The economic argument for daycare, particularly World Bank’s if I recall correctly, is based largely on the ability of the child’s parents to participate in the workforce. Thats where $1 for $7 comes from, not reliance on miracles. You short shrift the math in an otherwise informative article.
It seems to me that it is difficult to study the effects of daycare across many daycare establishments and across time. What serves as daycare can vary a lot in terms of what is offered the children, what the qualifications and quality of staff is, how many staff there are, etc. Also, standards for daycare and our expectations of daycare have evolved over time and have been subjected to varying requirements as problems have become apparent, understandings of child development have changed, and goals and ideals have changed.
All of these difficult to control for variables would be expected to influence different experience and different results. This makes it impossible to meaningfully compare outcomes across individual situations or across decades of change. Variations in survey and study methods also complicates meaningful comparison or establishing trends.
One of my immediate thoughts as I started reading this piece was: "It takes a village to raise a child." Daycare is a formally designated aspect of a village that provides opportunities for socialization with peers and influence (for better or worse) by different people, both peers and adults.
Although our daughter had babysitters, she didn't go to daycare. She did participate in an Early Child Development program and in preschool, both of which I think did her some good and as best I can tell did not do her any harm in her development. It is my impression that the people operating both the ECD program and preschool were well qualified to provide good care and experiences. I think daycare is used more commonly now than it was 40 years ago, at least in our area than perhaps in big cities compared to our small town setting.
More recently, my now-young-adult grandson went to daycare that was uniquely structured to provide significant outdoor learning and activity experiences which I think were excellent for him and that he greatly benefited from. As he aged out of that, he actually chose to stay and help with the program for a while which provided him additional learning and socializing benefit. He remembers his experiences there very fondly and I think they provided him with valuable support as he continued developing through his school years.
I'm not aware of anyone I know of who might feel that daycare was a bad experience for their child. Based on news stories, though, I suspect some daycare operations that have been poorly operated and especially if abusive would possibly result in bad experiences for children that could be damaging, so any study results from such operations would skew results toward the negative.
My bottom line (so far) evaluation of complaints is that I suspect there are some people of devious persuasions who are probably trying to cast a bad light on a good thing for some political reason to influence policies and to justify cutting funding and keep women home "where they belong" according to some warped thinking. In other words, creating another manufactured issue.
This article is a welcome overview over the science on daycare. Note however that there is an additional topic that could be discussed in this context, namely "daycare illnesses":
The statements about the effects of the debates on delaying parenthood or feeling guilty, including the claim that the effects of the debates "may even prevent some children from being born at all", only seem to be based on intuitions. You rightly use the word "may", but it is worth emphasizing that it is unclear whether this really affects the number of children born.
The Venn diagram of 'daycare is bad' people and 'women belong in the home not the workforce' people is a perfect circle. It is pure ideology and nothing to do with concern for the child.
Much may depend on the nature & quality of childcare. With the shortage of manpower in post-WWII Russia, specialized childcare was introduced to get as many women as possible into the workforce. There were specialists for every stage of child growth: from peri-natal through adolescence. As a child grew past each threshhold, it was passed from one specialist group to another. So there was no continuity in the caring, only a series of broken attachments. The result? What was described in Russia as a generation of juvenile delinquents -- малолетний преступник -- or worse.
Great article! This seems weird when politicians everywhere are claiming that investment into ECE is great use of the taxpayer dollar, often citing child development reasons. Are they just misrepresenting the research or is the early childhood education they are talking about something different from the "daycare' cited here?
The economic argument for daycare, particularly World Bank’s if I recall correctly, is based largely on the ability of the child’s parents to participate in the workforce. Thats where $1 for $7 comes from, not reliance on miracles. You short shrift the math in an otherwise informative article.
It seems to me that it is difficult to study the effects of daycare across many daycare establishments and across time. What serves as daycare can vary a lot in terms of what is offered the children, what the qualifications and quality of staff is, how many staff there are, etc. Also, standards for daycare and our expectations of daycare have evolved over time and have been subjected to varying requirements as problems have become apparent, understandings of child development have changed, and goals and ideals have changed.
All of these difficult to control for variables would be expected to influence different experience and different results. This makes it impossible to meaningfully compare outcomes across individual situations or across decades of change. Variations in survey and study methods also complicates meaningful comparison or establishing trends.
One of my immediate thoughts as I started reading this piece was: "It takes a village to raise a child." Daycare is a formally designated aspect of a village that provides opportunities for socialization with peers and influence (for better or worse) by different people, both peers and adults.
Although our daughter had babysitters, she didn't go to daycare. She did participate in an Early Child Development program and in preschool, both of which I think did her some good and as best I can tell did not do her any harm in her development. It is my impression that the people operating both the ECD program and preschool were well qualified to provide good care and experiences. I think daycare is used more commonly now than it was 40 years ago, at least in our area than perhaps in big cities compared to our small town setting.
More recently, my now-young-adult grandson went to daycare that was uniquely structured to provide significant outdoor learning and activity experiences which I think were excellent for him and that he greatly benefited from. As he aged out of that, he actually chose to stay and help with the program for a while which provided him additional learning and socializing benefit. He remembers his experiences there very fondly and I think they provided him with valuable support as he continued developing through his school years.
I'm not aware of anyone I know of who might feel that daycare was a bad experience for their child. Based on news stories, though, I suspect some daycare operations that have been poorly operated and especially if abusive would possibly result in bad experiences for children that could be damaging, so any study results from such operations would skew results toward the negative.
My bottom line (so far) evaluation of complaints is that I suspect there are some people of devious persuasions who are probably trying to cast a bad light on a good thing for some political reason to influence policies and to justify cutting funding and keep women home "where they belong" according to some warped thinking. In other words, creating another manufactured issue.
This article is a welcome overview over the science on daycare. Note however that there is an additional topic that could be discussed in this context, namely "daycare illnesses":
https://blog.ninapanickssery.com/p/daycare-illnesses
The statements about the effects of the debates on delaying parenthood or feeling guilty, including the claim that the effects of the debates "may even prevent some children from being born at all", only seem to be based on intuitions. You rightly use the word "may", but it is worth emphasizing that it is unclear whether this really affects the number of children born.
The Venn diagram of 'daycare is bad' people and 'women belong in the home not the workforce' people is a perfect circle. It is pure ideology and nothing to do with concern for the child.
Much may depend on the nature & quality of childcare. With the shortage of manpower in post-WWII Russia, specialized childcare was introduced to get as many women as possible into the workforce. There were specialists for every stage of child growth: from peri-natal through adolescence. As a child grew past each threshhold, it was passed from one specialist group to another. So there was no continuity in the caring, only a series of broken attachments. The result? What was described in Russia as a generation of juvenile delinquents -- малолетний преступник -- or worse.
Great article! This seems weird when politicians everywhere are claiming that investment into ECE is great use of the taxpayer dollar, often citing child development reasons. Are they just misrepresenting the research or is the early childhood education they are talking about something different from the "daycare' cited here?