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positive effects are on the competence
of the immune system and on health,
in ways that have major long-term cost
implications for any modern society.
Ideology masquerading as
science
Discussion of childcare is not meaningful
without stating whether it is early
childcare for infants in the first two
to three years, for preschoolers, or for
children after school, since the implications
are very different. We must
acknowledge that there are risks in
early childcare, and that professionals
regard staff stability, with one carer
per three (not five) infants under two
years, as a preliminary requirement
for infant daycare to be considered
of ‘high quality’. This is inherently
costly. Yet rather than promoting social
settings which support healthy, more
natural mothering of small children,
many women gaining power in the
social sciences, the bureaucracies and
politics call for still more non-parental
childcare, ignoring or downplaying
the accumulating evidence of risks in
their early childcare prescriptions. In
his editorial in The Wall Street Journal
of July 16, 2003, Professor Jay Belsky
described this bias as ‘ideology masquerading
as science’.
Maternal care and family
mental health
Summarising evidence from much
research, including the multimillion dollar
US study into the effects of childcare
by the Early Child Care Network of the
National Institute for Child Health and
Development (NICHD), of which he is
a founding member, Belsky observed
that, regardless of the type and quality
of daycare, research shows that the
more time children spend in any kind
of non-maternal daycare before they are
4 1/2 years old, the more truly aggressive
and disobedient they are — not just
more assertive or independent. This has
adverse implications for parents, as well
as for teachers and fellow-pupils, who
are all disadvantaged by the disruption
to learning which such children can
cause in the classroom.
The security of an infant’s attachment
to his or her mother can be reliably
assessed at around 15 to 18 months, and
an insecure attachment in the first half
of the second year is associated with a
higher risk of adverse outcomes in later
development, especially when the child
confronts risks and challenges to his or
her development. The NICHD study
showed that risk of insecure attachment
is increased for boys with more than 30
hours per week in non-maternal childcare,
regardless of the quality of the care
or other factors.
Risk is also increased when a number
of risk factors, such as low quality care,
changes in care, and relatively insensitive
mothering, occur together. For example,
more than just 10 hours a week increases
risk of insecure attachment if mothering
is relatively insensitive, even if all other
factors, such as quality of childcare, are
favourable. Also, the more time children
spend in childcare, irrespective of its
quality, the less sensitive is the mother’s
mothering through the first 36 months
of the child’s life. An extended outline of
this NICHD study may be found in my
Early Child Care — Infants and Nations at
Risk (1997).
The Minnesota Longitudinal Studies
show that, while peer and family experiences
appear to make distinctive
contributions to future close relationships,
the quality of early attachment
experiences have particular importance
with regard to the intimacy, trust, and
other emotional aspects of both teenage
and adult relationships, and the
capacity for successful partnerships in
The fruits of good
mothering and early
nurture are among
the greatest blessings
a person can
have in life.
adult life. Moreover, children and teens
with secure attachment histories excel
in social and emotional health, leadership
skills, morality, social behaviour,
self-reliance, self-control and resiliency,
as appropriate in each stage of development.
The risk-benefit situation may be
different where young children are at
risk for social reasons, such as an impoverished
home environment, especially
when exposed to indisputably good
quality day care, and here good quality
day care may offer intellectual-developmental
benefits. But these may be a
special case which should not be generalised
to argue for early childcare as
a healthy norm for most young children
in society — even though it is politically
fashionable to do so.
The private opinions of mental health
professionals
Penelope Leach (1997) reported that,
when asked what care they considered
likely to be best from birth to 36
months, most infant mental health professionals
privately believed that from
the infant’s point of view it is ‘very
important’ for babies to have their moth-
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