Daycare is NOT associated with behavior problems in 10,000+ children across 5 countries

@jnat24 I would be cautious about that graph. Because it's wrong for Czechia. We have 28 weeks of paid maternity and then parental leave with government support till age 3/4.
 
@hoohkostwon It looks like that might be correct in that graph? The graph suggests you get 52 weeks full pay equivalent - is it possible the government support works out to, on average, 26 additional weeks of full pay?

Either way, it’s not true that most of Europe offers full pay for a year.
 
@hoohkostwon
The earliest I can imagine would be 6 months but more likely around 1 year at least going by maternity and parental leave in the countries alone.
Click to expand...

I live in Europe and send my two children to a daycare here, including an infant. There are lots of infants in daycare here.
 
@damacri Yes, but that's irrelevant to the question at hand. The paper's analysis literally cannot comment either way on whether daycare has negative effects before the age of 2 because the actual data they're using does not cover time points before the age of 2 (except QLSCD at 18 mo). This isn't a comment on the quality of the analysis in general, but on what it does and does not cover. It's also not a commentary on the underlying studies, some of which do track infants and toddlers before 2, but that's irrelevant because that data is not part of the analysis. I'm also not weighing in on the overall literature because that is way outside of my areas of expertise.

Let me illustrate the issue with a thought experiment (I'm going to ignore QLSCD at 18 mo for simplicity):
  • Let's assume the world only has two types of kids, those who start center care at 6 mo and those who start at 2 years.
  • Let's further assume (just for this thought experiment!) that center care before 2 years is significantly detrimental, but there is no impact after 2 years.
  • At the 2 year time point, we would then expect significant differences between toddlers who started center care at 6 mo and toddlers who are just starting at 2 years.
  • We then sample 4 time points and analyze the impact of within-subject dosage on negative behaviors. We'd find no impact! Why? Because there's no impact of daycare dosage or treatment after 2 years and we're ignoring any pre-existing between-subject differences.
The only place a study sampling post-2-years might see differences due to pre-2-years center care would be a between-subjects analysis. This is assuming (reasonably) that there's a correlation between post-2-years dosage and pre-2-years dosage (i.e., if you can keep your child out of center care before 2 years, you're more likely to have an easier time periodically pulling them from care or going part-time later on). And that's what shows up in their RE model in 3 of the 7 studies (I don't think the author's talk much about the exact statistics of the random effects model beyond that and I doubt the evidence is particularly strong).

I'm not saying it's a bad paper. Doing a between-subjects analysis would have pretty significant issues and wouldn't provide strong evidence of pre-2-years issues anyways. However, the paper's within-subject approach is only better at answering the question it's actually answering, which is about dosage after 2. It's mute on issues before the age of 2, which is what all the pushback is about.

Hope that helps clarify why so many people in the thread are unhappy with the framing of this post!
 
@motherof7 Yes people seem to want to dismiss the study because it doesn’t look at age of entry effects specifically, but it is pretty conclusive that being in daycare for a longer period of time in toddlerhood is not related to externalizing symptoms. That is significant on its own.

Additionally, the study does not see a lot of RE differences, even though it includes children who started daycare before 2 as well as after 2 as you mention. It seems unlikely that the study is masking negative effects of early entry since at least one of the cohorts did look at age of entry effects and did not see them, but it’s possible statistically in theory.
 
@damacri Okay. It’s still just one paper. One paper cannot be used to definitively say daycare is good and no need to worry about the previous evidence saying otherwise, ignore that, we’ve proven its all fine now!

As someone with an infant in daycare I understand the impulse to give more weight to the studies that reassure me and find more fault with the ones that upset me, but that’s not a very science-based approach.
 
@elisjohn It’s not giving more weight to the study because it is reassuring, but because it’s a better study (higher n, multi-cite, international, fixed effect modeling which is a stronger statistical control).
 
@elisjohn But if the previous studies are methodologically flawed, often very old, and not replicated, you should give more weight to the empirical evidence that is more recent, methodologically rigorous, and replicable.

No one is saying "it's fine now", but you would have been hard pressed even before recent research to find neuropsychologists who say that daycare will decisively lead to negative outcomes for children. There is much greater certainty that daycare is bad in this thread than there has been in the scientific community in the last decade.
 
@damacri It doesn't break them up by age, which is partly what the original blog is about. Just by reading this paper, how many under 2s were included?
 
@philipb It’s unclear how many under 2s since all the studies do not include age of entry in their data set. I clarified because a lot of people thought it daycare was only over 2 in this study, which is incorrect. This study does lump them together.
 
@damacri I was excited to read this and then after digging through the articles, studies, and their associated links so thoroughly disappointed.

OP: Though your search for more extensive studies is admirable, I'm not sure if it's entirely unaffected and unbiased. By your own admission in a comment below where you state the following about another often cited/discussed article:
"I don’t know if you’ve interacted with the author of the blog post, but I have and she blocked me for sending her studies that counteract her message instead of editing the post. She has an agenda and ignored half the existing daycare research. I honestly do not believe the blog post was written in good faith, but as a way to sway already vulnerable mothers."

It may help to take a step back and to conduct a more neutral and objective analysis of any associated literature prior to diving in to help perform a more holistic review.
 
@yadid I don’t have a personal stake in this as I don’t use a daycare center at this time, but I do think the blog post is fundamentally flawed as it ignores some of the scant literature available (all the maternal report studies) and glosses over issues. This is literally the best evidence to date based on objective metrics of study quality!!

I’m sorry you were disappointed by it, but I have yet to come across a better study. Feel free to share if you found one.
 
@damacri OP, this is not the best evidence available. You’re fundamentally misunderstanding what this paper even is. It’s not a multinational longitudinal study in and of itself — it’s a re-analysis of EXISTING studies using different statistical techniques than the original authors.
 
@yahwhshua So? Those are actually the kinds of studies that can check for quality. If all the reassessed data from all these studies conclude the same, the study the authors of the paper did was multi-national. I can't judge for it being longitudinal or not, but these kinds of overview studies, double checking conclusions are actually wildly important and add extra value to the studies examined if the overview study reaches the same conclusions.
 
@ellimae Agree! Meta-analyses and reviews are wildly important. Simply pointing out that OP has repeatedly referred to this as a longitudinal multinational study and the papers it analyzes as “sub-studies”, which isn’t accurate. This analysis does not stratify by age and by lumping babies data in with 4 year olds data (who we know from all the previous research have very different outcomes from daycare attendance) you will, of course, get a less significant (in this case, null) result.
 
@yahwhshua What do you think is the best evidence available? Because this seems to address issues with statistical analyses from previous studies and uses data from multiple countries.
 
@damacri Also, to be clear OP, I’m really glad you shared this study! The discussion it’s stirred up is really valuable and there’s lots of good stuff in here and this study IMHO IS a good addition to the literature even if it’s not as groundbreaking as you might have originally thought. I know this probably feels like a pile-on and that sucks, it’s not personal, everyone here is just passionate about science too :)
 
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