Nathaniel had his first day of daycare today!
As is typical of these things, it was harder on mom and dad (mostly dad) than baby. Nathaniel was happy when we left him, and happy when we picked him up, and the daycare center sent some adorable photos of him playing and napping (sidebar: I cannot imagine how big a change the job of early childhood daycare provider has changed since the dawn of the app era). Dad held it together during drop off but was sobbing in the car ride home, and then started tearing up again upon pick up once I saw that he had done well (I cry from relief).
Tears aside, though, this is good for everyone. It's good for Nathaniel to socialize with other kids, and it's good for us to have a bit more freedom during the day (it's terrible for our bank account, but there's not much to be done on that). Indeed, my main thought was to wonder, once again, how universal childcare isn't the #1 top voting priority of every American who has ever been a parent.
Today was just a half day -- tomorrow he stays through the afternoon. But for the time being, it's looking like an A+ adjustment from an A+ baby. I couldn't be prouder of the little guy.
1 comment:
I genuinely have no idea how your typical middle class family makes do with child care. Some have grandparent support. But those that don't? Like we started out in a nanny share. The going rate was around $17.50 an hour per family for 40 hours a week, which comes out to ~$36K per year. For, say, a couple of teachers making $180K per year combined, that's a solid quarter of their post-tax salary. Add housing, and there's not much room left for much of anything beyond a car, clothing, and food. Now that we have two kids, even taking into account our older son's eminently reasonable $1,100 a month half-day preschool, between that and a nanny, we pay over $100,000 annually for childcare. It's preposterous.
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