Q. I'm happily staying home with my newborn for her first year. It's a real stretch for us financially, so I need to return to work when she turns 1. But I just read that children who spend a lot of time in daycare are more aggressive and stressed out, and now I feel terrible about going back to my job. What can I do?
A. Returning to work after having a baby is rarely easy. The most recent data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Early Child Care Research Network has not helped, with its negative findings about daycare and behavior issues, in some cases. Nor has the sensational news coverage that resulted from these reports. But as you probably know intuitively, children's behavior is complex and affected by so many other things. Just as staying home can not guarantee you a compliant, gentle child, going to work doesn't doom your family to years of defiance, either. Educate yourself first and then figure out who your child is and how you can best meet her -- and your -- needs.
The latest research In 1991, NICHD began a national study of infants to identify the effects of non-maternal care on young children -- anyone other than the mother, from Dad to Grandma to a nanny to center-based daycare. The researchers made sure to obtain a sample of 6-month-old children that represented different geographic, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic sectors of the U.S.
One of the most dramatic, and certainly the most publicized, bits of data is this upsetting finding: The greater the number of hours spent in childcare from 3 months to 4 years of age, the higher the level of disobedience and aggression displayed by the child in kindergarten, as reported by the child's teacher. The less-quoted fact is that these levels of negative behavior were still in the normal range --that is, they didn't warrant intervention.
Unfortunately, however, that's not all: In another recent study, researchers found that the stress levels of toddlers (children aged 16 to 38 months) increased over the course of the day while at full-day, center-based daycare. On days when the kids were home, their stress levels decreased as the day progressed. The researchers also observed that the increases in stress were more pronounced among toddlers than among infants, especially those toddlers who played less with their peers and were more fearful in social situations. This pattern of results led the researchers to conclude that a possible source of the stress seen among toddlers was the higher social demands, relative to those of infants, they experienced in the childcare setting. On the more positive side, other research has shown that high-quality childcare and a sensitively attuned mother can make up for some of the potentially negative effects.
Anita Sethi, Ph.D., is a research scientist at The Child and Family Policy Center at New York University. She has two sons and a daughter.
