Children were pretty much never raised exclusively by their parents throughout the history of mankind, were they? So I would put quotes around the word "need" instead.
I'm sure not exclusively, and I don't know what a typical daycare schedule is like because my wife stays at home, but e.g. my 2 year old gets up around 7am, and usually takes an hour to eat her breakfast. Then I guess to drop her off somewhere and get to work by 9, we'd have to leave close to 8. Then we might get home around 6, and it's time to eat dinner (again this takes her an hour), take a bath, and bed time.
So 5/7 days, she'd only get her parents telling her to hurry up and eat followed by putting her to bed. That's almost exclusively being raised by a stranger.
I might not put it as aggressively as the other commenter, but I do wonder why it seems common for my peers to use daycare (if they have kids at all). I know they have the means not to. We'll see what happens when the time comes, but I quite like the idea of home schooling or hybrid schooling depending on what everyone wants. The time you get is so limited; to me at least I don't see what could take priority over spending time with them while we can (again, this applies more to people in my social class who have the means). And when people talk about "sacrificing their career"... my work is the means, not the end. To speak of "sacrificing" career for family is just... baffling. Unless you are a trauma surgeon saving lives every day or an amazing scientist inventing cancer cures, I can't believe anyone would say it. Something like principal engineer or director at a fortune 500? It's just a way to make money.
We lost my dad very suddenly when I was a teenager, so I've always had to consider that no matter how much money I make, I'll never be able to buy more time with him, but I can focus my resources on my family having more time together, and hopefully I can pass my kids that lesson without them having to learn it so directly (or at least so young. At some point we all need to learn that lesson directly). Having a stay-at-home-parent means we're buying 10,400 hours of her and her mom together before age 5. Good deal at almost any price, and it only becomes a better deal when you have more kids. Likewise with remote work, if I get an extra 1.5 hours per workday (commute + seeing them when I take a break), that's almost 400 extra hours together per year. Sometimes my daughter comes and sits on my lap while I'm working on the computer, and I'll put Curious George on for her on another monitor. How lucky I am!
When people in my social strata talk about daycare, I just want to shout at them. Not angry like the other commenter, but in a more pleading tone: don't you realize! Life is fleeting! Didn't anyone tell you! Oh well.
This is a different argument, and a bit weird one. Why do you want to shout at other people for having preferences that are different from yours (or rather your wife's)? For me personally supervising small kids 12/7/365 sounds like hell on earth, I'd prefer almost any other occupation.
Like I said it's more of a "stop! Don't you see what you're missing? You can't have it back!" kind of thing. If you're a neurosurgeon, sure, but are you really going to look back one day and wish you spent one more day in stand-ups or trying to increase conversion or debugging certificate issues or whatever? It's their lives and I'd never say anything (beyond abstract conversation online) but the degree to which it seems so normal is freaky to me. I do think being career-oriented is pushed very strongly by society (or the bubbles I'm in), especially on girls, which is something I worry about for my daughters. It makes me wonder sometimes whether introducing them to church would be a smart move even if I don't think I could ever really get into it.
I wouldn't want to supervise other people's kids all day, but my own? They do all sorts of cute stuff, and sometimes they just want to come sit on you and hug you. It's not even comparable to corporate office work. My biggest worry for them is that they won't get to have that too one day.
