|
Book |
Quote/Comment |
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005, p. ix - x |
I had started out as a believer in the
ideal of quality nursery care...
But the more I saw of the reality of daycare centres and nurseries, and the
more conversations I had with parents and carers*, it became clear to me
that the reality never matched the fantasy. In fact, it was often a
disastrous disappointment. The best nurseries struggled to meet the needs of
very young children in a group setting. The worst were negligent,
frightening and bleak: a nightmare of bewildered loneliness that was
heartbreaking to watch.
*carers =
daycare workers
Category = Quality |
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005
p. 11 |
Nurseries (day-cares) are marketed so
well that parents at home have even begun to feel that they are not as good
for their babies and toddlers as 'professionals' might be.
Category = Economics, Politics |
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005, p. 12 |
'Will nursery care (daycare) harm my
child?'
The results may be alarming to some, but seem perfectly obvious to others.
Finally, we are waking up to the fact that something is amiss in the way we
rear our children, and this includes our glib assumption that group care in
nurseries is probably OK. As the research you are about to read tells us --
as common sense might also tell us -- it is not OK: far from it.
Category = Danger |
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005, p. 12 |
Daycare was originally intended for
three and four-year-olds, but its use has spread downwards; sometimes babies
are now put into nurseries and crèches when they are just days old. The
hours have gotten longer too, millions of children under three are in
daycare centres ten hours a day, five days a week in America, the UK, Japan
and other industrialized countries across the globe
Category =History, Quality |
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005, p. 14-15 |
This large-scale group care of the very
young is a recent thing. It has happened without prior research or
understanding...
If it turns out that early child-care is a damaging thing, then millions of
lives will have been adversely affected.
Category =Behavior, Danger, Development, History |
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005, p. 16 |
The rapid adoption of nursery care
(day-care) in the early years has been a huge social experiment; it is
essentially a gamble taken by millions of parents that 'everything will be
OK'. The results of that experiment are now emerging...
Category =Behavior, Danger, Development
|
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005, p. 18 |
The childcare debate is one of the most
emotionally intense topics of contemporary society. Controversies that go
this close to people's hearts generate a lot of emotion....
Category = Politics |
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005, p. 20 |
Sweden is the best example of this --
with probably the world's best quality nursery care available for all, usage
for the under threes has been falling solidly for the last decade.
Category = Politics, Quality |
Raising Babies: Should under 3s go
to nursery?
by Steve Biddulph, ©2005, p. 21 |
(In the future) The raising of very
young children in large, commercial nurseries (daycares), with their
emotionally sterile environments, plastic surfaces and bored, underpaid,
under trained and exhausted staff, will be looked on as a brief and horrible
era, along with all the other nightmares of our childrearing history -- gin
in the baby's bottle, child labour in the coal mines, and boarding school
for six-year-olds. It will be, to quote a beautiful phrase, consigned to the
dustbin of history.
Category = History, Quality |
