We Should Spend More Hours In Child Care

By Author: kinhomchan
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The more hours that toddlers spend in child care, the more likely they are to turn out aggressive, disobedient and defiant by the time they are in kindergarten, according to the largest and most authoritative study of child care and development ever conducted. Researchers said this correlation held true regardless of whether the children came from rich or poor homes, were looked after by a relative or at a center, and whether they were girls or boys.

What is uncertain, however, is whether the child care actually causes the problem or whether children likely to turn out aggressive happen to be those who spend more hours in child care. It also remains unclear whether reducing the amount of time in child care will reduce the risk that a child will turn into a mean-spirited bully. Complicating matters further, quality child care is associated with increased skills in intellectual ability such as language and memory, leading some academics to suggest that child care turns out children who arc "smart and nasty".

The government-sponsored research, which has tracked more than 1 300 children at 10 sites across the country ...
... since 1991, is bound to rekindle the debate over child care, a debate that resonates across every income group and every demographic: How should people balance work and family? And how should parents, especially mothers, resolve the demands that are placed on them to be both breadwinners and Supermoms?

That debate was already on display at a news briefing yesterday, where researchers themselves clashed about the data and its implications. "There is a constant dose-response relationship between time in care and problem behavior, especially those involving aggression and behavior, " said Jay Belsky of Birkbeck College in London, one of the lead investigators of the study who has previously irritated women's groups because of his criticisms of child care. "On behalf of fathers or mothers?" interrupted Sarah Friedman, a developmental psychologist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (N1CHD) and one of the other lead scientists on the study. "On behalf of parents and families, " responded Belsky.

"NICHD is not willing to get into policy recommendations, " retorted Friedman, contradicting her colleague. "There are other possibilities that can be entertained. Yes it's a quick solution — more hours in child care is associated with more problems. The easy solution is to cut the number of hours but that may have implications for the family that may not be beneficial for the development of the children in terms of economics. In an interview after the briefing, Friedman said that asking parents to work fewer hours and spend more time with their children usually meant a loss of family income, which adversely affects children.

There is a constant dose-response relationship between time in care and problem behavior, especially those involving aggression and behavior, " said Jay Belsky of Birkbeck College in London, one of the lead investigators of the study who has previously irritated women's groups because of his criticisms of child care. "On behalf of fathers or mothers?" interrupted Sarah Friedman, a developmental psychologist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (N1CHD) and one of the other lead scientists on the study. "On behalf of parents and families, " responded Belsky.Scientists said that the study was highly reliable. But the researchers said they had no idea whether the behavioral difficulties persisted as the children moved to higher grades. They also cautioned about extrapolating too much from the study.