So, lass, maybe it's time you got a response from someone who actually HAS put her children in day care, and can witness personally to how it's affected her family and her relationship with her children.
In Canada, working women are entitled to a year of unemployment insurance -- admittedly, "only" six months at the time it applied to me -- and guaranteed return at current seniority to the same employer. So, we rarely see newborns in daycare, or even children in their first two trimesters of life (and indeed very few daycares have places for this age-group). So, when I placed my daughters in daycare breastfeeding was already well established, they were already taking simple solid foods, and the parent-child attachment bond was already well developed. This is a very different situation than I read about happening in the United States where some women are required to choose between returning to their jobs at six weeks(!) or not having a job to return to, and it is this relatively healthy pattern of daycare of which I can recount my experiences.
That being said, I have worked full-time all my children's lives except for those two six-month periods, and I kept my elder daughter in daycare part-time when I was home with her younger sister in order to respect the relationships she had formed with her day-care care-givers. My elder daughter is now a high-school senior, and my younger daughter a junior. According to the elder in her own words "I have a better relationship with my parents than anyone I know ... " (here eyes roll at the thought) "I certainly have a better relationship than M--" (who was home-cared throughout childhood) "has with hers, and I'm a whole lot emotionally more healthy". In my husband's words "I can never understand all those people who say "Oh, poor you, you have teenagers, as if teenagers were something bad." In the words of the mom of one of the unrelated backstage parents "We love your girls -- they are so kind and compassionate: and they have such a lovely relationship with one another". My teenagers still call me "Mama", even in public, and my elder daughter (who is lame with juvenile arthritis) today chose to walk along arm-in-arm with me rather than taking a crutch to lean on.
So, I can attest with considerable force that daycare did not result in BAD relationships within our family. But are we close despite using daycare? Or did it help forge the strong relationships that we enjoy? I think it did.
For one thing, to quote a long-time internet friend of my ivillage days, "I'm a better parent when I can put a roof over my children's head and put food on the table". Working is the historical norm for people of both sexes, the brief abberation of the 1950's and 1960's notwithstanding. Cottage industry and domestic service positions don't exist as they did in previous centuries, but the women who worked in those roles had to rely on neighbours and extended family to provide care for their children just as you rely on daycare now -- and those caregivers were often less careful and less qualified than a modern daycare! Earning your living -- even if you share that role with someone else -- is nothing to be ashamed of. Most marital conflict is, in fact, related to financial stress. Having the safety-net of two jobs in the family can increase financial security, reduce stress, and result in a happier and more secure home-life.
Second, your children are not going to be "raised by strangers". You will be choosing the daycare so you can choose one that reflects your values. Our daycare was run by six of the loveliest gentle old Carmelite nuns: we still stay in distal contact with them. Every hour that my daughters were in care, someone was in the chapel praying for them, and they spent more time being dandled on the old Bishop's knee than on their grandfather's. In this age of isolated nuclear families, the convent house beside the daycare facility took the place of "grandma's house" for the girls, and the nuns were like the loving spinster aunts of my childhood.
And, however well-matched the daycare situation, more than half your children's waking hours will still be spent with you. The old quality-time-versus-quantity-time debate has been subverted: you certainly cannot replace quantity with quality and pretend that one trip to the zoo makes up for ten hours of compansionship. But, you do need to take into account that quantity time can be squandered and made worthless. Any hours your four-year-old is spending alone in her room or in front of a television is squandered -- just as lost to your relationship as if you were spending those hours at a jobsite. If the time you spend at work refreshes you and leaves you yearning for your children, with the result that when you are with them you are WITH them, then your relationship will in fact be better for that commitment.
There are traps and challenges that you will have to deal with as a working parent. Transitional stress is the big one: you will be transitioning from your work mode to home mode at exactly the same time your children are transitioning from daycare to homecare -- and both right at the time that your blood-sugar is low and dinner still needs to be cooked. You'll have to be creative to find ways to cope with that stress that bring you together instead of driving you apart. My biggest piece of advice whether you go back to work, or use a nanny, or follow through with your current plan is: get that TV out of your child's bedroom and find a healthier coping mechanism than TV. Good luck, and PM me if you want advice from one who has been there, done it, and looks back with pride and thanksgiving on the outcome.
