Research into Day Care

Research into Day Care

Impact of Day Care on Attachment

• Day care can offer opportunities for socialisation and the development of peer relationships that can influence a child’s social and emotional development.
• The NICHD study found no evidence that starting daycare early and attending for many hours leads to insecure attachments with parents, contradicting Bowlby’s Maternal Deprivation Theory.
• However, Belsky and Rovine found increased levels of insecure attachments in children who began intensive day care arrangements in the first year of life.

Cognitive Development And Day Care

• High quality day care has been found to have a positive effect on cognitive development. The Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) study in the UK found attending a pre-school led to better cognitive development than not attending.
• The Perry Preschool Project found long-term benefits on IQ, educational success and job prospects for disadvantaged children attending high quality pre-school.

Social Development And Day Care

• The NICHD study found that children in high-quality daycare had better language and cognitive development during the first four-and-a-half years of life.
• However, they also found that the more time in day care of any type or quality, the higher the chance of becoming unruly or aggressive.

Quality Of Day Care

• The quality of day care is an important factor. Higher quality day care with a beneficial carer-to-child ratio has been associated with positive cognitive and social outcomes.
• Low quality day care, especially accompanied by long hours, has been linked with behavioural problems.

Remember: Overall, the impact of day care on child development depends on various factors like quality of care, the amount of time spent in day care, and the individual child’s characteristics and experiences.