Yeah, I think we're all grownup enough to toss this judgemental crap about "OMG someone else is raising your kids!" It's time to look at a bit of history.
In the past most people lived in villages of 50-250 people. Everyone had 6+ kids. Having so many kids meant each one wasn't treated as preciously. If you have little Johnny and Jane, then Johnny and Jane might be unique special snowflakes. But if you have Johnny, Jane, Marty, Maria, George, Georgina, Robert and Roberta, then... wait, when was Marty's birthday, again?
Since everyone has 6 kids, that also meant that as well as their 2-4 surviving grandparents, every kid had 6+ aunties and uncles and 20+ cousins. There was always someone to watch over the smaller children. Always. Your children were
always being brought up by someone else. And this was considered to be
a good thing. It was good for children to kick around with other children and get the input of a whole bunch of different adults on life and skills. Cousin Jane would teach you to climb trees, Uncle Jim would teach you to cut wood, Grandma Jenny would teach you how to cook vegie soup, and well Auntie Marie was always trouble, but at least she'd have some wild stories to tell of her travels.
Everyone brought up
everyone's children.
Then along came clean drinking water and vaccination, and infant mortality went from 25 to 2%. With that and industrialisation, family income went up, and pensions appeared - there was enough spare wealth to pay people to sit around doing nothing productive. Previously, you needed to have 6+ kids to have 4-5 survive, leaving 1-2 to look after you in your old age, and maybe 1 of them would make good, become an artisan or priest or something and bring some wealth and prestige to the family. But with indoor plumbing, pensions and education out there, almost all the kids survived, and you didn't need them to look after you, and each of them could get a good education. So now we're down to 1-2 children per couple.
But 1-2 children per couple means we have them later, too. Now we don't have 2-4 surviving grandparents, we have 1-2, and usually they're so old they can't help much. And 1-2 children per generation means maybe just 1-2 aunties or uncles, and at best 5-6 cousins. This might be enough except that we're not in villages any more, so those people are scattered across the city, often the country, and sometimes even internationally. So we're down to just the parents.
With just the parents and 1-2 children, it's not enough that the children just grow up to be more or less healthy and non-criminal, they all have to be great sportspeople and violinists and take out the maths prize, too. With fewer children, we repose all our unreasonable hopes and dreams and own regrets into their little selves.
And somehow this is all supposed to happen with the support of just 1-2 parents? Oh and by the way, advance your career lots, too, or you're a failure, and for fuck's sakes don't get fat because that's the worst thing ever. Hurry up, Chantelle dear and get your shoes on, time for your lacrosse game.
If you just want your children to grow up more or less healthy and non-criminal, you need two parents for that, the stats are that one alone often can't do it. That means both mother and father involved with their child. And if you want more than that, then you definitely need more people involved - teachers, coaches and so on. Since we're not living in villages hoeing beans any more, if you want your child to be more than healthy and non-criminal, you have to
pay for that help.
Again: children have
always been brought up by adults other than their own parents. Always. The only question is whether they're relatives doing it for free, or non-relatives being paid for it.
Relevant sidenote: old episodes of Sesame Street are marked PG because the children do things like ride through construction sites on their bicycles without their helmets on, and in the first episode an old man invites a little girl into his house to have ice cream. Fifty years ago, this was considered normal: children will take risks, and other adults will engage with them harmlessly.
Now our culture has changed, and any risk at all is unacceptable, and all unrelated adults are to be considered a threat. You can't insist that parents keep their children in cotton wool but that they must do it all alone. That just doesn't fucking work. It takes a village to raise a child, the only question is whether some people in that village get paid for it.
I have chosen to stay at home with my children. But this is not a moral requirement, nor is it wrong for one gender and right for the other. If a woman wants to whack her kids in childcare for five days a week while she does her job, well they're her kids, so she can do as she fucking well likes. If the father doesn't like it then he can quit his job and stay at home with the kids instead. That's what I did.
One of my pet hates is the chickenhawk, the person crying for war who would never themselves volunteer to fight. Likewise, anyone telling others to live a life they themselves would never live. It's your life, and your kids, do whatever you think is good. I only suggest that there are options other than those most commonly chosen - the woman staying at home and doing zero paid work - and that each couple should sit down and discuss these, and review things over time. It's important to plan and discuss and plan and discuss and so on, otherwise one day you just
flip out like Gemma Atherton.