Daycare institutions are an important aspect of modern life. They enable moms and dads to have kids and a career at the same time, thus promoting gender equality and parents’ contentment. Financial necessity and lack of family support often make daycare facilities the only possible option.
But how does this affect the children? What are the problematic aspects of center-based childcare from the children’s point of view?
Stress Levels
Studies persistently show that children spending a lot of hours in childcare experience higher stress levels, leading to heightened aggression, unruly behavior and lack of empathy. Especially for very small and highly sensitive children, there may simply be too much going on, leaving kids over-stimulated and completely exhausted by the end of an often very long day. Besides, a lot of children experience separation anxiety – they cry due to separation from their parents and are clearly in deep distress. And even after settling down, they still have high stress levels even without showing outward signs of distress. Some long term effects of those permanently increased stress levels are believed to include anxiety, relationship problems and lower resilience to stress.
Parent-Child-Relationship
According to attachment theory, an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally. Children try to initiate a lot of contact at a very early age – by eye contact, smiling or words – looking for responses. Unfortunately, they are highly unlikely to get any individual responses in the busy, noisy environment of daycare with a child-carer ratio of one to five or worse. Furthermore, kids in daycare may not spend sufficient time with their parents in order to bond properly with them. This not only negatively affects the parent-child relationship but also the children’s general ability to form strong, warm, trusting and loving relationships later on in life.
Too Little Meaningful Activity
Small children learn through imitation. Watching mom clean or cook, they are inspired to emulate her behavior in a playful manner. Most daycare centers don’t offer enough meaningful real-life activities such as shared cooking, cleaning, simple crafts or games to do this. Instead, children are given artificial activities to do such as meaningless glue and paper handicrafts or are entertained by multi-media.
Too Much Focus on Intellectual Development
Children until five or six years don’t need any intellectual training at all. Too much early focus on reading and writing or mathematics may actually be harmful to their development. Instead, they can learn the basic skills through play and meaningful activities such as setting the table, finger games and so on. There is no convincing evidence for any lasting benefit of introducing intellectual learning at a very early age. A child’s development has its sensitive periods which cannot be shifted arbitrarily just to suit politicians, corporate or parents’ needs.
Illness
Children in childcare facilities get sick more often. There is an almost three-fold risk for respiratory infections, ear infections, and diarrheal disease.
While there may be good reasons for and against childcare, the ideal setting for children under three, according to Steve Biddulph, will be to stay with a parent or close relative who enjoys caring for the child. A lot, of course, depends on the quality of care received in a center – and even more on the quality of parenting at home. But assuming that you are a caring parent sensitive to your child’s needs, there is no reason to think there would be anything better for your child than to spend time with you. As family therapist and author Steve Biddulph says: “Children at this age - under three - want one thing only: the individual care of their own special person. Even the best run nurseries cannot offer this.”
Sources and Related Reading
- Steve Biddulph. Raising Babies: Why Your Love is Best. Harper Thorsons, 2011.
- Effects of early child-care on cognition, language, and task-related behaviours at 18 months: An English study. A study by Sylva, Stein, Leach and others. Wiley Online Library.
- Expert Guidance on Child Care: What's Best by Age. Suite101-article by Martin Bohn.
- 3 New Studies Assess Effects of Child Care. Article by Tamar Lewin in the New York Times.
- The Negative Effects of Daycare on Small Children. Suite 101-article by Martin Bohn.
Martin Bohn - As a certified yoga teacher, I enjoy freelancing for various yoga magazines in different countries. In my main profession, I work as a ...
