I think that it's about time that someone took a real stand on this daycare/homecare issue. I've never seen any serious evidence that shows that there is any long term negative effect from daycare. I usually refer students who are interested in the topic to Scarr's very readable article "Why child care has little impact on most children's development ( 1997. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 6(5), 1143-148. ) In fact, I'm so convinced that there is negligible effect from daycare that I am offering a challenge a la the Turing Test. Let's immodestly call it the Allen Test. I am willing to bet that if we assemble a room full of people, some of whom were raised in daycare and others who were raised at home, that no one could accurately differentiate them based on fair questions about their current lives. By a "fair" question I mean one that probes their current life e.g. "How close do you feel to your mother?" or "Do you consider yourself to be a happy person?". Unfair questions would be those which attempted to weasel out whether one was placed in daycare as a child, e.g. "When you were a child did you wish that you could have spent more time with your mother?". If it is true that there are dire sequelae to being raised in daycare then it should be easy to spot the difference in the adults. On the other hand, if there really is no measurable lasting effect of daycare then these adults would be indistinguishable from one another. I am willing to put my money on the latter scenario. Any takers?
-Don. On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, jim clark wrote: > Hi > > On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Stephen Black wrote: > > > Jim Clark asked about a book which apparently questioned research > > showing that daycare didn't cause harm to children. > > > > As a long-shot, I wonder if he might be referring to the massive and > > on-going National Institute of Child Health and Human Development > > Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which started in > > 1989. > > Thanks Stephen. I do have the NICHHD stuff. The book was more a > popular press kind of work, and talked about a "cover-up" by > academics promoting daycare as an equivalent to parent-care. > > Best wishes > Jim > > ============================================================================ > James M. Clark (204) 786-9757 > Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax > University of Winnipeg 4L05D > Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED] > CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark > ============================================================================ > > > --- > You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ******************************************************************** Don Allen email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dept. of Psychology voice: (604)-323-5871 Langara College fax: (604)-323-5555 100 W. 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. Canada, V5Y 2Z6 ******************************************************************** --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
