When it comes to caring for kids, there is a mantra that everyone should do what works for their family. This is, of course, true. This being the case, when a mom is clearly agonizing over a choice to use daycare for her 12-month-old, why is it so hard to follow that theme? 

I recently met a mom through an online parenting group. She posted about putting her first and only 12-month-old into a daycare. She would not be rocking her daughter to sleep for naps anymore—and was having a hard time with the fact that the daycare would not be doing so, either. 

“I don't know what to do. I can't avoid overthinking… I can't pretend all is good,” she wrote, throwing her message in a bottle into the virtual ocean. 

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Her post called for recognition that perhaps the very best thing for her family was not using daycare at all. And that seemed to be the one thing no one would say. 

If you look at your baby and feel she is still a small baby and you wish to remain with her, you are not alone. My first suggestion to this mom was to gain some time. If she could financially swing it, she could legally switch from a 12-month to an 18-month leave. 

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Getting creative is step two. Scratch below the surface and the mirage that everyone uses full-time centre-based daycare fades. Child-care is not the same thing as daycare and comes in many different forms. We ended up hiring a woman to come into our home for part-time hours. 

On money: Paying through the nose for child-care (again, not the same thing as daycare) that worked for our family was very much worth it to me. I white knuckled my first week back at work even though my daughter was upstairs in the same house. A magnetic desire to be close pulled me toward this option. Following Canadian developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld’s work only sealed the deal. 

There are many reasons why counseling any family to avoid daycare is hard. One is the blessing and curse of our maternity leave policy. It is a blessing because it allows the protected time for a mom with her baby. It’s a curse because it has the effect of dictating what is an “acceptable” amount of time off work after having a baby.  

Then the endless media stories about mothers endlessly seeking daycare spaces with a new baby in tow enter in, which creates expectations about the type of care “everyone” is using once back at work.

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The recently-enacted Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care system, which is an attempt at universal daycare, adds to the pressures. This system actually runs perfectly contrary to doing what is right for your family. It is, by design, a one size fits all policy because it funds only one type of care, giving that money to the daycare providers, not parents. Offering subsidized daycare for rich and poor alike is soft coercion on plain display, saying whether you have money or not, this is your funded choice. 

To be fair, this is true of many benefits, whether government or corporate. All benefits must have parameters. Funds are limited, and the government has its own motivations for providing any benefit, just as companies with generous HR policies do: It’s not always about helping your family.