Daycare: Day Care and High Quality Day-care

The Effects of Day Care on Children’s Emotional, Cognitive, and Social Development by Gina Lalli There have been many concerns in the past decades as to whether attending daycare during infancy produces negative or positive effects on the development of children (Belsky and Steinberg 1978, Booth et al. 2002, Egeland and Hiester 1995, Farran and Ramey 1977, Field 1991, Lamb 1996, Peisner-Feinberg et al. 2001, Schwartz 1983). Many of these concerns are influenced by the fear that separating infant from their mother may cause emotional harm to the child or disrupt the mother-infant bond (Belsky and Steinberg 1978, Booth et al. 2002, Egeland and Hiester 1995, Farran and Ramey 1977, Lamb 1996, Schwartz 1983). It is also questioned as to whether home-based maternal care or nonrelative day-care provides the child with more opportunity to develop cognitively and socially (Belsky and Steinberg 1978, Field 1991, Lamb 1996, Peisner-Feinberg et al. 2001). In order to ensure that day-care is not creating adverse effects on children, research on day-care institutions and on the outcomes of children who attend them have been done. The intent of this paper is to explore the concerns adults have regarding the negative effects that children may experience from attending day-care, and how these perceptions are higher than the actual risks in some cases, as well as to describe how high-quality day-care may even benefit certain groups of children. The purpose is to create a better understanding as to how day-care influences children and impacts their development. One aspect of the sociological relevance of this topic stems from socially constructed ideas of women being the primary provider for children and the influence of their presence in their children’s lives. The concern of day-care having adverse effects 1

on children began to emerge when social change allowed women to break from the traditional role of care-taker and instead participate in the workplace. Now that there has

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