But would the same be true of negative outcomes associated with exposure to programs in early childhood? Their research confirmed that the negative effects did continue, and in some cases became stronger across development. The impact on boys and children with the most elevated behavioral problems was stronger, especially in measures of hyperactivity and aggression.
Source: M. Baker, J. For youth and young adults, ages 12 to 20, analyses of self-reported general health and life satisfaction indicated that negative social-emotional outcomes associated with exposure to the daycare program persisted into young adulthood. Though crime rates in Quebec are lower than the rest of Canada, there was a significant increase in crime accusation and conviction rates for those cohorts exposed to the Quebec child care program.
As with the 5- to 9-year-old measures, the impact on criminal behavior was greater for boys, and for those who already had elevated behavioral problems. Baker, Gruber, and Milligan acknowledge that there is some evidence of positive impacts from universal child care programs in certain nations for children of certain ages. But in most cases, the benefits are primarily for less-advantaged children. The timing and extent of the Quebec child care program provided the unique opportunity to comprehensively evaluate the implications of a universal day care program on many children from childhood to young adulthood.
That study, which followed the same 1, children every year from birth, found that extensive hours in day care early in life predicted negative behavioral outcomes throughout development, including in the final assessments done when the children were 15 years old. By age four-and-a-half, extensive hours in day care predicted negative social outcomes in every area including social competence, externalizing problems, and adult-child conflict, generally at a rate three times higher than other children.
Family economic status, maternal education, quality of child care, and caregiver closeness did not moderate these effects. But would those effects persist? By third grade, children who had experienced more hours of non-maternal care were rated by teachers as having fewer social skills and poorer work habits. More time in day care centers specifically predicted more externalizing behaviors and teacher conflict, too.
Hours spent in day care centers specifically continued to predict problem behaviors into sixth grade. And much like the findings for the Quebec childcare program, the statistical effects linking day care hours with problem behaviors at age four-and-a-half were nearly the same as the statistical effects at age As with the persistence of negative effects across development, there is also evidence for the persistence of positive effects when children are exposed to the highest quality daycare.
Higher adult-child ratios and more sensitive and positive caregiving in day care have consistently been associated with better cognitive performance and fewer behavioral problems in children.
Some of those positive effects appear to be lasting. Findings from the NICHD-SECC found that higher quality child care was associated with a significant increase in cognitive-academic achievement scores at age 15 for children who experienced the highest levels of quality.
These researchers like others uncovered widespread negative consequences, but they emphasized that earlier exposure to the child-care system resulted in larger problems. They wrote:. The estimates indicate that on average, children who gain access to subsidized child care at earlier ages experience significantly larger negative impacts on motor-social developmental scores, self-reported health status and behavioral outcomes including physical aggression and emotional anxiety.
Only children from lower socio-economic backgrounds who started child care at age three appeared to benefit in terms of development scores; the authors note that this suggests society would benefit from targeting assistance for early-education and care programs at less-advantaged children especially after age three, rather than universal daycare subsidies.
The results of the first of these two Quebec studies were confirmed by a follow-up study by the same authors, which found that some of the negative effects observed among younger children exposed to the Quebec system persisted and even increased into the teen years. While the researchers found that the introduction of the Quebec daycare program had "little impact on cognitive test scores," they found that the program's negative effects on non-cognitive skills appear to strongly persist into school years, and in many instances grow larger as children get older.
Problems such as anxiety, aggression, and hyperactivity were worse in older children than younger ones exposed to the Quebec system. Moreover, there was "a worsening of both health and life satisfaction among those older youths exposed to the Quebec child care program. The study's most startling discovery is that the program appears to have driven an increase in criminal behavior among teens:. More exposed cohorts have higher differential crime rates at every age The estimates For accused, we estimate a rise of crimes per , children, compared to a mean of 7, crimes.
