THE EFFECTS OF CHILD CARE (DAY CARE) ON THE SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN.

By Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D.
Amsterdam, August 10, 2009

 

 

 

 

I have some credentials to speak about child are and its effects. While I was Deputy Assistant Secretary for the US Department of Health and Human Services during the Bush I Administration I procured a major overview of the literature from a group of the top developmental psychologists. That review for the federal government can also be found in the book “Human Attachment” by Virginia Colin, the integrator of the research for the working group.¹ Also during that period I worked with the US National Institute for Child Health and Development team to ensure (and pay for) the insertion of marriage quality and family structure in NICHD’s longitudinal study, the Study of Early Child Care.²

 

Later, while a Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation I supervised the gathering of data for the FamilyFacts.Org database and the writing of a synthesis paper by Janet Jacob, then a PhD student and now a faculty member of Brigham Young University (from which paper I have drawn extensively, today). That paper was reviewed by two of the world’s top experts on child care …Jay Belsky of the University of London and Margaret Owen, of the University of Texas at Dallas.

 

 

General Introduction:

Early infant experiences and mother-child attachment have always been prominent and foundational in developmental and clinical psychology.
Freud held that the Mother- Child relationship is: “unique, without parallel, established unalterably for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest love-object and as the prototype of all later love-relations” ³

 

For John Bowlby, the founder of modern infant attachment theory and clinical work, this relationship results in the child’s “internal working model” of human relationships by which the infant views himself as “acceptable or unacceptable” to figures which he is attached to. ⁴

 

Stanley Greenspan, of York University Toronto now probably the world’s expert par excellence on intellectual and emotional development of children, and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health’s Clinical Infant Developmental Program, sees the intense and extensive nurturing mother-child relationship as the foundation of, not only relational life, but also intellectual and creative life, with biological and physical health implications on into later adulthood at least. Empirical research has confirmed their conclusions:

 

Belsky and Ferguson (2002) “Sensitive, responsive care enables [a child’s] confidence” in his mother, fostering in children what the two authors have called “a positive and trusting orientation toward the mother, themselves, and the world at large.” ⁵

 

Secure attachment generates a mind “capable of inferring things about other people’s minds, their thoughts, ideas, motivations, and intentions.” ⁶

This points towards “the vital importance of parent training for the normal emotional and cognitive development of a child and the prevention of major psychological disturbance” ⁷

 

Why Should we be concerned about non-maternal care -- Mainly because of its contribution to negative outcomes:

Non-maternal care consistently predicts “negative social behaviors throughout childhood.” ⁸

 

Children without maternal care for a period of time “lacked feeling, had superficial relationships, and exhibited hostile or antisocial tendencies” ⁹ Without such attentive care, children develop an insecure attachment and ‘a mistrusting orientation’ to relationships and experiences, increasing the likelihood of negative social behaviors.” ¹⁰

 

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (one of the US’s premier surveys for tracking the well being of children through to adulthood) as well as its continued follow ups indicate that, “early and extensive maternal employment was associated with increased behavioral problems, less compliance and increased insecurity, and was the strongest predictor of socio-emotional functioning, exceeding both poverty and maternal education” ¹¹

 

The main capacity affected by child care is “attachment security” … the child’s sense of security about his social surroundings that is mainly conveyed by the mother’s interaction with the child.

 

Lack of attachment security best predicts less capacity to regulate negative feelings and distress (confirmed also by neurobiological research).¹² And the effects can be seen even into young adulthood. Secure infants yield secure adults, insecure infants yield insecure adults.¹³

 

Maternal Employment and Child Care

Maternal employment is the main, if not the sole, driver of child care usage. Early maternal employment predicted more acting out behaviors and less frustration tolerance, ¹⁴ and be more likely nominated by peers for hitting and being mean, ¹⁵particularly when they were from working class families. ¹⁶

 

Israel and the Kibbutzim movement have made Jews more sensitive to the child care issue: One study on Jewish and another on Israeli mothers and infants found that hours and placement in group day/center care resulted in significant attachment insecurity.¹⁷

 

Effects on Social Development: the NICHD study

The NICHD Study of Early Child Care (SECC) is a comprehensive longitudinal study (birth to 15 years of age) initiated by US federal government’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in 1989 to answer the many questions about the relationship between child care experiences and children's later development. The research team is composed of the leading developmental psychologists in the US and they have worked cooperatively to design and implement the study, and in 1991, enrolled a very diverse sample of 1,364 children and their families at 10 locations across the U.S. The study has so far tracked them through to age 15 and provides the most detailed and largest set of data on child care effects. For this reason we turn to some of its findings to lay out the parameters of the issue of child care.

