title: Why does pandas return timestamps instead of datetime objects when calling pd.to_datetime()?
body: <p>According to the <a href="http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.13.1/generated/pandas.tseries.tools.to_datetime.html" rel="noreferrer">manual</a>, <code>pd.to_datetime()</code> should create a datetime object.</p>
  
  <p>Instead, when I call <code>pd.to_datetime("2012-05-14")</code>, I get a timestamp object! Calling <code>to_datetime()</code> on that object finally gives me a datetime object.</p>
  
  <pre><code>In [1]: pd.to_datetime("2012-05-14")
  Out[1]: Timestamp('2012-05-14 00:00:00', tz=None)
  
  In [2]: t = pd.to_datetime("2012-05-14")
  In [3]: t.to_datime()
  Out[2]: datetime.datetime(2012, 5, 14, 0, 0)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there an explanation for this unexpected behaviour?</p>