What's best for baby?; Scientists have answered some, but not all, of the vital questions about children
Vancouver Sun
February 23, 2008
By: Chad Skelton

…IS DAYCARE GOOD OR BAD FOR CHILDREN?

Researchers are a long way from being able to answer this question definitively.

But one of the largest U.S. studies ever on the topic suggests daycare may make kids both a little bit smarter and a little bit brattier, though the effects in both cases are pretty small.

The $200-million study, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, has been following about a thousand U.S. kids -- some who went to daycare, others who didn't -- since the early 1990s.

In 2001, the study's authors reported children who went to daycare were more disruptive both in kindergarten and Grade 3, but those who attended high-quality facilities also scored better on tests of their memory and language skills. The most recent results from the study, released this past spring, looked at how those same kids were faring in Grade 6.

Many of the differences between the two groups had disappeared by then, but two remained: Children who attended daycare still scored better than the non-daycare kids on vocabulary tests. And they also had more behaviour problems, according to their teachers.

The differences were not huge. For example, the average score of all children on the behaviour test, which asked teachers to fill out a checklist of 100 anti-social behaviours, was about 50. The scores of children who spent a lot of time in daycare were, on average, just three points higher than those who had no exposure to daycare at all.

Paul Kershaw, an expert with the Human Early Learning Partnership at UBC, said it's also possible the difference is more a sign of independence than misbehaviour, showing, for example, a child's willingness to question what their teacher says.

"Down the road, I'm not sure that kind of behaviour is not precisely what we want," he said.

The NICHD study also found the impact of daycare on a child's development was small compared to the impact of good parenting.

Why daycare might be good for learning but bad for behaviour isn't entirely clear.

UBC economist Kevin Milligan co-wrote a study that found behaviour problems in children went up in Quebec following that province's implementation of universal daycare.

He said a number of studies have shown kids in daycare centres have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their body than they do at home, suggesting the unfamiliar environment of daycare may be stressing them out.

Other experts have suggested daycare may provide an environment for kids to learn bad behaviour from others.

As for daycare's effect on academics, Milligan said it may be that daycare staff -- many of whom have special training in early childhood education -- are simply better able to teach academic concepts to children than mom or dad.

While the NICHD study is one of the largest so far on the issue of daycare, it isn't the only one. Some studies have come to the same conclusions, finding daycare good for academics and bad for behaviour.

But others have not.

For years, HELP has been collecting surveys from teachers on every child entering kindergarten in B.C. Kershaw said researchers have done some initial analysis of that data, comparing neighbourhoods with primarily two-income families to those with more stay-at-home parents, trying to see if there are any daycare effects.

"We can't find any evidence to support one over the other," he said. "The evidence seems to suggest that kids can thrive when parents stay at home and kids can thrive when both parents are at work and rely on quality child-care services."

While there is still debate over the effects of daycare overall, the research is more clear that, for those in daycare, the quality of the facility matters a lot.

Hillel Goelman, a senior scholar with HELP, said several studies have shown things like a high adult-to-child ratio, low staff turnover and whether staff are trained in early childhood education can make a big difference to children's development.

The effect is most pronounced in kids from disadvantaged families, he said, but even middle-class kids seem to do better in higher-quality facilities.

For that reason, said Goelman, parents should do their best to research a daycare before signing up their child and, if possible, sit in to get a sense of whether their kid will like it.