Daycare vs Nanny? How To Choose the Best for Your Baby

The importance of quality childcare for professional parents

If you’re a working parent, you need quality childcare. You need to know that you can go to work and trust that your baby is in good hands. You will depend on your caregivers so that you can focus on your work. The childcare providers you choose should fit your family’s lifestyle and budget and I’ll share what I know about choosing a daycare or a nanny – it’s a tough decision!

The differences between a daycare vs nanny

There are so many factors to consider when choosing a nanny versus daycare. Here are some of the biggest differences:

Ratio of childcare providers

With a nanny, your child has 1:1 care. With daycare, it may be 1:4 care, meaning one caregiver may have four babies they’re caring for.  With a nanny, you’re trusting one person to take charge of your baby alone. When they have to go to the bathroom, for example, they will have to put your baby safely in a playpen or bouncy seat, just like you do. There are typically several caretakers with daycare, so they have coverage when they need to go to the bathroom or take a break. With a nanny, if they call in sick, you’ll have to take the day off of work or find backup care.

Transportation to/from daycare

With a nanny, you don’t have to pack up your baby’s things (extra clothes, bottles, solids, diapers, etc.) and physically bring your baby somewhere else before you get yourself to work. Your nanny simply shows up and all you have to do is pack yourself up for the day if you work outside your home. Consider a cold, rainy day. If you live in NYC or any urban area where you rely on public transportation or taxis, think about how much effort is involved in dressing yourself and your baby for the elements, transporting them to daycare, then getting yourself to and from your office, then doing it all again on the way home. If you live in the suburbs, you still have to pack up and load your baby into a car seat with all the things they need for the day, and pick them up at the end of the day. A nanny is hands-down more convenient when you look at it from this viewpoint!

Illnesses

While there are many benefits to daycare, in my opinion, the biggest downside is that your baby will get sick often. Winter months are far worse. There are so many germs in contained areas with other babies and toddlers, and all the kids are building their immune systems so there will be no shortage of illnesses. Every time your child is sick you will have to call in sick or find backup care because you just cannot send a sick baby to daycare. 

Cost of daycare vs nanny

Childcare costs vary widely depending on where you live. If you live in an urban area like NYC, the average rate for a professional nanny is $25-$30 per hour. Of course, you can find nannies for a lower hourly rate in NYC, but if you want quality care from an experienced nanny and you want to pay them fairly (highly recommended when compensating the person charged with your baby’s care!), then expect to pay an average of $25-$30/hour. If you need 50 hours of care per week, that’s $65,000 – $78,000 per year, pre-tax. If you live in rural America, you might pay as little as $20/hour for a nanny. At 50 hours per week, that’s $52,000 per year pre-tax. Daycares in NYC average about $3,000/month, and can be as low as $1,000 per month in rural areas or home-based daycares. So, annual costs for daycare range from $12,000 to $36,000 per year, depending on where you live. From a cost perspective, daycare is less than half the cost, and significantly more affordable. 

Baby sleep training and sleep consulting

Before you start daycare or hire a nanny, consider how your baby will sleep with your caregiver. If your baby depends on you for contact naps, then a nanny is kind of your only option. You can’t expect a daycare provider to contact nap your baby. Even if your baby just needs to be rocked or fed to sleep, it’s a tall order for daycare providers to give this 1:1 attention when caring for several other babies. 

Even if you have a nanny, you should consider how you want your baby to nap with them. It’s still a lot to ask a nanny contact nap your baby (she’ll never get a break!), so consider getting help teaching your little one to sleep independently before you start daycare or hire a nanny. There are thousands of baby sleep consultants who can give you a sleep training “plan” that should theoretically work for nights and naps. However, we often hear from parents that these cookie-cutter sleep training plans don’t work so well in practice, or they take months with lots of tears to implement. If you want more hands-on help with sleep training (and fast, easy results), reach out to us and we’ll come to your home to help your baby learn to fall asleep independently night and day, nap restfully wherever they are, and dependably sleep through the night very quickly. We can get your baby sleeping independently in 3-5 days, and get them on a predictable nap/feed schedule in a couple of weeks. This will make your transition to daycare or nanny much, much easier!

