Probably lots of us heard the big news from last week about the study on day care. The story reported: "Youngsters who had quality child care before kindergarten had better vocabulary scores by fifth grade, but the more time they spent in child care, the more likely their sixth grade teachers were to report problem behaviors." The media takes care to report that the behavior problems are not large, and they are not anything for parents to worry about.
But did you notice what was considered day care? The article mentions, "In the study, child care was defined as care by anyone other than the child's mother who was regularly scheduled for at least 10 hours per week." Anyone other than the child's mother? Even for 10 or 12 hours a week? That means if Grandma is scheduled to watch the child for 2-3 hours a day, that's considered day care. If DADDY is with his kids for 2-3 hours a day on a regularly scheduled basis, that counts as "day care" in this study.
Interestingly enough, Saturday's follow-up article mentioned that "the study’s lead author, Jay Belsky, is no stranger to controversy. He says he was vilified for an article he wrote in 1986, saying there was 'slow and steady' evidence that non-parental child care, no matter the quality, could lead to developmental problems. Critics called him an ideologue."
When you do sociological research, you have a whole bunch of raw data. What does all that data mean? How can it be put together to make sense to anyone, to show trends, to show differences between groups? First thing to do is to make the groupings, to decide which individual pieces of information are lumped into a "group."
The study's author chose to call it "day care" when anyone other than the mom watched the kids. And still the study showed a difference in behavior!
What would've been the results of the study had the researchers lumped together kids who were A) cared for by a close relative, versus B) kids who were cared for by non-family? In other words, if Munchkin stays with Dad while Mom works, that wouldn't have been considered daycare. Likewise if Munchkin stayed with Grandma.
What would've been the results of the study had the researchers lumped together kids in A) family settings such as a child with a neighbor who watches only the kids from that one family, versus B) a day-care center where there are several babysitters and many many children coming and going throughout the day?
The lead author of the study took his lumps twenty years ago when he released information which indicated that day-care was bad for kids. Now he's sitting there again with a pile of data which shows how harmful day-care is to kids. But he doesn't want to be vilified again. Parents don't want to hear the results of a study that show day-care is bad for kids. Big corporations and the government don't want evidence that day-care is bad for kids. So what to do? What to do? Ah ha! I know what to do! We'll rig the groupings in this research. If we include in the "Day Care Group"
-- the kids who have stay-at-home dads,
-- the kids who stay with Aunt Susie two days a week,
-- the kids who stay with Daddy two evenings a week while Mom waitresses,
-- the kids who stay with Grandma while Mom works full-time, and
-- the kids who stay with the nice neighbor lady who doesn't watch anybody else's kids,
THEN
the "Day Care Group" won't really represent the kids in day-care. Any negative characteristics of that group will be toned down by the fact that a lot of kids in the "Day Care Group" weren't really in day care.
So the really big news of this study is NOT that there was a slight difference in behavior between the kids who were in day-care and those who weren't. The big news should be that even with their incredibly restrictive definition of what it means to NOT be in day-care, there was still a difference in behavior between the two groups of kids. The study results would have been vastly different if they had grouped
-- kids at home with family members, versus
-- kids in small home-like day-care settings, versus
-- kids in day-care centers.
That would not have been popular news!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You caught my attention! I babysit for my neighbor's two children just about 10 hours per week (5 hrs., 2 day per wk.). All the rest of the time mom or dad cares for them, taking turns because mom and dad do both work. When I have a conflict, my neighbor's mom or sisters babysit.
ReplyDeleteI have a really hard time describing what I do as day care. Before the kids come to me, their mom feeds them, plays with them, runs her errands with them. They come to my house and have a snack, play with my kids and have a meal.
Goodness, after the school year or on no-school days my kids spend time at their house playing. I'm sure there have been many times where the time my kids spend there adds up to more than 10 hours per week. My daughter has spent enough time at the neighbor's that she can understand some of the Polish words they use, as that is the language they use at home.