I just had a my first kid, she's 5 months old now.
On the weekends, we stay with my parents and they take care of the little one. Tuesday and Thursday, I take care of her from 8 am (morning) until 1 am (next day). I work on Saturday + Sunday to make up for those two days. My wife takes care of the kid on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She works the rest of the days.
Yes, it would be nice to have her take care of the kid full-time. She wants to. She had debt from law school and wants to pay that off first. Until she makes that decision, everybody helps out.
There is a fundamental difference between want and can. Unfortunately, many of the decisions we make before we have children limit our options after we have them.
You guys should consider sending her to a quality daycare. We've been sending our son to one since he was 3 mo. old. He loves it; we love it. We think that's the best thing we've done for him so far.
Socializing with other children is sooo important. He interacts with other adults (daycare employees). He learns so many things (esp. wrt self-control, autonomy etc) just by playing with his friends.
I personally think a daycare (many kids + several caregivers) is closer to the environment that we evolved to grow in, rather than having no other kids + couple of caregivers as would be the case with an at-home parent.
You should give some serious thought into finding a quality daycare. You're highly likely to like it. Good luck!
> You guys should consider sending her to a quality daycare.
In my area, that's an extra 20-30K a year. I intend to have more children. With 2+ kids, it becomes cheaper to hire a full-time nanny.
That might make sense if my wife manages to land a job that pays 50K+, but that's not a certainty especially since I'm pretty sure she doesn't want to ... any job that pays in that range will mean long hours and very little time for anything else.
And that's just the $$$ talking.
I would much rather my parents raise her. They're in that retirement age zone, they want to, and frankly, since it's their grandchild, they would do a better job than a stranger. That's how it's been done in my family for generations, anyway. Parents go off and make the $$$, while grandparents take care of the day to day.
If you've thought it through, great. Whatever works for you. Good luck. But I just thought I'd address the subtext of your comment for the benefit of others who might be reading this too.
> With 2+ kids, it becomes cheaper to hire a full-time nanny. ... [grandparents] would do a better job than a stranger. ... grandparents take care of the day to day.
In my experience, a quality daycare person is superior to all except the best of the best nannies (I'm talking about those $80k/yr nannies NY Times wrote about). I think of myself as getting access to an experienced child development specialist, rather than as renting a warm body that just keeps my child physically safe.
I'd go with a quality (note emphasis) daycare over grandparents every single time.
Please don't take this as a snarky comment, because it isn't.
Aren't you concern about your limited role in raising your children? I don't know what your situation is like, but I know professional couples who use daycare and maybe spend an hour or two a day with their child. For the other 14 hrs, someone else is rasing their child. This includes teaching them values, connecting emotionally, etc.
If I were in this situation I'd be worried about how well connected I would be with my child in the future.
We drop him off at 8 am and pick him up at 5 pm (that's 9 hours). He goes to bed between 8 and 9 and wakes up at around 6:30 am (that's about 10 hours). Both parents drop and pick him up. So we spend about 4 waking hours per day with him and he spends 9 waking hours at daycare. Obviously there is no daycare on weekends.
On the question of values: my daycare lady's values are in sync with our own, so I don't worry about the values.
Wrt connecting emotionally: i used to wonder about this too. whether he'll get confused about who his real parents are. whether he will be close to us, or whether he will think the daycare people are "his family" etc.
I'm happy to report that that's absolutely not the case. When he gets hurt in daycare he cries for 'dad' (and has never asked for his daycare lady at home). He totally groks that we are his parents and his identity as a member of his family is the one only he has. He thinks of his daycare as a sort of playground that he goes to meet his friends.
I hope I answered your questions. You should talk to the couples you know too to get their perspective.
On the weekends, we stay with my parents and they take care of the little one. Tuesday and Thursday, I take care of her from 8 am (morning) until 1 am (next day). I work on Saturday + Sunday to make up for those two days. My wife takes care of the kid on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She works the rest of the days.
Yes, it would be nice to have her take care of the kid full-time. She wants to. She had debt from law school and wants to pay that off first. Until she makes that decision, everybody helps out.
There is a fundamental difference between want and can. Unfortunately, many of the decisions we make before we have children limit our options after we have them.