My wife hates being a SAHM, wants to find new work, and is battling depression and anxiety (in therapy & on medication). She also hasn’t had time to find a job bc we don’t have help - still finding a babysitter, refuses to put our LO in daycare (21 mo.), and no family in the area. By the weekend, she’s spent and would rather not job search. It’s affected my availability and reliability at work, and my boss and team both feel it. Tips to be a better supporter at home and time manager at work?

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That's tough. What's the plan for childcare when she returns to work? Nanny? Daycare? I only ask because while she may resist daycare now, there needs to be some post-return to work plan.

Delaying support seems to only be prolonging misery. And you can only help so much if you're also single income and need to work full time.

Seems like you need some stable childcare auxillary support for time and happiness. If daycare is inevitably the plan, it feels no-regrets to get moving on that now (other than $). Many places will do part-time arrangement if full-time feels like too much. She'll get time to hunt for a job and begin to rebuild her sense of self outside of being an infant's caregiver.

And for supporting now - daycare hunting and enrollment can be stressful and takes time! That's a place you can help.

The post-RTW plan is daycare (her reasons for not putting him in are safety, health, and ineffectiveness of growth and development within group setting). I need to ask her about timing - if she wants to go back to work, but doesn’t think putting him in daycare makes sense until he’s 3 (according for her research), isn’t she essentially signing her own fate and misery for another year and a half? Maybe two? I don’t get it.

Yes, as someone working FT, it’s hard to work a rigid 9-5 when i have work far beyond that, and have to dip away when she has mental and physical health appointments so I can be on baby duty.

From my experience and what I’ve read: Ineffectiveness of growth and development is not the reason not to do daycare. High quality daycares do a much better job of structured learning and development than most nannies or SAHM/D. The reasons not to do daycare would be (1) concern with attachment / bonding (due to shear time away from primary caregivers), or (2) concern with high stress environment for the kids, which can have some negative impact. I know that wasn’t the main question. I would recommend reading some of Emily Oster’s research / books on parenting decisions and weigh the real tradeoffs.

Sounds like your wife is depressed and that might make her core decision making confused and potentially contradictory. Proceed with empathy

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