[ergocoder]

Assuming the income stays the same, I'd happily swap places. I suspect many people would.

There are 2 further points:

1. I'd say the ideal setting is for both parents to work and hire a sitter even though it might financially net the same (or affordably negative) as having one stay-at-home parent. Because a human needs community and diverse things to do, not just one thing over and over everyday for years. Both of the parents will be much happier.

2. When people say taking care of baby/toddler is difficult, it's almost always about not eating well and/or not sleep well. Eating would take an hour of spoon-feeding because the kid wouldn't eat by themselves. Kids wouldn't be able to sleep by themselves. You must focus on solving these 2 areas first. Once they are solved, it gets a lot easier to take care of a baby/toddler.

[briHass]

While stay at home parenting isn't, and shouldn't have to be, for everyone, it also isn't somehow a downgrade from being in the working world. If anything is doing something 'over and over', it's trudging to some job to push papers/keyboard keys around for 8+ hours.

[ergocoder]

Taking care of kids without a sitter means you have to watch the kid 24h/day. Every waking moment needs to be supervised.

> some job to push papers/keyboard keys around for 8+ hours.

There are tons of socializing during the work time. Nobody sits and types for 8 hours a day without moving.

[em-bee]

granted our kids were easy, but kids don't need to sleep by themselves. see attachment parenting. we let the kids sleep in our bed which solved the sleeping problem and the feeding problem because the kids could get milk at night without my wife having to get up and be wide awake.

i can't speak for my wife's experience directly, but while she complained about other issues, lack of sleep was never her problem.

and the idea that work gives you more community than staying at home is nonsense. we always had family and friends around, and taking the babies to events or visit others is also a non issue.

about swapping places, i did. when our first was 1 year old, my wife started to work. i was always working from home, and i loved the idea if taking care of the kids at home, it's been something i wanted to do all my life, except when it actually happened i was lost. i didn't know what to do with the kids and things only got better for me when i started working part-time and we hired a maid. but this was my problem, it wasn't at all my wife's problem while she was at home. also, as the kids got older, things got easier, and i'd happily repeat the experience now that i am better prepared for it.

practically speaking the most annoying part of my wife working for both of us was breastmilk pumping. the benefits of going to work are not worth that hassle.

[ergocoder]

> kids don't need to sleep by themselves. see attachment parenting

I misused the word a bit.

I meant the kid had a hard time falling asleep. They would get cranky. They would take >30 minutes to fall asleep. They would get up and walk around wanting to play but they would be cranky because they were sleepy. Co-sleeping or not is independent of this.

[em-bee]

Co-sleeping or not is independent of this

unless the child doesn't like to be held then i believe co-sleeping does help here.

cuddling together, maybe reading a story provides an alternative to directly sleeping or playing, allowing the child to settle down until it falls asleep...

from my observation, a child not wanting to go to sleep is coming from the child needing to sleep alone.