This is the second installment of a two-part series on childcare.
A few weeks ago, I decided to write an article about nursery schools. I wanted to provide parents with accurate information about the pros and cons of sending their babies and children to daycare. Nursery school here refers to a commercial nursery school.
I wrote this article using information I learned from reviewing some of the decades of research.
This news received mixed reviews, some of which were negative. I was wondering how reading this might be helpful for parents who are forced to send their babies and toddlers to daycare, or who have already decided to send their babies and toddlers to daycare. At the nursery school.
It can be very difficult to find affordable day care, let alone quality, affordable day care, and finding reliable and affordable alternatives to day care, such as babysitters and nannies, can be very difficult. It can be even more difficult.
Still, I was concerned that parents should know. In order to make informed decisions about what we want for our children, we need to know the research on outcomes for children who attend day care.
And you need to know what the important variables are.
However, the debate surrounding daycare centers is complex. And it’s politicized.
Talking about the potential adverse effects of daycare can be interpreted as anti-feminist.
Or it could be interpreted as disrespect for parents who feel that being home full-time doesn’t suit their temperament. This includes parents who received professional training or had career aspirations before having children, or who feel that work provides meaning to their lives.
speak for baby
But my question is this: Given all this, who will be the baby’s advocate?
We avoid this topic because we don’t want to seem anti-feminist or indifferent to the economic realities of many families.
However, I have spent my entire career learning and understanding children’s emotional development and advocating for them. And now I don’t want it to stop.
And this is the problem. In my training as a psychologist and psychoanalyst, I have found that babies up to about 2 years of age develop best when they are cared for by one or two primary caregivers. And what I read about research on day care didn’t deter me. In fact, it confirmed what I had already learned.
For optimal development, young children need to be able to form secure attachments with one, two, or even three adults who are responsive, affectionate, stable, and consistent. Nurseries often keep babies in large rooms with a variety of caregivers.
Babies need to know the smells, sounds, and touch of one, two, or three people to care for them. They need to know the person’s rhythm and how to soothe, feed, and play. This kind of routine and consistency gives your baby a sense of security. This allows you to predict what will happen and when. This is the basis for building a basic relationship of trust.
And this is not political. Really!
What is political is whether our society and government provide parents with the resources to provide for their babies.
Parents who have to work cannot be blamed because our government does not have adequate provisions for family leave for the first year of a baby’s life.
And you can’t blame parents if they don’t have access to quality child care when they have to go back to work in a few weeks or months.
Leave after childbirth is usually 3 months. And this is considered generous by many. But your baby doesn’t stop needing a primary caregiver after three months.
If they are firmly attached to a person, that person cannot be replaced. they are unique. And their presence helps maintain a secure attachment for the baby.
So we need to speak up for babies. Because we don’t make the resources that families need available to them, what they need doesn’t change.
What will change is the health of our babies and children.
Research results
Because, sadly, some studies are concerning. A very large Canadian study found that extended stays in daycare by 4.5 hours predicted negative outcomes in social competence, externalizing problems, and adult-child conflict, with rates generally It was found that the number of children who did not attend nursery school was three times that of children who did not attend nursery school. Children who attended day care showed higher levels of anxiety, hyperactivity, and aggression than their siblings who did not attend day care. Differences were also found in mothers’ sensitivity to their children attending nursery school. 1
Additionally, another study found that children had higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol when they were in daycare than when they were at home. 1,2
We do not know exactly why this result was obtained, but the following hypothesis can be made. Since primitive humans, babies may have been cared for by relatives and community members as well as their parents, but group sizes have always been small. Throughout the course of human evolution, infants and young children were not cared for in large groups, with a few small exceptions (e.g., in the kibbutzim of Israel, extensive research has shown that this arrangement A social experiment that was canceled because it was deemed inappropriate (was ideal for children and families). 3
Spending long periods of time in large groups with multiple caregivers appears to be stressful for many infants and young children.
At the same time, there were some positive discoveries. The study cited above found that most children who attended daycare were better prepared for school than those who did not. And children who grew up in highly economically disadvantaged households with depressed mothers were overall better off attending daycare than staying at home.
So what does this mean?
In my opinion, this means parents should make careful choices regarding childcare. You should think about what’s important to you, what’s best for you, and what’s best for your baby or toddler. They have to weigh the pros and cons. And you should think about how to provide as much one-on-one care as possible for infants and young children. Whether this means changing your schedule to reduce the amount of time your baby spends at daycare, or advocating for less time at daycare. Teacher-to-baby ratios, whether that means hiring a loving and competent babysitter, setting up a nanny share with a nanny you can commit to for at least a year or two, or leaving your home entirely. Does it mean that there is?
Parents cutting back on work can hurt their professional careers, but it’s important to ask yourself, “Is it worth it for a few years?” Is it for our babies and toddlers?
Think about it.