This is a rise of 3. The result is slightly higher in percentage terms for convictions per , 4. These troubling findings from rigorous, scientific research should not be ignored, especially as politicians in the United States consider instituting daycare subsidies for everyone.
It is clear that there is something about daycare, especially for very young children, that is not as neutral as we'd like to think.
So what could explain these profound, lasting negative effects of daycare? One potential explanation comes from studies of the stress hormone cortisol. Professors Harriet Vermeer and Marinus van IJzendoorn conducted a meta-analysis of nine daycare studies examining trajectories in the stress hormone cortisol. Their article concludes:.
Our main finding was that at daycare children display higher cortisol levels compared to the home setting. Diurnal patterns revealed significant increases from morning to afternoon, but at daycare only Age appeared to be the most significant moderator of this relation.
It was shown that the effect of daycare attendance on cortisol excretion was especially notable in children younger than 36 months. We speculate that children in center daycare show elevated cortisol levels because of their stressful interactions in a group setting. Further discussion of one of these nine studies shows why cortisol may help explain the worrying findings on stress, behavior, and daycare.
A group of researchers at the University of Minnesota studied 55 children in full-day daycare centers. They monitored the levels of cortisol in children's saliva when they spent the day at the daycare center and when they spent the day at home. The authors found a "significant effect of setting home vs. Should we be worried by these findings?
On the one hand, the authors note,. Elevated cortisol levels are often interpreted as boding ill for physical and emotional health. During periods of rapid brain development, contact with parents prevents elevations in cortisol, and this has been interpreted as nature's way of protecting the developing brain from the potentially deleterious effects of this steroid.
Moreover, in research on animals, "there is strong evidence that early experiences shape the reactivity and regulation of neurobiological systems underlying fear, anxiety, and stress reactivity. On the other hand, the authors find it somewhat reassuring that the older daycare toddlers show smaller increases in cortisol throughout the day than do younger toddlers and older preschool children, and that when daycare kids are at home on the weekend their cortisol does not rise throughout the day.
Disturbingly, the authors are also reassured by the misleading conclusions of the many published reports claiming that daycare provides cognitive and social benefits. They write:. Potential negative impacts on social or cognitive development seem unlikely given the overwhelming evidence from studies of center-based child care showing that these settings, when of good quality, stimulate cognitive and social development. On balance, the authors conclude that "we do not know if there are adverse effects from chronic but small context-dependent elevations in cortisol for young children.
Taken together, the studies on the Quebec child-care program and on cortisol levels show negative effects from daycare at the time of children's daycare experience as well as lasting negative outcomes that persist into the teen years, which certainly calls into question the commonly offered conclusion that daycare appears to be "neutral," with positive and negative effects cancelling each other out.
Rather, this research suggests that younger children in particular are vulnerable to lasting harm from daycare, especially when exposed early. That is something parents and policymakers deserve to know. The Washington Post opened an August article with the following finding: "More than three-quarters of mothers and half of fathers in the United States say they've passed up work opportunities, switched jobs or quit to tend to their kids, according to a new Washington Post poll.
Mothers and fathers value time spent with their families, and they think the time spent together is good for their children's well-being. They are also skeptical about daycare. While her siblings excelled at academics and sports, Tata spent some time in juvenile detention, as well as a special school for troubled youth. At one point, she admitted to a charge of delinquent arson for starting a fire in a school bathroom.
But when Tata was around 16, her family saw a radical change in her. Her parents wanted her to go to college, like most of her brothers and sisters, but Tata decided to open a day care in her two-bedroom apartment.
She divided the lower floor of her house into different areas—mats on the tile floor for naptime, a classroom area with little desks, a play area with Legos and musical instruments. Tata liked to keep her older brother, Ron, posted on their progress, proudly describing the best speller or a child who had learned a new word. I have these kids. I have everything that I dreamed of. A neighbor was trying to console a distraught Tata when she noticed that the children and the firefighters carrying them outside were covered in black soot.
