Consider the Possible Benefits and/or Disadvantages of Day Care for Children's Social and/or Cognitive Development.

"In many industrialised countries, it is typical for infants as well as school aged children to spend significant periods of time being cared for by someone other than a parent."
Consider the possible benefits and/or disadvantages of day care for children's social and/or cognitive development.

Day care is a form of temporary care that is not given by family members or someone who is well known to the child, and usually takes place outside the home. This form of care is probably the most common situation in which infants and young children are separated from their primary attachment figure. The physical separation involved in day care may or may not affect a child's social and cognitive development due to a lack of emotional care during this time period. Social development is the aspect of a child's growth concerned with the development of sociability, where the child learns how to relate to others and the process of socialisation, in which the child acquires the knowledge and skills appropriate to society. Day care may have negative and/or positive effects on children's social development, and this has been studied by many psychologists.
Bowlby (1950) drew the conclusion that prolonged separation from the primary attachment figure could cause long-term maladjustment in the child; this demonstrates that there is a negative effect of day care on development. Increased aggressiveness is thought to be an effect of day care on a child, as is disobedience and violence. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) carried out a longitudinal study, beginning in 1991, that supports this idea. They studied 1000 children from 10 different locations, assessing both them and their parents at regular intervals in order to establish the effects of various experiences on the children’s development. The study showed that at aged 5, the children that spent 40 hours or more a week in day care were rated as more aggressive and disobedient. The results suggested that children in full-time day care are three times more likely to show behaviour problems than those who are cared for at home by their mothers. Although the study by NICHD seems to show that day care has a negative effect, this may be due to the presentation of the results. Although children who spent 40 hours or more in day care showed negative behaviour as a result, 83% of children who spent between 10 and 30 hours in day care did not show any increase in levels of aggression and disobedience. Also, the situations and participants involved were unique and therefore the study lacks reliability as it cannot be repeated with the same results. Whilst some research shows that day care has negative effects on children, some research supports the idea that day care benefits children’s social development. The exposure of children to peers allows them time to develop social strategies, such as the ability to negotiate and to make friends. Field (1991) discovered that the amount of time spent in day care was directly related to the number of friends made by children in school. He found that the more time spent by children in day care whilst under the age of five, the more friends they made once they started school. Research by Creps and Vernon-Feagans (1999) supports these results – they discovered that children who started day care before the age of 6 months were more sociable than those who started later. We cannot assume that day care has caused these differences in social behaviour, as it is possible, for example, that children who are shy are less likely to remain in day care and they may be home-schooled due to this personality type. Also, the type of care provided at each centre may differ causing differences in behaviour and sociability.
Cognitive development is the aspect of a child’s growth concerned with the cognitive functions performed by the brain of an individual, such as thinking, reasoning, problem solving and language skills. There is also a possibility that day care has an effect, may it be positive or negative, on a child’s cognitive development.
Research shows that day care has a positive effect on the cognitive development, as long as the day care is of good quality and provides stimulation of the brain for children. Scarr (1998) discovered that the effect is enhanced for working class children as middle class children seem to receive the appropriate stimulation at home. Broberg et al. (1997) found that there was a positive correlation between time spent in day care and cognitive ability in later life. They achieved these results by comparing the cognitive abilities of groups of children who had received different types of care at a young age – day care, child-minders or homecare. The children who had spent time in day care had better verbal and mathematical abilities than children who were cared for in the home.
These individuals are in unique situations and therefore the studies here lack reliability as they cannot be replicated and the same results cannot be achieved. Also Broberg et al. study is a lab experiment and therefore may lack ecological validity as the situations that children are put in may not reflect real-life situations.
Although there are studies that show that day care has a positive effect on cognitive development, there are also studies that have opposing results. For example, Baydar and Brooks-Gunn (1991) found that the cognitive ability of children who started day care at a younger age was lower than that of children who started later in childhood. Operation Head Start was started in the USA in the 1960s, and it was a programme of pre-school education that would encourage the cognitive development of working class children. The cognitive improvements were achieved by this scheme in the short-term, but these faded quickly.
The results of Operation Head Start showed that cognitive development was not significantly improved by day care, but the findings showed that the children who took part in the programme were actually more likely to complete high school and find employment later in life that those who had not undertaken the programme.
In conclusion, it seems that the research into the effects of day care is very contradictory. This shows that the effects of day care depend on individuals and possibly other factors such as the quality and number of hours spent in day care, as well as the child’s age and home experience.