Posted on 03/26/2007 2:41:17 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.
The finding held up regardless of the child's sex or family income, and regardless of the quality of the day care center. With more than 2 million U.S. preschoolers attending day care, the increased disruptiveness very likely contributes to the load on teachers who must manage large classrooms, the authors argue.
On the positive side, they also found that time spent in high-quality day care centers was correlated with higher vocabulary scores through elementary school.
The research, being reported today as part of the federally financed Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, tracked more than 1,300 children in various arrangements, including staying home with a parent; being cared for by a nanny or a relative; or attending a large day care center. Once the subjects reached school, the study used teacher ratings of each child to assess behaviors like interrupting class, teasing and bullying.
The findings are certain to feed a long-running debate about day care, experts say.
"I have accused the study authors of doing everything they could to make this negative finding go away, but they couldn't do it," said Sharon Landesman Ramey, director of the Georgetown University Center on Health and Education. "They knew this would be disturbing news for parents ... if that's what you're finding, then you have to report it."
Past arguments
The debate reached a high pitch in the late 1980s, during the so-called day care wars, when social scientists questioned whether it was better for mothers to work or stay home. Day care workers and their clients, mostly working parents, argued it was the quality of the care that mattered and not the setting. But the new report affirms similar results from smaller studies in the past decade suggesting setting matters.
"This study makes it clear that it is not just quality that matters," said Jay Belsky, one of the study's principal authors, who helped set off the debate in 1986 with a paper suggesting that nonparental child care could cause developmental problems. Belsky was then at Pennsylvania State University and has since moved to the University of London.
That the troublesome behaviors lasted through at least sixth grade, he said, should raise a broader question: "So what happens in classrooms, schools, playgrounds and communities when more and more children, at younger and younger ages, spend more and more time in centers, many that are indisputably of limited quality?"
Report has its critics
Others experts were quick to question the results. The researchers could not randomly assign children to one kind of care or another; parents chose the care that suited them. That meant there was no control group, so determining cause and effect was not possible.
The study did not take into account employee turnover, a reality in many day care centers, said Marci Young, deputy director of the Center for the Child Care Workforce, which represents day care workers.
The study, a $200 million project financed by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, recruited families in 10 cities from hospitals, after mothers gave birth. The researchers regularly contacted the mothers to find out where their children were being cared for, and visited those caregivers to see how attentive and how skilled they were.
Every year spent in day care centers for at least 10 hours per week was associated with a 1 percent higher score on a standardized assessment of problem behaviors completed by teachers, said Dr. Margaret Burchinal, a co-author of the study and a psychologist at the University of North Carolina.
"there was no control group, so determining cause and effect was not possible"
Somehow this is never mentioned when the topic is global warming or some other "desired" cause/effect relationship...
"So I should ask ????husband?"
sure - why not?
you suggested I'm deluded, and if I'm deluded I cannot give you a coherent answer.
hubby will tell you if I'm deluded or not.
" are most of you from rural areas? or small towns? "
yes - it is much easier to get by on one income here than if we lived in a city.
"I live in New Jersey and the cost of living is high."
my sister-in-law lived in Jersey for some years.
when they rented an apartment she was able to stay home, when they bought the house she had to go back to work.
"So maybe you just don't have the ability understand other peoples lives."
the article isn't debating the high cost of living in cities - I think most people are aware of that.
The article is about a study conducted about the affects of daycare.
"But keep your mind closed and nothing will fall in."
pot calling the kettle black.
"The child was about two years old when the woman divorced the father and decided to look for "something more" for her.
This woman was the product of a very liberal upbringing, and was very open, before she got pregnant, about her disdain for the typical burdens of parenting."
she could have been depressed. I've seen women act like that when they suffered from postpartum depression.
The really sad thing is that "stay-at-home" moms aren't always the cat's meow, either.
Many are seeing day care as a way for them to be unburdened by the child on a regular basis. I know a person like this right now. Why doesn't she just give the child to her mother who loves taking care of him anyway (even if she is an hour away)?
"despite people telling us he needed prep for "socialization" purposes"
Total BS. How do these fools think we survived for centuries without "day care"/pre-school - and indeed, had less "anti-social" behavior?
Isn't being cooped up with young children exactly what day care workers do?
I understand that the "Brightest & Best" need quality time and space to do the planing necessary to give us workers a socialist utopia.
Yes we do, don't we?
I was working part-time in the evenings for a while last year, now I just do it on a fill in basis. But because it is at the Moose Lodge, I can bring my daughter with me if my husband is running late getting home from work.
I thought we were encouraging socialization skills?
"Isn't being cooped up with young children exactly what day care workers do?"
yes - that is exactly what they do.
And their patience can be tested by children just as much as anyone else.
That is the challenge for anyone working with children - moms, daycare workers, teachers - how to be patient.
Sorry, but you were born in '56 making you a something of a disco-boomer. Things had changed by then, and Dr. Spock was all the rage (hence the hippie problem, who were children of the 1st wave).
Dr. Spock is ultimately what made brats and screwed up this country.
My mother was a TEEN in the '50s born in '37, and she will tell you different. Things were more civil and behaved then, to her (as well as my dad, but they were in totally different environments - mom in Baltimore proper, dad in Maine).
Of course there are always brats, but the impression is they were definitely the exception the proved the rule.
Look at how people these days remark in public when a child is GOOD and MANNERED! In mom's day such would never have occurred to them to compliment on GOOD manners - indeed the opposite! People were good at staring down OBNOXIOUS children and their parents, if you ask her. Nowadays, we just ignore, and compliment the nice children.
HEADLINE: New Study Determines Water Is Wet...
You make an excellent point about remarks on good mannered children, as opposed to the norm of the past about the poor mannered ones. My husband and I are continually complimented on our child's behavior in public.......nowif she would just behave that way at home and school :)
I was born in 1960, and would have been in serious dire straits if I behaved in public the way I see some children behave now. Buton the other hand I have a close friend, who is only 24, and her children are just as well mannered and well behaved in public as my child is.
Actually, I have heard this. I've been called a "leach". I've been asked how I can stand "being a non-person". I've been called a "breeder". I've had friends who try to stay home for a few months, then go back to work because they couldn't stand "not having my own life". I love the backward compliments of people who laud my decision to stay home with my family because "I couldn't stand giving up a meaningful existence" and who couldn't do it simply because being a SAHM was the most "boring" thing they could imagine.
The attitude does exist. At first I found it hurtful. Now I just find it sad.
I would agree to an extent.
Instead of seeing all "working mothers" as selfishly choosing a job over raising kids, we do have to realize that alot of it is almost forced.
Not that you can't live on 1 salary or even good wages. That is also a choice.
However, this all goes back to, as does most everything, the INCOME TAX.
And how it's gotten out of control.
If we had no income tax as the Founders would've wished, it would be that much easier for women to stay home with children. (And hopefully not CHOOSE to put them in pre-school, which as noted earlier too many are these days.)
They learn, at a younger age, how to rise to the top of the pack by bullying and dominating others.
There aren't conservative men who divorce their wives and have disdain for parenting? So working women have disdain for parenting and are looking to get involved with other men and run off with them? Just to clue you in working women carry the typical burdens of parenting and then some. But more often than not the husband has to be more involved with the children.
No one had come down on working moms. But Cath26 became defensive.
A lot of women need to work. A lot of women don't need to work. A lot of women can handle families and work. Some can't. It's a mixed bag. It's not a perfect world but it's okay to discuss options and outcomes.
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