just a substitute.
My priority became finding a child care location that was within a mile of my job. That way, I could spend every lunch hour with her, and nurse her as well. I visited her every day until she was 18 months. Thus, I rationalized to myself, Waverly never went without me for more than a 4-hour stretch. That sounds a lot nicer than “infant in full-time child care”, doesn’t it? Did these visits benefit Waverly? I have no idea. I can tell you that I do not detect any attachment difference - she is neither more distanced nor more clingy towards me than my older daughter. Probably more importantly, it made me feel better. It made me feel as though I was doing what I could to compensate for a situation that I knew was not the ideal.
So, when friends want my brutally honest opinion about putting their child in non-parental care, here is what I say:
· If you can avoid putting your child in the full-time care of someone else before age two, Mazel Tov. I think that is a good thing.
· If you cannot avoid it, the longer you CAN wait, the better. Early development including attachment is so rapid in the first year of life, that delaying even by months IS worth it. If you can work only part-time, then do so.
· My rationale for the importance of the age factor is thus: The less a baby is a baby and more like a child, a professional caregiver becomes more of a teacher and less of a parent substitute. Starting at around two, socialization provides more of a benefit to children and child care teachers start to offer things that I don’t offer at home – a water table, for example. I know that may sound silly, but I think there is a benefit to children to be in an environment where Mommy isn’t worried about the carpet, and getting messy in finger paint and play-doh is a regular occurrence. There is value in developing an early sense of community – taking care of things and each other - that isn’t quite identical to what can be learned within one family. Most importantly, (and to the extent I and my compatriots accomplish our professional mission), high quality child care providers know a lot about children, how to build on their strengths, and how to help support them through their challenges. They have ideas, tips, and tricks that sometimes don’t occur to you as a parent.
· My biggest revelation in being a working mom was that, outside the 40 hours of working was NOT the time to catch up on ANYTHING except being with my kids. In addition to the daily visits, we found other ways that we had to be different from other families in order to hold sacred our time together as a family. So other things get sacrificed. We almost never go away on overnights without our kids, almost never get babysitting on weekends, rarely have time to talk on the phone with friends or family, hardly ever have weeknight playdates (my kids have plenty of socialization), and often have a messy house. I had to come to terms with these imperfections in order to allow our available parental face time to not be sacrificed.
If you have had a child in non-parental care, did you make similar sacrifices? If you are contemplating this reality in your future, how can you imagine changing your routine or adjusting your schedule to maximize togetherness? Can you accept not “having it all” in order to give your child the gift of time?
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