Your Day Care Choice May Have an Impact on Your Child's Later Success in School

The thing that is really missing from this article is the definition researchers and the reporter are using to measure the difference between "quality" and lesser daycare. The article is so poorly done it offers us nothing. Wonder where the reporter went to daycare?

Just what I was going to say. Unless the study controlled for the fact that higher-income parents - and all the benefits that go along with higher-income parents - are likely to be able to put their children in higher-quality daycare, it's worthless.

Amen, Gordon.

Great response...I could not agree with you more. Sad for children that have to "fin for themselves" from birth. The most important years are birth to age 5...the nurturing years and who most fit for that than FAMILY.

It's not that parents are unwilling...It's that the parents nowadays have to both have jobs to survive. Get a grip...

You ask every one of your students who cared for them between birth and kindergarten? If your answer is no, you are making assumptions.

Daycare centers are not the prime child care as they seem. When you consider that infants are 1 adult to 5 babies and the staff is rotated to keep the ratio of adult to children (this would include but not limited to the cook, janitor, and administrators.) Licensed family child care offers the same person day in and day out, they are a loving, nurturing environment. Children learn day and night; to blame a child care for a child not succeeding is a shame. I have been a licensed provider for 25 years and I cannot tell you how many children come to me not even knowing how to put their shoes on at 5 years old. It is time parents started helping with educating their children and not expecting daycare and schools to do it for them entirely.

Unwilling? Seriously? What world are you living in? How many people have the luxury of staying home with their children? It breaks my heart to hear stuff like this - I would give ANYTHING to be able to stay home with my children.....but we have to eat.

Dear Nailapot,


I could not agree more with your findings. I myself, am a stay at home Mom and have gone to GREAT lengths to stay here. For a short while I did enter the "Corporate Daycare" as a means of employment while my third child was an infant. I was in a very fortunate position in that I was still able to breastfeed, move up the "Corporate Ladder."
My two oldest never spent a moment in daycare.
After having worked in one of the most notable daycare corporations, I now know I would not recommend this care for any child. Teachers/employee's have good intentions but simply put corporations exist to make money. The average childcare worker is not paid nearly enough nor are most centers given enough funding to implement curriculum. While I considered myself to be excellent with the budget I was given to work within. Sacrifices in all areas needed to be made to "meet budget."
Eventually I tired of not giving the upper crust education this corporation boasted of. I worked hard, loved my job, loved the kids, parents and staff alike. I just could not sacrifice the things that needed to be all in the name of making a buck for the mammoth funding corporation that was behind all the claims of "excellence."
I am not against daycare on occasion, but yes......nailapot, I do raise my own kids now. It's just such a better idea for all involved.

Exactly, I agree with you. I think that many parents *could* forgo the second income if they really wanted to. Not all but many. (So don't jump down my throat about that). Unfortunately it seems that many of the upper middleclass are the first to toss their kids away like trash..into daycare, presumably because mummy NEEDS that huge house and doesn't want to give up her tennis lessons.

Raise your own kids, it all works out better.

jtrag, i think you meant "fend" for themselves...

Amen !!I I have been saying this for years. I am concidering pulling my kids out of formal school and working w/ them at home. Just trying to find a HS program. Please keep telling the truth and don't let the PC people quiet you.

I am a stay at home mom. We choose to live in a smaller house, not drive new cars, and I shop for want we need as a family not what I want. I know there are family's that HAVE to work to survive. However, many working mom & dads choose to both work instead of choosing to raising their children. This is not the only article ever to talk about the effects of daycare on children. I have seen for myself children who are in daycare tend (not always) to lie more and try harder to get attention from their parents! Children need time with their parents. When you child spends more time at Daycare then with you, how can you say you are raising them? Your not. I know working moms. I have a single mother as a friend who HAS to work then I have a working mother as a friend who does not have to work for money.She chooses to work because she doesn't want to stay home. Staying home is a choice of no income, no vacation days, no personal days and no 401K. However raising my children is the best job and the benefits.
So if you live in a BIG home, with NEW Cars, the NEW fancy cell phone with internet and gadgets then don't say I HAVE to work. Because it is a lie. It is all about living as a family and not about "being the jones"

Wow you're a college professor, and yet that last statement is amazingly the most ignorant I've ever heard on this issue. To be so presumptuous as to say that anyone with a child in daycare is doing so simply because "we are unwilling to raise our own kids anymore" is absurd and offensive. For all of those other stay at home moms with their heads in the ground, the majority of the country does not put their children into daycare to have a bigger house and an extra car, or "to keep up with the Jones". The majority of families in this country are not wealthy. We work because we have to work in order to provide a safe and clean home, a quality education and at least one means of transportation between the two. Sometimes a public education may not be a viable option in certain places, sometimes two incomes does not mean a lot of money, and sometimes money does not equal greed. I wish women could learn that we need to stand up for each other and support each other and respect our decisions and stop making assumptions and criticisms about other women.

That is interesting nailapot. I'd always speculated that such would be the case, and have heard similar observations. Just not yet from a college teacher. I've worked in a few daycares. Though they were high quality programs, I will NEVER work in one again. I saw what I was enabling/supporting - women bringing kids in the world just to leave them all day. Too sad. I am also unwilling to have kids if I think there's a chance I'll need to work, even if it means never having them. And I'm someone who really likes and wants kids!

Yeah, like I am sure that these kids coming into your college classes immediately tell you that they spent considerable time with their blood relative in their formative years. What kind of dillweeds do you take us for. You are completely without credibility.

We have been in daycare business for over 30 years. Good daycare is beneficial to infants and toddlers. My wife is a former teacher. My daughter has masters degree in education including special needs. Children come to us at
07:30 and leave at 5pm. When they get home by 6pm, eat their supper or what ever the parents provide for them. By 7pm they are in bed. They get up at 6am and back with us by 7:30am. So you see the child learns almost all of his/her traits by watching and learning from his child care provider and not the parents.

As a former elementary school teacher turned homeschooling mother of seven, I wholeheartedly agree. My oldest daughter, a product of homeschooling was accepted into a fully accredited prestigious all girls college in South Carolina. And now, at the end of her first year, has a 4.0 GPA and a full scholarship for next year based on her scholastic performance.

That being said, homeschooling isn't for everyone---and, in fact, its better they are NOT homeschooled if it isn't going to be done well and done properly.

I find it terribly egregious people having kids they don't want to be with, raise, spend time with, etc. And before I am blasted by those who remind me of the economy, I hasten to add I am a recently widowed mother of seven children. I teach, I raise, and I support my children. It's ALL about choices, planning and dedication.