Im a family law attorney who deals wth child care costs or the lack thereof in separating families on a daily basis, as part of support calculations. I've never seen a SAHM or SAHD have their kids in daycare. Not once. Because childcare is super expensive and when one parent isn't working, the cost is prohibitive. In fact, that's the reason many parents decide one parent will stay home- because child care costs are so expensive they actually cancel out the second income in many cases. So it's not at all normal or common or more than extremely rare, IMO.
That being said, maybe she wasn't a full-time SAHM. Or maybe she just use childcare as a babysitter for a couple hours now and then when she needed to get things done. That's different.
Either way, I don't know how it's relevant to her disappearance. Are people suggesting she couldn't manage her kids or something and wanted to be away from them? Because by all immediate accounts, this woman lived for them and would never have left them. Nobody hesitated saying that.
I'm struggling with this too. Not casting aspersions, just saying it's an indicator - if it's true that she was unemployed and had her kids in full time day care - it's an indication that she wasn't a happy full time stay at home mom. I really don't see how it can be looked at any differently - if she was really "all about her children" they wouldn't be in full time day care while she stayed home. Barring health issues, of course.
And to me, that's a critical point that could make it possible that she left.
Sometimes, the way people describe people they love is really how they describe themselves, IMHO. Someone who says about a dearly beloved woman that "she's all about her kids, she's a hands on mother" is really about themselves, and their life, not hers.