New York Times: Daycares linked to disruptive children
The New York Times is reporting on a study that shows that children who spend their preschool years in daycares are actually more disruptive in school than children raised by a parent in a home setting.
The study being reported in the New York Times ought to give pause to all those people clamoring for money for daycares:
A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.
Six more years of fallout? That's an extremely long time, suggesting that this negative effect they've noticed is deeply ingrained, and potentially has life-long consequences:
The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.
But the finding held up regardless of the child’s sex or family income, and regardless of the quality of the day care center. With more than two million American preschoolers attending day care, the increased disruptiveness very likely contributes to the load on teachers who must manage large classrooms, the authors argue.
The continuing research project began in 1991. The investigators have financing to follow the same children into high school, and are proposing to follow some into their 20s.
Regardless of the quality of the daycare. So a high-priced private facility or an expensive universal system -- it doesn't matter. Children raised by parents or close relatives fare better, on average, than children raised in non-familial group settings.
We can't assign blame to the daycare people. They are doing their best, and they truly have the child's best intentions in mind. But the study suggests that if wishes were fishes...the fact is that children adjust better to a school environment, which is teacher-directed, having spent their early formative years in a similar environment, that is, parent/caregiver-directed.
Maybe this should have been obvious, but then again, maybe not. Sometimes you just have to check these things in action to see what matters and what doesn't.
So what does this have to say about Canadian childcare policy? Clearly any scheme that allows the flexibility for parents to stay at home with their kids, or to use close family to help take care their kids, is superior to a scheme that considers daycare to be the only solution for parents. The Liberals and the NDP have long agitated for multi-billion programs pumping money into government-licensed daycare. The Conservatives have implemented a plan to give money directly to parents to use as they see fit when it comes to raising their children.
The Liberals accused the Conservatives of enabling parents to squander the money on beer and popcorn. This study suggests that, in fact, parents make the best parents, regardless of the suspicions of modern-day social engineering advocates.
Hey, maybe it was obvious after all.
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Comments
Check out this one.
http://scrux.blogspot.com/2007/03/day-care-breeds-aggression-study.html
Posted by: Fergy at March 28, 2007 03:50 PM
When you quote like that are you deliberately dropping information that you don't like and that counters your argument or do your fingers just get too tired.
The report doesn't say that home care kids "fare better". It says that daycare kids are more disruptive.
It ALSO says that daycare kids demonstrate more intelligence and do better on tests until about the same age.
This dichotomy - behaviour (daycare worse) and performance (daycare better) - is consistent with studies going at least a decade back. I remember a Time magazine report that said exactly the same thing about 11 years ago.
It also stands to reason: parents do tend to focus on the proper behaviour of their kids, especially in public places, and daycare providers tend to focus more on cognitive experiences.
And just like almost every other non-partisan report on this subject they make the most important point that, as you yourself quoted, the measured differences are SLIGHT and that good parenting vs. bad parenting is FAR more important than anything else.
Ted
Cerberus
Posted by: Ted at March 28, 2007 04:00 PM
Agreed, Ted...good parenting is far more important. But good parenting begins with being with the child.
Posted by: Conrad at March 28, 2007 04:30 PM
Not too quick on this one. I noticed that Fergy had posted by analysis. The research is quite inconclusive as far as the bad behaviour goes. I used to be a researcher in education and I would have been embarrassed to make the lead they did. The one conclusion about vocabulary development is effective because it can be tested on a longitudinal basis, but the conclusion about behaviour completely stretches the matter. There are just too many variables from pre-school to grade six, including peer pressure, to say early day care is a predictor. The bottom line is that the research really does not deal with parenting at all. I like the notion of full choice child care but when I see inconclusive research, even if it's on the left, I have to say so. I actually got a hold of some of the primary sources. My post is also available on jacksnewswatch.
Never got a chance to tell you, but I often visit, enjoy your site. It's refreshing!
http://scrux.blogspot.com/2007/03/day-care-breeds-aggression-study.html
Posted by: Sandy (Crux-of-the-Matter) at March 28, 2007 04:39 PM
Actually Ted - it said the kids had better communication skills IF they were in a quality system. Being talkative doesn't make you smarter.
Posted by: the bear at March 28, 2007 04:42 PM
I'm not a researcher and realize that statistics can be weighted in various directions, depending on the bias of the researcher, the sponsor of a study, etc.
What is clear, however, and I'm speaking as someone who enters classrooms from kindergarten to grade eight on pretty well a daily basis, is that there are increasing numbers of challenged and disruptive children in classrooms today. Unacceptable and anti-social behaviour is a growing problem, as are difficulties in processing academic information, many of which travel with the child into adolescence and adulthood, so it behooves our society to try to identify the salient factors causing so many challenged children today.
I suspect, in part, it's additives in foods, it's watching too much television and too many violent shows, it's playing too many video games, it's air pollution, it's too little physical exercise, and the list goes on and on.