Flexibility and convenience

One of the biggest benefits of a nanny versus daycare is the convenience of having the nanny come to your home. As I mentioned before, it’s so much easier to not have to pack yourself and your child up for the day and transport them to and from daycare. It will make your mornings seamless, and your evenings too. With daycare, you have to be there to pick up your child by 6:00 pm, and it’s a hard cutoff. You cannot be late, which adds a lot of stress to your daily routine. Consider you can also have your nanny bathe your baby before you get home so all you have to do is play with your baby, and feed them before they go to sleep. This gives you extra quality time with your baby, which you know is precious when you’re a working parent!

Socialization and learning in daycare or with a nanny

The biggest benefit to daycare is the socialization aspect. Your child will get used to many different caretakers, and be surrounded by other babies and toddlers of the same age. It’s sweet to see them make friends as they grow and many parents enjoy knowing that their baby is learning to socialize with other children and caregivers. That said, a professional nanny will know other professional nannies and arrange playdates. You can also sign your baby up for classes where your nanny and child can meet others. Nannies are often plugged into a community of other caregivers so that when they go to the playground or join other nannies for playdates, your child will begin making friends that way. 

Health and safety

One of the biggest benefits of a nanny is that your child just won’t get sick as much. There are fewer germs passed to your child with a nanny. And when your baby inevitably picks something up, your nanny will take care of a sick child; daycare will send your baby home, meaning you have to get backup care or take the day off work or work from home. Safety is something else to consider. With 1:1 quality childcare, your nanny will keep your baby safe. If you have any doubts about your nanny’s ability to keep your baby safe, you can put cameras in your home to observe. However, if you do, you should disclose this to your nanny. Otherwise, it may result in trust issues with your nanny and you don’t want that! With daycare, your baby will be with other babies. No matter how safe the daycare setup is, and no matter how many caregivers there are, your baby will likely be injured by another child. This happens more when they are toddlers learning to share toys, and learning to walk, but it happens with younger, crawling babies too. 

Reliability and backup care

A professional nanny should be reliable, punctual, and have a strong immune system. When my kids had a nanny, I was shocked that my nanny never called in sick! That said, illnesses happen, and if your nanny calls in sick, you will have to find backup care or work from home until they recover. That’s not the case with daycare, but consider that daycares are closed for MANY holidays and breaks. You likely won’t have childcare for the weeks between Hannukah, Christmas, and New Year, there will be a Spring Break, and they will be closed for most major holidays. This is a serious inconvenience for working parents and something to consider when deciding whether to hire a nanny or put your child in daycare. Nannies will often take vacations when you do, but you will also have to give them 1-2 weeks of paid leave when they choose (clarify this in your employment agreement!). 

Parent control and communication

One of the biggest complaints I hear from parents about daycare is that the communication with the caregivers is minimal. Daycare providers will share notes about how many ounces they drank, how many minutes they slept, and if they pooped at the end of the day. They can’t spend hours trying to get your baby to eat, so if you have a picky eater, you may find that their lunchbox is still full at the end of the day, and there won’t be an explanation of why they didn’t eat. If there was an accident and your child has a bump or a bruise, a daycare provider may not be able to tell you exactly what happened because they didn’t personally witness an incident with another child. 

With a nanny, you get to control the communication. You get to put a camera in your home if you want to observe your child; you can’t do that with daycare. If you want your nanny to text you throughout the day, you can request that. If you want your nanny to log everything from poops to wet diapers to minutes slept at what time, you can request that too. 

Daycare vs nanny? Choose what’s right for your family

There is no easy answer for what’s right for your family, but I hope this helps you make your decision about a daycare versus a nanny! If you want help prepping for childcare, getting your baby sleeping independently, and feeding/napping on a predictable schedule, reach out – would love to help!