My wife and I staggered our work schedules to minimize the time spent at daycare.
The one thing we didn’t expect: The kids absolutely loved daycare. It was a great place with excellent caretakers. Most of all, it was socialization with their friends.
From reading sneering interment comments (like the one above) I was led to believe that daycare would be an awful experience and I should feel guilty for sending our kids away. Instead, it turned out to be a very fun thing they looked forward to that was also great for their development. Our kids still hang out with friends they made early in daycare days.
People who stay at home and take care of their own kids aren’t skipping socialization. They still participate in various activities where there are other kids. But, the kids do get a lot higher quality care from stay at home parents than a daycare can afford. If you stay at the daycare and observe things, you’ll see how difficult it is for the workers to split attention.
Oh and you get a lot less illness if avoiding daycare. And that regained time, is development time and time to go do fun things.