For every variable mentioned above, except pollution, parents have a great deal of influence on their children. I can't help wondering if too few parents are monitoring the foods their kids eat (we now have a dangerous epidemic of overweight children and rising rates of childhood diabetes) and the television, movies, and video games they watch/participate in.
I'm not sure what study is going to isolate all of these variables, but our children are at considerably greater risk in 2007 of being hyperactive, disruptive, anti-social, obese, and unable to either read or communicate effectively than they were 40 years ago. For some reason questioning the way we parent our children is somewhat of a taboo subject, but if we're going to get to the bottom of the problems our children are facing I don't think we can avoid it.
I think it's time for a study on parenting in North America today, not just studies on our kids and the challenges they're facing, which arrive at no conclusive reasons or solutions. No doubt it would step on a lot of toes and shatter more than a few assumptions about our progressive societal gains in the past 50 years. But it might mean some gains for our children who, at this point, have been falling way behind in the progress sweepstakes.
Posted by: 'been around the block at March 28, 2007 06:18 PM
The bad news about child care is pretty much what the Daycare's Don't Care website's been saying all along...
Posted by: Judy at March 29, 2007 07:13 AM
Thanks, Judy, for the link to Daycares Don't Care. What they're saying is what I've been saying for years. And they're right:
No one wants to hear the message that there is absolutely no substitute for a parent ('could be Dad, but it's usually Mom because, as Robert Capon puts it in his book "Bed and Board," mom's "are geography" for their kids; they have breasts for food and to use as pillows and shelves, aka hips, to carry their children around on).
One psychologist put it very well: "Every child needs someone taking care of them who is absolutely crazy about them." Who but a parent--flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, quirk of my quirks--is going to be "crazy about" a kid? Daycare workers have too many kids to care for, which means that two-, three-, and four-year-olds are becoming "peer oriented" at very early ages. That essentially means that they don't "hear" or respond to an adult voice. I see it in the classrooms I teach in every day. They also hear only a very limited vocabulary from their tiny peers, which is one reason why so many of our children are literacy challenged. No amount of remedial literacy work with them, after the deprivation in the first six years of their lives, is going to help them over the hump, another fact I witness every day.
The gazillion$ of dollars we're spending on remedial and therapeutic programs and strategies for our underperforming children would be much better spent on encouraging parents to stay home with their children for the first six years of their lives, to engage them one-on-one in the learning process.
There's no way around it: Our children need far more attention from their parents than they're getting at present. 'Not a very palatable message in North America, but if we refuse to diagnose the problem no amount of bandaids and therapeutic/remedial help is going to cure what's ailing our children--and, by extension, our society.
The great irony is, that there have never been so many therapeutic/remedial helpers in our schools than there are today: special ed teachers, social workers, anger management therapists, dieticians, psychologists, and the list goes on and on. And yet, despite all of this help, there seems to be no upward swing of successes for our children. The mire just seems to deepen, and teachers are being driven to the limit of their resources to know how to accommodate such a great number of challenged children.
Posted by: 'been around the block at March 29, 2007 07:58 AM
Alright folks, then why is school suddenly so important at age 5. Shouldn't home schooling be promoted more? At least during the grade school years?
In fact, all of the arguments being trotted out now in opposition to daycare, were also trotted out decades ago as mandatory attendance in grade school was introduced.
Hey, I know, why not blame all of society's problems on grade school and kids not being with their parents full time from birth until age, I don't know say, ten.
The biggest problem in all of this are ideological driven arguments and research.
This research says that there is good and bad in daycares and being exclusively at home but, really, there is not much difference. BUT this blogger and the NYT article and many of the commenters here spin it as home is the only place for a kid up until, I don't know say, age six.
This is an ideological-driven argument, focused on the ideology and not what is good for the kids.
I say this not as a daycare advocate but as someone who is sick of partisans of all sides playing politics with our kids like Steve has done here.
Posted by: Ted at March 29, 2007 09:26 AM
Go ahead, Ted, and ignore the cold, hard facts of the huge numbers of children in Canada who are challenged socially, academically, emotionally, and physically. Take a look at the dismal statistics of illegal drug taking, unwed pregnancies, and suicides, to name just a few of the problems our young people are facing.
Will you call these cold, hard facts "ideological" arguments. Kids need their parents' attention, period. It's not happening in epidemic numbers of families in Canada today.
What's your argument here?
Posted by: 'been around the block at March 29, 2007 10:39 AM
Thanks for the insight, been around the block. Your comment about encouraging parents to stay at home is a good one. Unfortunately, years of lib-left demands for government meddling in our lives has resulted in ever increasing taxes. This has meant that more and more mothers have been forced out of the house to make ends meet.
Lib-left socialism has delivered large numbers of children into the hands of the nanny-state with predictable and unfortunate societal side-effects.
Posted by: Larry at March 29, 2007 12:27 PM
This is one finding I strongly believe to be factual.
It's a sure bet the Puck Stopper turned child care expert won't believe it. He still stands in the House spouting off about more day care spaces.
Factual evidence never did play a roll in Leftist Ideology.
Posted by: Libby at March 29, 2007 07:11 PM
 
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