You have a place to pay bills and make doctor appointments. You can eat lunch relatively slowly. You get one meal a day where you don’t have to clean up yogurt and purees. You have your own chair, with your own cardigan sweater on the back, your own drawer, a small bottle of Advil nestled within sharpened pencils and pens that work. You have coworkers — other adults! And working mothers, now there’s another reason for you to rejoice: two new studies confirm that sending your child to day care can be just fine and actually be good for his or her health.

Researchers have found that attending daycare or even playgroups can decrease the risk of a child developing the most common type of childhood leukemia by a very dramatic 30%. As the BBC reports:

…it is also thought that contracting some childhood infections - which are often readily spread in environments such as playgroups where children are in close contact with each other - may prime the immune system against leukemia.

So remember that the next time you’re madly and desperately trying to work from home while taking care of a sick baby who’s on his fourth ear infection of the season and you’ve used all your sick days, are behind on your projects, are worried about ear tubes, and are thinking that you might as well have been issued a vat of amoxicillin last November to last you through April.

Meanwhile, authors from the Work and Family Institute find that very few children in day care wish that they could have more time with their parents; rather, when asked what they would change about their parents’ work, children wished that their parents were less stressed out and tired. Score! for the quality-not-quantity camp!

I’ve been both a working mom and a stay-at-home mom. And from personal experience, I can confirm the no-brainer that indeed, working or not, parenting young children can be exhausting and stressful. But oh, the unparalleled joys.

Use Your Words
What are some of the benefits of daycare your family has experienced?