Day Care
Arguments For
Arguments Against
Day-care providers can provide lots of fun and stimulation: There is daily activities including painting and story time, also friends that they can play with, and the staffs are specially trained to look after the children. Often mothers and children that are at home are quite isolated- day care can provide a stimulating environment.
The separation from ones primary caregiver is bad: Bowlbys material deprivation hypothesis and his theory of attachment suggested that prolonged separation from a primary caregiver will have both short and long term effects. Day care is likely to result in deprivation and have negative effects on development.
Mothers have to work and/or get bored at home: For the mothers that can feel isolated or bored at home, day care can provide a better alternative for their child. Brown and Harris (1978) conducted a classic study on depression in women which found that many depressed woman blamed their depression on being at home with their children. A depressed mother will not provide good child care.
The quality of care offered in day care may not be as good as that given by parents: Day care providers may look for peace and quiet rather than stimulation and empathy that the child’s parents would try to give, especially when they are looking after a number of child at one time.
This is supported by Bryant et al (1980). They found that some children in child care settings where actually disturbed. They suggested that is because child-minders do not feel like they need to form an emotional bond with the child.
Quality counts more than quantity: Many of the negative effects of day care may ‘simply’ be due to poor-quality care. When children are placed in high-quality care, there are rarely negative effects and there can be positive effects. An example is Andersson’s (1992) study of day care in Sweden found that those children who were placed in day care before the age of 1 did best of all at...