By Samuel Rosenberg From Caribbean360

NEW YORK, United States – A tough dilemma is the choice of knowing whether you should stay at home and look after and raise a young child or find suitable employment while your children go to day-care, which is an expensive option and a drain on your salary. How can you know which is the right decision to take?

There are emotional decisions to evaluate and understand as well as all of the financial implications involved in making one of the biggest decisions of your life. You can change your decision if you feel it is wrong, but you will have lost the time elapsed since you decided to either stay at home or go out to work.

Even though this is an immense emotional consideration for your family, the final decision may be dictated by all of the financial elements that are involved. You will find matters become much clearer if you write down on a sheet of paper all of the financial positives and negatives so that you can at least make a clear choice of your best financial judgment.

If your child is going to spend some early years in day-care, there will almost certainly be an expense of enrolment at the school if you do not have relatives who can look after your child for between one and five years. Even then, you have to be sure that your child is being cared for properly with that relative, because you do not want your child to live in a misguided lifestyle purely because you wish to go out to work to earn more money for your family.

The potential income you can earn from employment or self-employment while your child goes to day-care has to be more than sufficient to cover all of the costs associated to the day-care and leave adequate funds remaining each week or month to make your choices worthwhile.

Many studies and psychologists have agreed that children who experience sufficient time in a day care environment are able to develop their social skills much earlier than children who stay at home, mostly because they are placed in a social setting at a very young age and have to learn how to react with other children.

Because professional teachers are employed at day-care venues, a child’s vocabulary and mathematical successes can be enhanced and they will understand a school atmosphere and schedule by spending this time with other children.

You will need to choose your day-care very carefully because with such a high expense against your salary it has to be worth your while both financially and emotionally. A poor daycare centre can be purely an expensive baby-sitting service, while a great preschool will prepare your children for their next school years.

When you are comparing the potential loss of your earnings as a parent stays out of the workforce for a number of years, you will need to understand that you may still have to work reduced hours because the day-care hours may not match those of your employment and your children will be prone to common illnesses like colds, flu and ear infections, which they will collect from contact with young children.

Any decision is reversible and after all due consideration it is the best interests of your child that you will be balancing with the financial constraints of your family’s budget, but any conclusion you do make will always be the best for the child over the long term.

The writer is the founder and CEO of Axcel Finance Ltd., the leading regional microfinance institution. Share your thoughts and email your questions to [email protected]

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/business/samuel-rosenberg-the-working-mom-dilemma#ixzz3H51x7WQt