I'm a SAHM...I think wherever possible gifted preschool age children should be with their parents, because the continuity of care, close relationships, and tenderness of interaction foster independence and security more than an environment where the teacher/caregiver's attention has to be split over 10 or more children.
I wanted to let this go, but for some reason, I just can't.
Women can have such a difficult time regarding family life: we're supposed to have children/not have children/not have too many children, breastfeed/not breastfeed, work/not work, and so on. There is no one right way of raising kids, and one of the mantras on this forum is that there is no single right approach with gifted kids. For example, not all of them have to be with their parents wherever possible to thrive.
I want to work, I like to work, and I have something to offer. That's okay. My kids loved daycare, and that's okay too. They thrived there. It was a warm, loving environment. My eldest loved preschool. That's okay, too.
Val, with respect, I didn't say any of the things you're purporting my message implied.
All I've suggested is that raising
preschool aged children is subject to both attentional constraints and agency problems, both of which are minimized under a stay-at-home parent model (either mother or father--both can be parents!--this isn't a women's issue, it's a family issue.)
On the first front, it's just a mathematical reality that someone with one or two children can pay each child more attention than a group-based caregiver with 10 or more charges. The time they spend with their child(ren) means they develop a deeper understanding of their child(ren)'s personalities and needs, and they can rally the resources required to meet those needs, be they interpersonal or otherwise, in a timely fashion (or at all).
Regarding agency problems, paid caregivers are subject to moral hazard. Whereas a parent has a duty of long term care--and the psychic (attachment), attentional, and financial incentives not just to avoid risk, but to optimize outcomes-- teachers and other caregivers face a shorter time horizon. This creates a misalignment of incentives between the child and the caregiver and results in developmetal outcomes that fall below the optimal opportunity set generated by the presence of an at-home parent. Even if a caregiver of identical quality to the parent is available, the outcome for the child will be inferior to a SAH parent model just by dint of moral hazard, assuming rationality on all sides.
Now, all of that said, life is full of trade-offs, one of which is financial. For many families who NEED two incomes to put food on the table, the cost to the child of malnourishment or living in a violent neighbourhood that could otherwise be avoided by earning two incomes might outweigh the advantage of SAH parent. Many very good parents who would prefer to stay home cannot.
Another possibility is that the parent-caregiver care quality differential is relatively small, (thanks to a great caregiver, a low-quality parent, or some combination of both), such that the caregiver experience is approximately--though not precisely-- comparable to the parent experience. As a decision based on gross
family-level utility it may well be an optimal outcome
for the family for both parents to work, which I suspect is your case (thanks to a great caregiver).
None of this implies that children cannot thrive in a well-matched paid care setting, but it does say there are non-zero intra-family trade-offs in utility being made under paid care that don't exist under a SAH parent model.
Incidentally, Deb Ruf advocates SAH parenting wherever possible for gifted preschool children based on her clinical experience in her 5 levels book. I'm inclined to borrow her book from the library to go to her source material on that matter to refresh my memory.
OP: sorry for the hijack! If this line of commentary continues, I'll cut my responses into a new thread and Val and I can duke it out in our own thread. Although Val and I often come at issues from different perspectives, I enjoy chatting with her and, for selfish reasons, didn't want to miss this opportunity.
