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 fter
10 years of work, results from the largest and most comprehensive
study of early childcare and child
development
ever conducted indicate that early childcare carries both developmental
benefits and risks. The benefits derive from the fact that children
who experience high-quality care appear advantaged when it comes
to their cognitive and language development at ages 15, 24, 36,
and 54 months. There is also some evidence that better quality care
promotes social competence, at least when children are 2 and 3 years
of age, but this seems less so by the time they reach 4 ½
years. Quality care is defined in terms of the extent to which caregivers
are attentive, responsive, stimulating, sensitive, and affectionate
with the children for whom they provide non-maternal care. And such
high quality care is more likely when caregivers are reasonably
well trained and do not have too many children to care for.
In terms of
developmental risks, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care finds that
more time spent in any non-maternal childcare arrangements is related
— irrespective of its quality and family-background factors — to
higher levels of aggression and disobedience, not just assertiveness
and independence, when children are 2 and 4 1/2 years of age and
in kindergarten. More time in care is also related to less sensitive
mothering and, thus, less harmonious mother-child interaction patterns
when children are 6, 15, 24, and 36 months of age. Finally, when
mothers evince limited sensitivity in their interactions with their
children, more time spent in non-maternal care also predicts a greater
likelihood of insecure attachments when children are 15 and 36 months
old.
It would be
irresponsible not to point out that in no case can the findings
just summarized be described as strong in magnitude. They are rather
modest. But the fact that more and more children are spending more
and more time at younger and younger ages in non-maternal care in
the U.S. makes even modest effects meaningful. After all, a small
impact on many may be of far greater societal significance than
a large impact that affects few. Just think in terms of the third-grade
teacher supervising 10-15 rather than 3-4 children — all with histories
of poor quality child care and/or full-time care that began by 6
months of age and continued until school entry. Is this teacher
spending more time managing than teaching her class? And, if so,
what are the consequences for the academic achievement of all the
students in the class?
Despite the
fact that both good news and bad news about childcare emerges from
the NICHD study, there has been a reaction, even among study investigators,
to "shoot the messenger." What is most troubling about
this is the double standard that it reveals with respect to how
child-care research is reported and interpreted within all too much
of academia and in the press. A series of questions nicely illustrates
this double standard:
Why is it so
objectionable if we make working mothers feel guilty upon reporting
findings linking lots of time in childcare with more aggression
and disobedience, but it is not equally objectionable when we make
stay-at-home mothers feel guilty by reporting, as the NICHD study
did two years ago, that children who experienced high-quality childcare
outscore children raised at home with their mothers on tests of
cognitive functioning?
Why must findings
linking quantity of childcare and aggression be qualified ad nauseum,
even to the point of arguing that we are supposedly speaking about
aggression "in the normal range" when such qualifications
are not demanded of the good news? Why have the NICHD study investigators
never made it clear that the large majority of children experiencing
poor-quality care function "in the normal range"? Why,
in fact, when the study found, as it did two years ago, that low-quality
care was related to more problem behavior when children were 2 and
3 years of age, was there no talk about aggression "in the
normal range"? And why is it when higher levels of aggression
and disobedience are found to be related to experiences like growing
up in poverty or being reared by a depressed mother, that no one
ever talks about aggression "in the normal range" as they
so cavalierly do now when the issue is the depth of childcare experience?
Why is it fundamentally
mistaken to infer causation from correlational evidence by raising
the prospect that children might benefit from spending less time
in childcare, but it is perfectly okay to do so when arguing on
behalf of policies that promote higher-quality child care?
The only answers
I can find for these questions — which I have repeatedly posed to
my collaborating investigators in questioning the "uneven playing
field" we operate on when analysing study data — is that childcare
research and childcare advocacy exist in a world reminiscent of
Orwell's Animal Farm: Not only are some childcare findings
simply more equal than others, but some citizen constituencies are
more worthy of consideration than others.
Just because
hundreds of thousands of families rely upon childcare does not mean
that disconcerting news should be censored and downplayed in ways
that more pleasing news never is. And just because one reports disconcerting
news about childcare does not mean one is against childcare. By
the latter logic, (which is so widespread as to make one wonder
whether there has been an outbreak of brain disease), one would
have to regard the weatherman as being against sunshine when he
says it is going to rain or an economist against growth when he
says we are in the midst of recession.
Ultimately,
all the findings about the effects of childcare emanating from the
NICHD study should be placed in the following context for sake of
interpretation: Much of childcare in America is mediocre, if not
poor in quality, usually due to limited funding. And, as Public
Agenda reported last year, the overwhelming majority of parents
with a child under five would like to rely less on childcare and
provide more care for their young children themselves.
These contextual
conditions lead me to draw two major policy implications from the
evidence emerging to date from the NICHD study. First, efforts should
be made to enable parents to rely less on childcare so they can
care for their infants and toddlers themselves when that is their
desire. Second, the quality of childcare available to families should
be improved. Although I could argue the merits of each recommendation
on an empirical basis, it might make more sense to do so on humanitarian
grounds alone. Why so many insist on only talking about the good
news and thus the need for improvements in quality childcare — but
insist on shouting down anyone ready to speak about the bad news
— continues to mystify me.
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