do you entrust your baby to someone not related to you?

Why do you think a stranger might harm your child? There seems to be two questions. If there was not one of your relatives to look after the baby, I would ask one of my friends to babysit. In the old days that's how many teenagers made a little extra cash, they babysat. However in the case of someone I did not know, I would get references and if she was completely unknown, I'd watch how she reacts with children.

We don't live in the same town as any of my family so they are not an option when it comes to a babysitter for my children. But I'd never leave them with someone that I did not know personally. Our babysitters are usually my friends older children or my friends themselves. If I need a sitter for a long period of time; once in awhile my stepmom will come here to watch them.

Whenever I wanted to go out for some urgent work, I used to leave my son with my husband's mother. If it is for weeks, I used to leave him with my mother.

That is a hard decision to make but there are sitter agencies who hire a sitter for you. They are screened for background check and stuff. That is how we found our babysitters. I think they are safe to sit our baby and I would never let anyone that I don't know babysit my child. I trust the agency with every sitter they send to us.

I would have a really hard time trusting my children to someone I did not know personally. Thankfully I have never had to do this. When I worked outside the home, my mother in law would watch my children and after I had my third child, I became a stay at home mom. Then when we would go out, it was always my friends who would watch my children for me, it was something we did for each other and that way we knew our children always had excellent care. Now my oldest is twelve and if I go out, I get her to watch her brother and sister so I still never have had to face this problem with getting a stranger to watch my children . If ever that were the case, I would make sure to check the person out thoroughly and probably want a criminal background done on them as well. Better safe than sorry as I see it.

I don't entrust anyone outside of the family. I am so bad about this still to this day and my oldest is almost 3 years old. I still haven't had a babysitter outside my children's grandparents and my SIL one time. That's it. I guess it's b/c I haven't had to have someone watch the kids yet. I do have my 2 1/2 year old in preschool for 2 1/2 hours 2 days a week but that's it. At some point I'm going to have to go back to work though and that's going to be hard to find a caretaker I can really trust.