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Quotes from News articles about daycare:
2006,
p2
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News Articles |
Quote |
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Surely We Can Emancipate Women, and
Not Abandon Children to Indifferent Care?
by Steve Biddulph, The Guardian, 18-Feb-06 |
And then there's the babies (in
daycare), lying in rows of cots, then milling about in garish rooms through
their toddler years, aching for one special adult to love them. 12,000 hours
of this before they set foot in school.
Category =
Quality
|
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Surely We Can Emancipate Women, and
Not Abandon Children to Indifferent Care?
by Steve Biddulph, The Guardian, 18-Feb-06 |
...almost a quarter of a million British
children under three attend a day nursery full- or part-time. Daycare was
originally intended for three- and four-year-olds, but its use has spread
downwards; sometimes babies are now put into nurseries when they are just
days old. The hours have got longer too: throughout the industrialised
world, millions of children under three are there for 10 hours a day, five
days a week. This large-scale group care of the very young is a recent
thing. It has happened without prior research or understanding (compared
with, for instance, the invention of kindergarten, which was designed with
child development needs in mind).
Category =
Economics, Quality |
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Surely We Can Emancipate Women, and
Not Abandon Children to Indifferent Care?
by Steve Biddulph, The Guardian, 18-Feb-06 |
Day nurseries (daycares) are an attempt
- whether motivated by idealism or corporate greed - to slot messy and needy
young children into the new economic system, while at the same time
reassuring us that it is good for them, socially and educationally.
Nurseries 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, despite the fact that these "professionals" may well be teenagers
with minimal qualifications, who fell into this line of work by default. The
critical, rarely mentioned core of nursery care is that our children will be
looked after in bulk..., compared to 1:1 at home. Like McDonald's fast food,
we can enjoy the convenience of drive-through, ready-made, fast-parenting;
through the miracle of mass production. The rapid adoption of nursery care
in the early years has been a huge social experiment; essentially a gamble
taken by millions of parents that "everything will be OK". The (negative)
results of that experiment are now emerging.
Category =
Economics, Politics, Quality |
|
Surely We Can Emancipate Women, and
Not Abandon Children to Indifferent Care?
by Steve Biddulph, The Guardian, 18-Feb-06 |
In the US, Britain and half a dozen
other countries, very large long-term studies, bringing together teams of
leading experts, were set in motion to try and establish the truth once and
for all. Was nursery care harmful?
In the NICHD 2004 results, three times as many children - 17% - had
noticeable behaviour problems in the over-30 daycare hours a week group,
while only 6% had these problems in the under-10 hours a week cohort.
According to the researchers' report, these problems included "disobedience,
being defiant, talking back to staff, getting into fights, showing cruelty,
bullying or meanness to others, physically attacking other people, being
explosive and showing unpredictable behaviour".
The Leach study reported babies and toddlers in daycare to have "higher
levels of aggression", and to be "more inclined to become withdrawn,
compliant and sad". It concluded: "The social and emotional development of
children cared for by someone other than their mothers is definitely less
good."
Category =
Behavior |
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Surely We Can Emancipate Women, and
Not Abandon Children to Indifferent Care?
by Steve Biddulph, The Guardian, 18-Feb-06 |
The mantra of the 90s had been that poor
outcomes were due to poor-quality nurseries. The new studies seemed to
indicate something that loving parents gave in one-to-one care that could
not be substituted. Quality care was not the panacea that had been hoped
for: it was still "stranger care", and in a group rather than individual
setting, and this mattered to the proper development of secure and
non-aggressive children.
Quality time was a lie. Hurry was the enemy of love.
Category =
Quality |
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Surely We Can Emancipate Women, and
Not Abandon Children to Indifferent Care?
by Steve Biddulph, The Guardian, 18-Feb-06 |
The more nursery care a child receives,
the more the effects received, in a proportional amount. The researchers
refer to this as a dose-related effect, and it is a strong pointer to a
causal link. There isn't a safe level of nursery care usage for the
under-threes (but at the same time, a little is better than a lot).
Category =
Quality |
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Quotes from News
articles about daycare: 2006,
p2 |
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03/08/2008
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