Other neighbors reported that they had seen her run out the door screaming, but, seconds before, some had also seen her drive up to the house, with nobody in her van. Later, a fire department investigator found a bag from Target behind the front door, with a receipt issued around the time of the fire.
Afterward—apparently the very next night—Tata returned to the charred remains of her home, retrieved her passport, and caught a flight to Nigeria. Interpol agents would eventually take her into custody, and at one point, Tata spoke with the mother of one of her charges on the phone.
As questions about Tata accumulated, many of them in coverage by the Houston Chronicle , 2 people started asking why authorities had allowed her to run a home day care in the first place. Her office was responsible for monitoring 6, child care providers in and around Houston, including Tata. Lahmeyer, a transplanted New Yorker who spent some 30 years working on services for children and families, explained how little power inspectors have to make sure kids are getting safe, quality care.
In Texas, a person only needs a high school qualification or equivalent to operate a home day care. That includes online degrees. In , the agency had ordered Tata to close the day care in her apartment, because she was operating without a proper license. Caregivers are also required to attend a state-sanctioned education session. According to a trainer, Tata had wandered in and out of the classroom, put her head down on the table, and spent much of the time texting. But since the law only requires applicants to show up, Tata had satisfied the requirement.
By national standards, Texas child care regulations are typical—better than average in some respects, worse in others.
That is to say, they are painfully minimal. You know it when, as the inspector, you are the most interesting thing the kids have seen all day. Like most states, Texas inspects child care centers at least once a year, but only has the manpower to visit home day cares every two.
On other occasions, the process of closing a day care can be torturous. Lahmeyer recalled one place that racked up repeated violations over two years before a judge would shut it down. All too often, it takes an incident to force a closure. Last November, for instance, DFPS closed a center after a caregiver left a nine-month-old infant alone on a changing table without a belt.
The baby fell onto a concrete floor, sustaining a serious skull injury. It took Kenya Mire about 25 minutes to get to the hospital, where she found a frantic scene. Parents were desperately seeking information; staffers were having trouble identifying the kids.
I still was kind of hoping it was OK. Mire practically had to be pulled into the emergency room. When they brought her in, she saw Kendyll laid out on a table like a doll. A doctor was pumping her chest, hard. Then a nurse pulled her aside and told her there was nothing more they could do. Four of the seven children at the day care died that day. Elizabeth died before her mother, Betty Ukera Kajoh, a teacher who met Tata through church, made it to the hospital.
Elias was in a special breathing chamber, expelling smoke from his lungs, by the time his mom, Keshia Brown, finished a training session for a new job at a grocery store and learned about the fire. Makayla survived; Shomari did not. In many countries, day care is treated not as an afterthought, but as a priority. France , for instance, has a government-run system that experts consider exemplary.
Parents who stay at home to care for their children or hire their own caregivers receive generous tax breaks. It hardly seems a coincidence that 80 percent of French women work, compared with 60 percent of their American counterparts. France spends more on care per child than the United States—a lot more, in the case of infants and toddlers. But most French families pay far less out of pocket, because the government subsidizes child care with tax dollars and sets fees according to a sliding scale based on income.
There is one place in the United States where you can find a very similar arrangement: the military. In the s, the Defense Department decided to address, rather than ignore, the same social changes that have transformed the wider economy.
More women were entering the military, and many had children. Increasingly, the wives of male soldiers had jobs of their own. A growing number of economists have become convinced that a comprehensive child care system is not only a worthwhile investment, but also an essential one.
When children grow up to become productive members of the workforce, they feed more money into the economy and pay more taxes. They also cost the state less—for trips to the E. In a July speech , Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke made the case that significant investment in early childhood would deliver even broader gains to the U.
Sometimes, a person of limited means pours a significant portion of their income into day care, which limits their ability to build a financial foundation for the future. When parents can find safe, affordable child care, they are more likely to realize their full economic potential.
Their employers gain, too: Numerous studies show that access to quality day care increases productivity significantly.
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