Home Care vs. Daycare: What's Right for My Baby?

You can choose the wrong size diapers or screw up your swaddling technique, but deciding on child care is one parenting choice you want to get right the first time. If you’re lucky, you’ll have multiple options to consider, including both established daycare centers and providers who work out of their homes. But how to choose? To find out how to make that call, we talked to Tina Pascoe, a nurse who works with Nurses for Daycare, a Connecticut-based consulting and training firm that specializes in health and safety of child care centers.

Home Care Pros and Cons
Home-based care tends to be less expensive than daycare centers, although costs vary greatly from place to place. In Massachusetts, the state where child care is most expensive, full-time center-based care for an infant cost an average of $17,062 per year, compared to $10,666 for home care centers, according to a 2016 report by Child Care Aware of America.

Home care is consistent in that the same person will always be supervising your child, and this type of setting tends to be cozier than sterile daycare centers. However, this setting does have drawbacks. You have to find a provider you really trust, and the provider may have limited and inflexible hours of operation. And if your caregiver gets sick or takes vacations, you may have to scramble to find alternative care.

Daycare Pros and Cons
Daycare centers tend to be more strongly regulated for health and safety than home care centers. However, regulations vary by state, so it’s important to familiarize yourself with your state’s guidelines.

Pascoe works primarily in Connecticut, where she says that regulations for daycare centers are much stricter than they are for home care centers. In her state, for example, daycare centers are required to have weekly visits by a licensed Child Care Health Consultant. “The consultant reviews physical examinations, immunizations, environmental health and safety, medications, first aid kits, developmental, illness review, etc.,” she says. “Group care is a much safer environment than family providers, where this is not required and there is no one to do [weekly] health and safety reviews,” she explains.

One downside of daycare is that because of the large staff, you might not always know the adults who will be caring for your baby on any given day. And daycare centers tend to have larger classes, which means less personal attention for your baby and a greater risk of catching illnesses from other children.

How to Choose
If you’re not sure about what type of setting is right for your baby, check out both. Pascoe suggests asking yourself questions as you tour prospective centers.

• What are the staff ratios? There should be no more than four children to every adult in infant settings — or fewer, depending on the ages of the
infants and state regulations.
• Are there safety measures in place, such as cameras and locked doors, to keep unauthorized people out? Are there emergency exits and
procedures for fires and other emergencies?
• Does the center have an open-door policy that allows parents to come in anytime and observe their children?
• Are staff trained in pediatric CPR and first aid?
• Is the center NAEYC accredited?
• Are there any visible safety hazards, like chemicals, hot drinks or choking hazards that are accessible to children?
• Are there age-appropriate toys and activities available?
• Are the staff loving and attentive?

Ultimately, your decision should come down not just to setting, but to people. It’s more important to find warm, smart caregivers whom you trust with your child than it is to find a center to fits your preconceived notion of the right setting. “Child care is only as good as its staff,” Pascoe says.



Kathryn Walsh is a freelance writer specializing in parenting and travel topics. Her work has appeared on mom.me, TheBump.com, and USAToday.com.