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Book |
Quote/Comment |
Children First
What our society must do--and is not doing--for our children
today
by Penelope Leach ©1994
PART TWO: Children and Parents
Chapter 4: Daycare: Dreams and Nightmares, P89 |
Unfortunately, every such concession to adult
needs further reduces fulfillment of the children's. The daycare center's
working day, for example, has to be longer than a full office day to allow
for parental commuting. Center staff's working hours can be reduced by
splitting the day into two shifts, but that immediately doubles the number
of people with whom infants must interact. As soon as nursery workers are
also given proper lunch hours and breaks, sick leave, vacation entitlement,
in-service training, educational leave and encouragement to relocate for
promotion, there is such constant staff movement that babies are likely to
be handled by several different people each day and are unlikely to be
handled by those same people all week: some will inevitably be strangers to
some of the children, filling in for the known caregivers who are already
filling in for parents.
Category = Quality |
Children First
What our society must do--and is not doing--for our children
today
by Penelope Leach ©1994, P92 |
Zigler's 1988 paper on the effects of daycare
summarizes many studies (about) early daycare...
"From the research carried out to date, a tentative consensus emerges
that...children who have experienced early group care tend towards
assertiveness, aggression, and peer rather than adult orientation."
Category = Behavior
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Children First
What our society must do--and is not doing--for our children
today
by Penelope Leach ©1994, P97 |
Most daycare advocates gloss over babies' need to
be breast-fed and to establish the primary attachments on which later
development depends, but I am aware of none who deny it. Regular all-day
separation in the first six months means that the baby cannot be fully
breast-fed; furthermore, it means that the nursling relationship between
baby and mother...is diluted.
Category = Behavior
|
Children First
What our society must do--and is not doing--for our children
today
by Penelope Leach ©1994, P102 |
...to put an infant in daycare (in Sweden*)
is very unusual...
*Sweden - A Scandinavian country noted for
its high quality day care.
Category = Politics
|
Children First
What our society must do--and is not doing--for our children
today
by Penelope Leach ©1994
PART THREE: Children and Parents
Chapter 12: New Approaches to Practical Parenting, P245-246 |
The public image of daycare is an unrealistically
positive one: preschool children playing and learning together in the
playgroups and nursery schools that should indeed be freely available to
them all. Less positive and less looked-at are the images of those same
children, seven hours later: past playing, past learning and still with two
hours before they are collected*. And then there are the images that are
seldom seen: images of babies, a few weeks or a few months old, with nothing
to gain from being with other children and much to lose in being left to the
care of adults who they must share.
*Collected - picked up by their parents
Category = Politics |
