Childcare Centre or Maids?

Recently one lady forumer in a forum I actively engaged, was asking if she should send her three kids -age 4, 2 and 1 respectively, in a childcare centre or employed a maid to look after them? She plans to go back to work and has a mother-in-law who sometimes comes to help her look after the kids.

To some people, this is not such a difficult situation - just employed a maid and asked the mother-in-law to supervise in the house; in fact, this is a cheaper arrangement than sending them to a childcare centre. Besides, the kids theoretically could be better taken care of in a home environment.

But not all parents have the luxury of a mother-in-law or mother who could help in this manner. Nowadays, some "modern" mother-in-laws or mothers might not even want to look after the grandchildren full time. So some forumers were sharing their experience on just having a maid at home with their kid or kids with a CCTV installed to monitor the maid. They said that so far the maid, who knew the existence of the camera, was taking good care of the kids. Others, like me, would never trust a maid to be alone at home with the young kids unless they are of schooling age.

Just a few days ago, the Straits Times (ST), reported that a maid was ruled not guilty or negligent of an infant death. http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Courts%2Band%2BCrime/STIStory_194765.html?vgnmr=1
STOMP also have a series of readers' reports on maids : http://singaporeseen.stomp.com.sg/singaporeseen/searchArticleList.do
After reading all these news, most people would roughly know what are the issues faced employing a maid.

The key is that most people entrust their maids with too much responsibilites (not chores), they expect their maids to be professional nanny to the children. Can they? Will they? They are merely in the proper term known as "Foreign domestic helpers". If they are just a helper, how can you blame them when things happened to your children? Why not blame yourself for completely trusting the maids to take care of the children "swee swee"? Certainly, maids are sometimes negligent, just like any human beings, so be the main caregiver to the children, not the maids. In fact, I tried very hard myself, to remember that they are just helpers when handling my maid.

Then, looks like the childcare centre is the only option for people with no parental support? Certainly an option. However, I do not recommend sending infants to infant care centre or toddlers below 2 years old to childcare centre. I think I am quite a "difficult to please" mother in this issue. Mokkie, my girlfriend, would tell you otherwise. *smile* I often mention her because she seems to be doing things quite differently from me, in comparison among my 3 buddy girlfriends, Ning and Koon.

Nevertheless, in the choice of maids or childcare centres or other arrangements, there are bound to be trade-offs in any option.