Day Care

Using research information from your Textbook (Pages 147-150), discuss the impact of Day Care on infants.

Impact of Day Care on infants is hard to assess, economic, cultural and circumstantial backgrounds can either better or worse the impact if any on an infant. The study in England found that overall infants in nonmaternal care were more likely to be emotionally immature later on but then again these mothers were young and poor. As noted youth and poverty correlate with childrens behavioral problem no matter who the caregiver is. In this case is next to impossible to know how these infants would have developed if they were cared for exclusively by their mothers-they might have been worse off, or they might have been better off. Family day care for instance could be better because it tends to be in home setting and with fewer kids but on the other hand it can be problematic for infants and toddlers because they get less attention than the older kids. Another option might be center day care in which several paid adults cared for many children, they group the kids according to age so infants and toddlers are separated but quality varies according to the set standard by law. In the US parents encounter a mix of quality,price, type of care and government subsidies. Some care centers are excellent but come with a pricy tag and the more affordable ones do just the mininmun to meet the parents expectations. A study in Canada found that of the 30% of infants who were cared for by someone other than their mothers, from high income families fared less well in nonmaternal care than other boys did. By age 4 they were slightly more likely to be aggressicve and to have emotional problems. In contrast, Canadian boys from low income families actually benefited from nonmaternal care. The study found no differential effects of nonmaternal care in girls. Once again no policy implications can be taken from these findind due to the fact that care varied so much in quality, location and provider. In the US an ongoing longitudal study found many cognitive benefits of infant day care, especially in language. The social consequences are not as cleared but most analyses of the data found that secure attachments to the mother was as common amonth infants in center care as among infants cared for at home. As other small studies has shown infant day care even 40 hours a week before age 1 has much less influence on child developemtn than does the warmth of the mother-infant relationship. The importance of the mother (even shen she is employed full time) was evident in the study. Infant day care was correlated with later emotional problems only when the mother was insensitive and when the infant spent more than 20 hours a week in a poor-quality program, with too few caregivers who had too little training. Again the study found that boys were affected more than girls. Boys who received extensive nonmaternal care became more quarrelsome