 

Maternal attachment and child care results in the NICHD study

The NICHD study found consistent, but modest associations between attachment security and measures of child positive affect and compliance, as well as mother-reported social competence and behavior. ¹⁸

“Mother-infant attachment at 15 months uniquely predicted child-friend interaction and exploration.”¹⁹ And less negativity and more focus ability during mother-infant interaction at 24 months, as well as fewer behavioral problems in mother reports at 3 years of age.²⁰ “Insecure attachments at 36 months predicted internalizing behaviors for boys and girls, and externalizing behaviors for boys. As the authors conclude, there are clearly meaningful associations between attachment security and the behavioral problems seen by mothers as well as caregivers.” ²¹ And responsive and positive mothering is the significant predictor of fewer mother-reported behavior problems and more positive interactions between the mother and child.²² And maternal sensitivity emerged as the most consistent and strongest predictor of all developmental outcomes. ²³

But the effects of quantity of care remained significant even after adding maternal sensitivity as a predictor, and quantity of care continued to be a significantly stronger predictor than child care quality, type or stability ²⁴

 

Children can change from secure to insecure if they begin non-maternal care for 10+ hours a week during the ages of 16-36 months.²⁵

Children of a less sensitive mother have a continuously decreasing sense of security the longer they are in non-maternal care. ²⁶

I n contrast, the absence (or limited use) of non-parental care significantly reduced the probability of “troubled” behaviors and interactions with parents.²⁷

 

Positive mothering was a constant predictor of less problem behavior according to mothers and caregivers.²⁸

 

Self control / problem behaviors NICHD

The self control, aggressive and problem behaviors of children are the negative outcomes that are tracked carefully in the SECC.

 

There are repeated findings from different investigators that problem behaviors increased proportionately, particularly with “continuous and extensive” hours of child care. Problem behaviors included “neediness”,²⁹ “assertiveness”³⁰, “disobedience/defiance”,³¹ and “aggression”³²

 

Children who spent more time in child care were more aggressive in their interactions according to their caretakers, “although increased peer aggression was not found in observer assessments” ³³

Quantity of Non-maternal child care ranked consistently among the most important predictors of reports of behavior problems across all ages-- larger in impact than the quality of parenting, maternal sensitivity and home environment.³⁴

 

Other research has consistently found this to be the case:

 

• Schwarz and colleagues over 35 years ago found that day care children were more “physically and verbally aggressive than their matched home-reared counterparts.” They also had a much higher occurrence of problem behaviors ranging from experiences of frustration and rejection to non-conforming behaviors and messiness.³⁵

 

• Children in all income levels experienced more behavioral problems based on how early in their lives and how many hours per day they spent in day care, ³⁶,³⁷ even when controlling for socioeconomic status, family stress, and child gender.³⁸

 

• In high risk families similar results of stress and hostility hold, not only for children’s behavior but also for mothers’.³⁹

 

Mother – decreased sensitivity: NICHD study

When measured repeatedly during the first three years the more time the child spends in child care the more likely mothers will be less sensitive to their children, and the children in turn less engaged with these now-less- sensitive mothers.⁴⁰ This is important because this decreased maternal sensitivity is an important factor the probability that the child will go from being secure to insecure during the first three years.⁴¹ Children who are the most competent at three years of age and have fewer behavior problems, greater social competence, more developed language skills and higher school readiness scores than any of the other children were those who had a history of attachment security at 15 months and continued highly-sensitive mothering.⁴² This holds for both parents, the more time and warmth from both the more attachment security for the child. ⁴³

 

Socialization NICHD study

Children with greater attachment security at 36 months, tended to have friendships characterized by less instrumental aggression than children with insecure attachment histories, particularly insecure-avoidant attachments,⁴⁴ who show greater dependency and less initiative in play,⁴⁵ and by four and a half years of age those with more years in child care were more negative in interactions with others.⁴⁶ But “On the whole . . . cumulative quantity of care beginning in the first six months . . . best predicted [this] lower level of social and behavioral functioning.⁴⁷

 

Education NICHD study

Infants who spend more time in daycare had lower pre-academic skills at 54 mos. Toddlers who spent more time in daycare had higher language skills at 54 mos.⁴⁸

First Graders cared for by their parents scored lower in math than first graders who were in “center based care.”⁴⁹

When day care hours increased for children between 3 and 54 mos., children later scored lower on fifth grade vocabulary.⁵⁰

 

Securely attached children had fewer behavior problems, greater social competence, more developed language skills and higher school readiness scores than any of the other children. ⁵¹ Similar findings hold for low income children.⁵² By fifth grade children with more hours in day care scored lower in vocabulary.⁵³

 

First graders cared for by their parents scored lower in math than first graders who were in “center based care.”⁵⁴

 

Conclusion:

If the above were findings from engineering journals on the quality of design and production of cars being produced by Volkswagen, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, GM, and Ford there would be massive outcry and crackdown by governments in all the developed countries. The regulations prohibiting the offending practices would be introduced, law suits would proliferate and tort lawyers would become rich while bureaucracies would expand.

 

But the highest values that drive child care are not the care of the child (though that care is highly valued) but rather it is that the mother must have no obstacle when she wants to go to work: that value may never be trumped, not even the welfare of her own child. Thus in the EU treaties and labor regulations, in the laws in the US Congress and other developed countries, in universities around the developed world these disturbing findings --- more children at risk, risk into adulthood and likely throughout life when eventually we get around to doing that sort of longitudinal research --- are shunted aside. Though the greatest strides in science are made by dealing with “contrary data” in this case the contrary data is not valued, is embarrassing and like an uncouth relative at a wedding celebration, it is ignored and, as much as possible, shunted aside.

 

However, this data will “out”, and more and more mothers are less and less disposed to run the risk of damaging their children.

 

We must spread the word, and go around the media and even academia if all of our children are to thrive.

 

I hope this paper helps such a change. Thank you.

 

NOTES

9 Robert Kobak, The emotional dynamics of disruptions in attachment relationships by– in Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical Applications: by Jude Cassidy (Editor), Phillip R. Shaver PhD (Editor) The Guilford Press, 1999, pp 21-43