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 Quotes from books about daycare - 2007-2008, p6

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Inevitably, in day care centers, even in the best ones, there is both too much stimulation and not enough. There is too much of the stressful kind of stimulation which comes from being part of a large crowd and from partaking in a day that is constantly structured and not enough of the good kind of stimulation which comes from being one-on-one with a parent or loved one.
Category = Quality

In a day care, the signals a baby gives as to the need for less stimulation and more comfort are, of necessity, ignored. This is not to mention that their cry is often lost in the din of other cries.
Category = Quality

Babies in day care centers lead frantic lives. They are expected to cope as adults would, to adjust as adults would to all the vicissitudes and turmoil of public as opposed to private life. There is no time in day care for daydreaming and introspection. Time in the “Learning Center” is defined for them: as play time, story time, art time, reading-readiness time, outside time, etc. What is missing is their own time—to define the moment as they choose, to think things over, to explore their dreams without fear of reprisal. Again, day care provides too much stimulation of the random, disorganized kind which comes inevitably comes from the co-habitation of large numbers of babies and toddlers, and too much of the organized kind which comes from group-centered living. It provides too little calm, quiet, space, and comfort and too little opportunity to converse and relate with a loving other.
Category = Quality

The evidence, mountains of research, confirms our common-sense appraisal of the beneficiality, and lack thereof, of the kind of “stimulation” babies and toddlers receive in day care. As a publication of the Rockford Institute entitled “The Family in America” observes, the negative findings on day care “continue to roll in and they are very consistent with those that have been accumulating for the past 20 years.”
Category = Quality

In a summarization of findings on day care, T.J. Gamble and E. Ziegler conclude that children who experienced day care from infancy were rated as significantly less cooperative with adults more physically and verbally aggressive with peers and adults, and more active; there was a tendency for them to be less tolerant of frustration. Sadly, inexcusably, we Americans do not hear much about these consistently negative findings.
Category = Behavior

Of course, there are other risks of day care which, because they are physical (and therefore visible) have been difficult for the mainstream press to ignore. Attending day care increases incidence of upper respiratory tract infections (e.g. bronchitis and pneumonia), gastrointestinal infections, and “virtually all agents which cause illness in children.”

Chronic ear infections often lead to the need for ear tubes and to the risk of mild hearing loss. University of Michigan and Penn State researchers found chronic otitis media affected the social behavior of day care children in concerning ways; the mild hearing loss associated with it led to more solitary play, and to children initiating fewer verbal interactions. A child in day care is 300 percent more likely to require hospitalization and twice as likely to die from disease as are children at home.
Category = Disease

In spite of myths to the contrary, children are at much greater risk of physical and verbal abuse at day care centers than out of them. The Rockford Institute findings also included these: “Individuals with mental illness, including sexual perversions directed toward children are sometimes drawn to the day-care setting. When parents turn their children over to strangers, there is no way to be completely sure the caregivers are not maliciously or unnaturally motivated. Day-care centers in many states have been closed because of increasingly frequent allegations of physical and sexual abuse."
Category = Danger

The moment a researcher stumbles upon the negative effects of day care, (Professor Jay Belsky of Penn State University) reports, “a host of ideologues are raising questions, criticizing methodology, mounting ad hominem* attacks, or simply disregarding the data entirely in their pronouncements.”
*ad hominem = criticizing or personally attacking an argument's proponent in an attempt to discredit that argument.
Category = Politics

Rutter found, for example, that:

Children who experienced day care from infancy were rated as significantly less cooperative with adults, more physically and verbally aggressive with peers and adults…there was a tendency for them to be less tolerant of frustration…

Category = Behavior

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