Time for Parenting...

...because raising children is a full-time job

June 2000 Newsletter

Day Care: The True Story; Women @ the Millenium; After School Clubs; ParentChild 2000 Conference

Day Care: The True Story

Why is there so little serious discussion - outside these pages- of the impact of daycare on young children? The daycare sector is expanding rapidly, with more and more funds earmarked for every kind of care except a mother's care.

The call is always for more accessible, affordable, quality childcare; to this is now added the demand for "flexibility" from employers. The debate is centred on the rights of parents as employees; it is also about the duties of employers to meet those rights, by offering parental leave, workplace nurseries and childcare vouchers. What the debate omits is any examination of the needs of children, and how their lives are affected by the disappearance of mothers from the home.

The awkward truth is that it is virtually impossible to reconcile the developmental and emotional needs of the young child with the realities of daycare. Further, any public discussion of those needs is quickly stifled lest it induces feelings of guilt amongst working mothers, or threatens to upset the new consensus that women are interchangeable with men.

The discussion surfaced briefly in May, on the publication of another US report on the impact of daycare on the very young. In a study of 4,000 children, the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that verbal ability is adversely affected if a child's mother works during the child's first year, and 5 and 6 year olds have lower reading and numeracy skills if mothers work when they are 2 and 3.

The research confirmed the findings last year of a London University survey showing poorer educational attainment for children whose mothers worked during their first year. Further data is emerging from Australia, where two separate university studies reveal that children in full-time daycare before the age of 3 are later found to be less academically competent than those who have been in part-time or no daycare.

As usual, boys show the strongest effects. Emotional development Whilst research on educational outcomes makes uncomfortable reading, a more significant question is the child's emotional development, and the implications of non-maternal care for mental health. Here, the key to the child's needs lies in the formation of "early attachment". Long recognised by child psychologists as the foundation of neurological and emotional well-being, a baby needs to experience this all-important attach -ment in the first months and years of life. This attachment will be easily recognised by most of us as the passionate bond that is the love between a mother and her child. It is a bond that is supplemented, or occasionally replaced, by the child's father or another close family member. But it cannot be bought, and a child who goes into daycare within months of birth will have this bond severed prematurely.

This is the blunt reality of which most mothers are instinctively aware. It is a truth which the many advocates of daycare would prefer to suppress, because it does not fit into the brave new world of paid work for all.

So the quest continues, for more creches and day nurseries for babies, and "educare" for 3 and 4 year-olds. Emphasis is placed on the supposed educational and social benefits of placing babies and toddlers in brightly painted, busy nurseries. We are encouraged to avert our gaze from the lines of cots and high chairs which remind us that the child is just one of many, the intimacies of feeding, sleeping and nappy-changing items on a carer's rota.

Daycare is always second best Even if enough money could be poured into non-maternal care to provide the necessary adult-child ratios the resultant care would still be inadequate. Because to provide continuity and attachment the child's carer must not change jobs, or object to working long hours, and will preferably not take holidays or sick leave. Such care cannot be provided commercially; it is the kind of care that mothers give.

Motherhood is not politically correct So instead of urging mothers back to the workplace and tempting them with childcare credits, why don't we support them in their role as mothers, both financially and socially? There are still many women who would prefer to put their working lives to one side for a few years to be with their children. Since it is so clearly in the child's interest to promote this choice, why do we have a tax and benefit system which penalises it, and a raft of subsidies to promote non-maternal care? Perhaps it is because the word 'mother' is being erased from the childcare vocabulary, to be replaced by 'parent' or 'carer'.

In the work-life debate, parents and carers are being made interchangeable; women are urged to leave their stereotypes behind (along with their infants). But we should be on our guard, because the new language is designed to obscure an unchanging truth: that children need their mothers. JK