Developmental costs associated with early maternal withdrawal (2022)

Always optimize for the long term. They should all be able to go to college, get healthcare, food and clothes and housing, but once that’s settled invest in your relationship with them. Set them up for long term success. It looks a little different for everyone but I’m sure with your context the solution will be clear.

Congrats! It's a wild ride.

2 months was some of the hardest times ime.

Fyi we did long parental leaves followed by home nannies followed by nanny share where we went to other house half of the time to eventually day care, then changed day cares.

It depends on the kid (outgoing, brave, high energy, can start daycare younger) but I like waiting 1 year for day care.

Don't delay daycare for too long. The best teachers for your young kids are often other kids. I have friends who left / kept their kids too long at home either caring for them themselves or with a nanny, and the kids were developmentally behind. No I don't believe it was permanently, but it is amazing to see how fast your kids learn to crawl, walk, talk as soon as they see how other kids do it. Everyone finds their own path, situations differ, kids differ. Just something to consider. Oh and have fun with the kids sicknesses once they are in daycare, it takes an entire year for their immune systems to adapt :D Still worth it to go earlier rather than later. (My kids went to day care at 4 months which many will say is too early, each to their own, and my wife resigned her job to stay at home, still went to daycare)

We were lucky to have some flexibility to spread the load. My wife and I both dropped down to 4 days a week, and my Mother-in-law looks after our son one day a week, so he has a Dad day, a Mum day, a Nana day, and 2 daycare days.

To us it feels like the optimal setup, he gets some valuable one-on-one days with all the important people in his life, gets socialised at daycare, and no one gets too exhausted looking after him all the time. I absolutely love Dad days, I don’t think I could ever give them up now.

Please add a location. Here in Germany, - my wife had 6 weeks maternity leave (fully paid) before birth and 1 year parental leave (65% paid) - I have 2 months parental leave (65% paid)

In Spain for example, it appears to be 4 months (fully paid) for each parent. You can't take 8 months as mother, only the father can claim his share.

Not working in an office and still getting paid makes this decision rather easy.

Expenses have a way of ballooning to fill your income, so my wife and I decided to drop to one income when we had our children. It's been fine without daycare or nannies.

First of all, cograts!

As father of a 4yo and a 2yo, the only thing I can confidently say is that if available/possible, they need their dad to be around as much as possible. With this in mind, try to find a solution that works for everybody in both the family front and the financial front, but that doesn’t mean they get cut off of your presence.

My 4yo wakes up very early in the morning just to be with me, and my 2yo stays late at night (for her hours) just to be with me.

I’m very happy for you. Having kids is a wonderful experience :)

Here’s an idea to consider.

This is a broad scale study with meta analysis of multiple papers.

It isn’t meant for you. It’s meant for public health administrators, doctors, other researchers.

Parents (especially brand new parents who are into researching everything) all have their alert triggers set on max sensitivity. Just because this paper showed up here don’t mean it relates to you.

Do what you find natural and correct and don’t invent a narrative that doesn’t apply to you.

My SO was out of the workforce for the 18 months until our daughter started qualifying for daycare and in hindsight it was a good call, because we could do e.g. baby-led weaning or address early signs of future posture problems and just be with her more.

Long term we're both planning on working four days a week but to be perfectly honest it's more so that we can use that one day to recharge.

What I learned from summarised nuggets of Winnicott and Bowlby [0,1] is that time spent as they grow is an investment in relationship building for the future. It doesn't have to be that much for fathers, but it needs to be consistent and regular. By the time you want to go skateboarding and bike riding with them, when you have more spare time and money and mum gives them more independence, there needs to be a solid foundational attachment bond. It may not seem like playing with a 1 or 2 year old is "useful or productive", but your mere presence is foundation building.

(dad of 7/8 yo)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Winnicott [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby

There is what I would call an ideal, yes, but what you personally should do is subject to your particular constraints, what you can afford to do, and so on. As you hint, the poor do no have the luxury of choosing between various options that may be available to those better off. But if you do have the option, as you claim to have, then there is an objectively better choice.

During the early years of a child's life, the mother's constant presence is more important than the father's. This is not to downplay the paternal role, only to highlight that the maternal role has an especially important role to play during a child's early years, biologically, emotionally, and so on. If you can afford to do it, I would say that it would be best for your wife to leave her job and devote her time toward her children. She can return after they've all reached a certain age, though we should stop being so monomaniacally career focused, especially in the US. Children are entitled to such care, and so there is an obligation to give it to them, provided you can give it to them.

As children get older, the paternal role becomes more important. Again, this is not to suggest that fathers don't matter in the early years, or that mothers don't matter later on. They absolutely do. But the needs of a child in those early years depends more immediately and constantly on the mother. As children get older, the father becomes increasingly important as a figure of authority and maturation. If you observe children, you will see that how they relate to men and women differs. Children can intuitively grasp sex differences readily. Fathers play a greater role in teaching discipline and ushering children into the public sphere and the like.

I wish you the best. Too often children are given secondary importance, but we fail to realize that being a mother or father in some capacity (even if adoptive, or in some spiritual sense, as we see among, e.g., Catholic religious, if the biological option is closed to you by choice or by condition) is the height of human existence and purpose. Nothing else really makes sense unless that is recognized. A person never reaches adulthood until her becomes a parent, in some sense. He or she are perpetually trapped in childhood. Self-indulgence is much more common.

My 2 cents. Dad of 5 and 1.5 year old girls. Work at startup. Wife in PE.

Time with kids is important for sure. Many commenters rightly point that out with their own anecdotes. But, equally important is time to deal with yourself, the good, the bad, the etc.

Something that happens is your anxiety spikes. So, you're determined to spend time with your kids but also anxious about logistics or where/how to fit that time in relative to other demands.

So, you're anxious with and around your kids. That doesn't help them much either. In fact, I think lots of anxious moments in parenting would be better left ignored. In other words, your time with them is sort of good and bad - anxiety is contagious. They benefit from your presence but feel the stress like you do too.

Long story short: just focus on enjoying your time with them, and worry less about what you're doing, how much time you're spending, and certainly cut a lot of the overthinking.

Honestly? My mom worked nights/ weekends as a nurse when I was little, and I have really fond memories of all the things I got to do with my dad. I think I turned out fine?

I think the key there is this section: "Central to the construct of emotional neglect is a failure to meet the basic emotional needs of the child. Key indices of early emotional neglect include both a pervasive parental failure to respond to children’s signals, particularly those of stress or distress, and a pervasive failure of parental initiative in proactively structuring the interaction with the child in protective and developmentally enhancing ways."

I honestly think whatever parent(s) are available just need to show their children that they are loved & respected. From the sound of it, I would agree with your first instinct - it should balance out. But, if you can, having loving grandparents around is supposed to be good for little ones too! :)