Effects of Day Care on Children's Development and School Readiness

Introduction

Childcare can serve two purposes for a family. It can be part of the educational plan for the child, and it can be a way to allow mothers of young children to work outside the home. The two goals are sometimes in conflict because, to be educational, childcare must be of high quality — and such programs are expensive. They are often out of reach for families where there is an economic need for the mother to work outside the home (SSUV & KLC, Inc., 1999).

History of Daycare

We tend to think of daycare as something new, but throughout history mothers have shared the care of their children with others. Mothers in all cultures have traditionally had the help of family and friends for childcare. What has changed in modern times is who provides that assistance. High rates of employment for women have reduced the availability of family members to fill that role.

In addition, two historic events caused a rise in daycare facilities. The first was World War II. Women were needed to work in factories and other jobs to support the war effort, and that increased demand for daycare. After World War II, the United States population became more mobile, meaning mothers did not always live near family members who could help with childcare. When family members helped raise children, it was a reasonable assumption that they had a deep desire for those children's welfare. This cannot be assumed when non-family members are used for daycare, raising concerns about the quality and long-term effects of relying on people outside the extended family for childcare (Jaffe, 1999).

The Scope of Modern Childcare Use

By the mid-2000s, childcare was shared among multiple people in most families. More than 50% of mothers with children under 12 months old held jobs outside the home. By the time children reached school age, that number rose to approximately 75% (SSUV & KLC, Inc., 1999). The combination of increased daycare use and growing concern about its long-term effects on developing children has fueled research into whether daycare serves children's best interests. While some experts assure us that good daycare — with trained staff and small groups — does no harm even with infants, others argue that any daycare, no matter how good, interferes with the relationship between mother and child (Bower, 1991).

Research into the effects of daycare on children increased significantly in the last two decades of the twentieth century, examining whether quality makes a difference, whether the amount of time spent in daycare affects outcomes, and whether different types of care — such as home-based or relative care compared to daycare centers — produce different results (Vandell, 2004).

Effects of Daycare on Children

Alongside these research questions, several states instituted programs requiring mothers on welfare to work even when they had young children at home. This trend placed extra demands on daycare at a time when many observers felt the country already lacked sufficient quality programs (SSUV & KLC, Inc., 1999).

There are multiple arguments in favor of daycare. One is that childcare allows mothers to work and supports greater equality between men and women (SSUV & KLC, Inc., 1999). Of all the arguments for daycare, however, this may be the weakest, because it suggests that society should place vulnerable children in a societal experiment for an outcome that benefits adults far more than the children involved.

A stronger argument for daycare exists when a child's home life does not support pre-school learning. When this occurs, the child is at great risk of school failure from the very first day of kindergarten (SSUV & KLC, Inc., 1999). Research conducted at the University of Miami suggests that all children can benefit from good daycare. That study followed children between the ages of 5 and 8 who had been in full-time daycare before their second birthday. All came from two-parent families in which both parents worked outside the home. The children attended a daycare center with highly trained teachers and a low teacher-to-infant ratio. Parents reported that children who had spent the most time in daycare were more emotionally stable, showed appropriate assertiveness, displayed less aggression than peers, and had more friends. Over 50% were eventually placed in gifted programs, and their math grades were higher than those of children who had not attended daycare. What remains unclear from this study, however, is whether the children in this particular program came from homes that would naturally foster high achievement — meaning that factors other than daycare may have contributed to their success (Bower, 1991).

Other studies have highlighted the difference that home environment can make in early development, and the potential for daycare to help close the gap between children from backgrounds that do not encourage school readiness and those whose homes do support it. In one study, only 50% of children whose mothers received welfare had school-readiness materials — such as alphabet books — in their homes, compared to 97% for children whose parents were professionals (Arnold & Doctoroff, 2003). Children from low-income families had experienced only about 25 hours of an adult reading to them by the time they reached kindergarten, while children from middle-class families had been read to for between 1,000 and 1,400 hours. Under such circumstances, it is easy to see why daycare might benefit children whose home lives do not support school-readiness activities. This is further supported by statistics showing that only about 40% of students from impoverished backgrounds could recognize letters when entering kindergarten, compared to five out of six children raised by mothers with high levels of education (Arnold & Doctoroff, 2003).

Conclusion

The body of research seems to suggest that daycare does not have to be bad for children, but that children are clearly better off in quality programs that include well-trained staff and small adult-to-child ratios. Unfortunately, such standards raise the cost of daycare (SSUV & KLC, Inc., 1999), sometimes placing the better programs out of reach for working parents. As a result, significant numbers of parents rely on informal, unregulated home care arrangements (SSUV & KLC, Inc., 1999). Experts recognize that children placed in excellent programs can do well, even when they enter such programs as infants. However, the best daycare remains out of reach for the families who may be most in need of high-quality care for their children (Bower, 1991). This gap between need and access represents one of the central unresolved challenges in early childhood education policy.