One post (by 'lazy4nothinbun'??) in this thread http://www.early-retirement.org/for...oices-please-give-your-suggestions-36230.html, triggered this question for me.
Quite a few of you are fathers, I believe (to me it sounds like almost all of you are men on this board). Others are starting families or maybe planning to start in the near future. If not, you could tell how you were raised.
So, I'm curious what you did or would do as regards to raising your kids (or how your parents raised you):
- Did you or your wife quit the job to stay with the kids full time? If so, for how many years and did you/she go back to work later?
- If one of you quit your job to become a SAHM or SAHD, was it more a financial or more an emotional decision?
- If you chose to have a nanny or a daycare instead, why and how did it affect your family's financial situation?
- How did your decision (staying at home or nanny/daycare) affect your retirement planning?
- Do you think kids whose parents are FT employees are more deprived of family love/attention and extracurricular activities (hence less to tell to a potential college/university to be admitted to)?
- If you could turn time back would you select a different route? E.g. instead of daycare, you'd be become a FT parent or vice versa.
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I'll tell about my family. My DH and his siblings were raised by their mother and much later she became a part-time teacher. But my sister and I started daycare very early though we were also raised by our grandmas at the very beginning.
Now we've got a 2.5y.o. DD and a boy is on the way (in Aug.). DD started daycare at 7.5 months old and I do hope that everything will go fine with our son and he'll start the daycare at similar age.
Why did we choose a daycare setting? Nanny would way too expensive for us and also because we think little children have to interact with peers of their age.
Financially I think we'd do pretty OK in case I raised kids at home and DH went to work. Unfortunately, I'm not the type of person who could be a SAHM. Another reason is that IMO my salary would be affected (not that it's big now by any means; DH is the breadwinner ) if I were a SAHM for a few years. A third reason is that the times are long gone when people had secure jobs, so having one person earning the bread is also a risk.
However, I do sometimes think that maybe in the near future our kids will feel deprived because we won't have time (due to work and commute) to take them to the extracurricular activities except weekends. So, this one thing bothers me a little bit right now. I comfort myself thinking that for the kids it will be more important to spend time with their parents than playing soccer, dancing, or swimming with other kids. We'll see...Maybe in the future we'll have to join a YMCA or something.
Quite a few of you are fathers, I believe (to me it sounds like almost all of you are men on this board). Others are starting families or maybe planning to start in the near future. If not, you could tell how you were raised.
So, I'm curious what you did or would do as regards to raising your kids (or how your parents raised you):
- Did you or your wife quit the job to stay with the kids full time? If so, for how many years and did you/she go back to work later?
- If one of you quit your job to become a SAHM or SAHD, was it more a financial or more an emotional decision?
- If you chose to have a nanny or a daycare instead, why and how did it affect your family's financial situation?
- How did your decision (staying at home or nanny/daycare) affect your retirement planning?
- Do you think kids whose parents are FT employees are more deprived of family love/attention and extracurricular activities (hence less to tell to a potential college/university to be admitted to)?
- If you could turn time back would you select a different route? E.g. instead of daycare, you'd be become a FT parent or vice versa.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll tell about my family. My DH and his siblings were raised by their mother and much later she became a part-time teacher. But my sister and I started daycare very early though we were also raised by our grandmas at the very beginning.
Now we've got a 2.5y.o. DD and a boy is on the way (in Aug.). DD started daycare at 7.5 months old and I do hope that everything will go fine with our son and he'll start the daycare at similar age.
Why did we choose a daycare setting? Nanny would way too expensive for us and also because we think little children have to interact with peers of their age.
Financially I think we'd do pretty OK in case I raised kids at home and DH went to work. Unfortunately, I'm not the type of person who could be a SAHM. Another reason is that IMO my salary would be affected (not that it's big now by any means; DH is the breadwinner ) if I were a SAHM for a few years. A third reason is that the times are long gone when people had secure jobs, so having one person earning the bread is also a risk.
However, I do sometimes think that maybe in the near future our kids will feel deprived because we won't have time (due to work and commute) to take them to the extracurricular activities except weekends. So, this one thing bothers me a little bit right now. I comfort myself thinking that for the kids it will be more important to spend time with their parents than playing soccer, dancing, or swimming with other kids. We'll see...Maybe in the future we'll have to join a YMCA or something.
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