The Affects of Daycare on a Child

Society has to realize that women are not made to be housewives anymore. The more complex they get, the more women that are joining the workforce. A familiar setting for modern women is that she attends college and then she graduates, getting the job of her dreams. Then she gets pregnant. What is she supposed to do? This is the job of a lifetime and she cannot stay home with the baby. She certainly knows she wants to have it, so abortion is out of the question. But troubles arise from the situation. Who will watch the baby? Where can the baby go during the day while she is at work? A daycare center? A private home sitter? A babysitter? Will childcare be helpful for the baby or will the baby feel uncared for? These are some common questions amongst women upon deciding who will care for their child. The question is what are the answers? When it is time to go back to work after a woman has a baby, what is she supposed to do? With all of these questions the most important of all is: To what extent does daycare affect a child?

With the triumph of welfare improvement and the extraordinary result of the amount of female college graduates, mothers are increasingly entering the workforce. As affirmed by the book Early Schooling: The National Debate by Sharon Kagan and Edward Zigler there are some statistical background.

Women with Children under Six

(Kagan 214)

Using these facts as an example of the past situations it is said that 65 percent of women with children aged younger than six are working or would like to be. As shown above Daycare is a necessity for the majority of working American mothers (Edward 318).

Within the last twenty years child psychologist and social develop mentalist have shown evidence to affirm that unless children gain minimum social potential by the age of six years, they might have a high risk of being at jeopardy throughout their entire life (Woodward 33). As a result peer relationships contribute a great deal to both social and cognitive development and to the efficacy with which we function as adults (Woodward 33). Others suggest that the number of caregivers a child has and the amount of time a child spends away from his/her parents harms the parent-child relationship. If the parent-child connection is torn this weakens the cognitive and emotional development (Kelly 65).

Several daycare opponents, such as stay at home moms, believe bonding, which is considered to be the formation of strong emotional bonds between the parent and child, is disrupted when mothers and fathers rely on others to be substitute parents (Kelly 65).

ÐŽ§Children who are securely bonded to parents are more confident in their explorations of their environment and have a higher sense of self-esteem than children who are insecurely bonded to their parents.ЎЁ (Kelly, 65)

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School, who has authored several, books including the recent book, The Irreducible Needs of Children says,

ÐŽ§A warm, loving human relationship is very important for intellectual development. Children form their capacity to think and self-image based on these back-and-forth interactions. Fewer of these are happening, because families are so busy and more care is being done outside the home. Studies [show] that for all ages, 85 percent of day care is not high qualityЎЁ (Jeffrey 13).

Other studies have also proven that the quality of the daycare program does make the difference in regards to cognitive, language, and socio-emotional functions. The more excellence care a child-care center has the more constructive the functional development.

ÐŽ§Placing a child in daycare does not exclude them from forming warm, human relationships in contrast it gives them the opportunity to form numerous bonding encounters with other adults and it also permits the formation of strong peer attachments.ЎЁ (Bower 118)

A very harsh reality that many parents are facing is that quality daycare is hard to find or too expensive. Fifty-nine percent of the mothers of three and four year olds are now working outside their homes, and many of these mothers have enrolled their children in daycare programs that provide organized educational activities (Bower 119). Thus far, not even all-day daycare services are able to fill the day-care needs of families with both parents working outside the home. Quality daycare consists of a compliant staff that serves children in small groups. Small groups are suggested in such environments because it allows for flourishing interactions between the care giver and the child. These interactions may be related to cognitive functioning and language development (Laforge 231).

It is stated that preschoolers that were exposed to positive communications given at quality daycare confirmed better language skills and cognitive functioning than preschoolers who did not experience such childcare as infants (Laforge 234). Without the interactions between the peers and the teachers, the children who have received low quality daycare or have been taught at home scored lower on measures of academic achievement when tested against those children who were experienced (Laforge 234)

Dr. Laura Schlessinger refutes this point of view stating:

ÐŽ§Young children learn differently than do older children and adults. Because the world of things, people, and language is new to infants and young children, they learn best through direct encounters with their world rather than through formal education involving the inculcation of symbolic rules.ЎЁ (Jeffrey 15)

This fact was also recognized by the ancients who described the child of five or six years of age as having attained the ÐŽ§age of reason.ЎЁ (Geddes 27) Specified this unshakable fact that children do not learn the same way older children and adults do, the educational outcome is simple. The education of young children must be different from that of older children and in keeping with their inimitable modes of learning.

In the study done at State University of New York College in Buffalo by the psychologist Mark Keaton, they explored the relationship between time spent in daycare and the quantity and quality of examining and problem-solving behaviors in 9-month-old infants. It was theorized that, given the existence of high quality care, infants who spent greater amounts of time in center-based care would display more advanced investigative and problem-solving behaviors then infants who did not spend as much time in center-based care