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

[damacri]

@katrina2017 I do have issues with the blog post as it ignores much of the daycare literature, which is of poor quality to begin with — see Dearing 2017 for a review of issues. While this study is not specific to a certain age of entry, it includes children under 2 and does not find an effect!! It is also higher quality than any of the previous studies and uses more stringent statistical models. It is relevant to the blog post in that respect. The second study I linked also directly refutes claims of externalizing pathology linked to age of entry.

Edit: I’m not sure what part of my summary of the actual article is wrong. I never claimed it studies the age at first entry. I presented the results and method in what I believe is an accurate way. Please let me know what you think is inaccurate about the summary.

 

[katrina2017]

@damacri You keep saying it “includes” children under 2 as if that refutes the blog post analysis. It doesn’t. Not at all. Lumping all ages together and declaring “no effect!” and then claiming that disproves the findings from so many other studies, which do stratify findings by age is simply bad science. It might make one feel better, but it’s bad science and I really appreciate that so many here are noticing that and calling it out.

 

[damacri]

@katrina2017 The linked study in edit 2 does not find an effect for kids under 2 specifically. Also, the prior literature on age of entry has a lot of methodological issues. See Dearing 2017 for an overview. This study is relevant because it is of particularly high quality.

 

[katrina2017]

@damacri Did you read the entire study you linked in edit 2? The children were almost all 1yr+ when beginning care and they did find an effect of earlier age of entry, they just found that it faded over time.

”We found some evidence that age of entry into ECEC predicted aggression at age 2, albeit modestly and not robustly. Between the ages of 2 and 4 years, the effect of age of entry on aggression faded to negligible levels.”

The study was conducted in Norway in the context of generous parental leave (which is why almost all children were 1yr+ when beginning care) and practically universal access to high-quality care. To take these findings and apply them to other contexts (especially the US where the quality of care tends to be poor to mediocre and infants routinely start in the first few months of life) would be misleading at best.

 

[damacri]

@katrina2017 The parental leave in Norway is 10mo, so most infants begin around that time with variation by birth month. I noted that in my summary and agree it is not applicable at very young ages. The quality comparisons between the US and Norway are less clear.

A strong parental leave policy would be amazing in the US. I believe every parent should have the option to stay home with their infant if they want to do so. I am not arguing against parental leave and apologize if it seemed like I was doing so.

 

[katrina2017]

@damacri The study states that Norwegian leave policy provides 10 months leave at full pay and 12 months leave at 80% pay. It also states that publicly funded care begins at 12 months of age. Most of the children in the study were over a year of age:

”Most municipalities, including those from which we sampled, offered care to children who were at least 1 year old by the enrollment date of either August 1 or August 15 (Ministry of Education, 2007b). Remaining free slots were allocated via a waiting list that gave first prior- ity to children who were 11 months old by the enroll- ment date and second priority to those who were 10 months old by that date.”

 

[damacri]

@katrina2017 The graph in Figure 1 does show it is closer to 12mo at earliest entry. I’ve edited my post to reflect this. I was reading the full study at 5am on my phone when nursing, so I appreciate the correction. It is still relevant to “kids under 2” though.

 

[jdthcstl]

@damacri

Additionally, the authors tested whether family income moderated the effects of daycare on behavior problems (i.e., if there were differences in the associations for low income or high income families). They did not find evidence of any moderation by income.

This seems like a red flag that they are doing something weird (most likely unintentionally), SES like income and education has a strong correlation with everything, for such a large combination of studies to find no relationship is suspicious to me.

I'm blindly guessing, but maybe they operationalize "externalizing behaviors" variables in a way that is not sensitive to the effects of education or income? Maybe when combining the outcomes by converting them to t-score? Something doesn't seem right.

 

[jessie_jones_godlover]

@jdthcstl They’re saying that low income kids in daycare vs not in daycare and high income kids in daycare vs not in daycare have no significant difference in rate of behavioral issues. Not that there’s no difference with low and high income in general. Just that within those groups the daycare didn’t make a difference

 

[jdthcstl]

@jessie_jones_godlover Ah that makes a little more sense. Still a little surprising, but not as far fetched.

 

[keekjaci]

@jessie_jones_godlover That would make complete sense because income levels make a huge difference in upbringing

 

[katrina2017]

@jdthcstl if I understand it correctly they did not test whether income has a correlation with f.e. behavior but whether income has an impact on the relation between childcare and behavior.

So from the rich kids, 10% have behavior problems with childcare and 10% without childcare.

From the poor kids, 30% have behavior problems with childcare and 30% without childcare. (All numbers made up).

If on the whole they did not find a correlation, it is not too surprising that they did not find a correlation in a subgroup to me.

 

[scooper8]

@damacri I think this is an interesting study, but the authors’ point about the external validity of US-based studies to other countries/contexts applies to making choices about childcare in the US. Studies of Norway and Canada, for example, give us good information about what does and doesn’t work in universal childcare efforts, but I wouldn’t use them to evaluate the current state and effects of US childcare. This is a real strength of Belsky’s work - he looks at a broad range of US childcare rather than focusing on intensive, high-resource programs like the Perry Preschool Project which aren’t representative of the current state of care in the United States. Even for pre-K, an age where I think there’s a pretty strong consensus about the benefits of at least some group care, we see variations in outcomes such as between the Tennessee voluntary pre-K study and results out of Boston and Tulsa suggesting that the quality of programs affect outcomes. And, like others have mentioned, without disaggregating results by age of entry into childcare, I think a null result isn’t as strong in refuting other studies. A child who starts 45 hours of daycare per week at 3 months is a pretty different subject than a child who starts 30 hours of daycare per week at age 3, even without quality differences in care.

 

[kareniya]

@scooper8 This - US based daycare is all over the place. Without a standard of care it's improbable that this study adequately captures the American approach. Not to mention children in the US often enter daycare significantly earlier in their lives due to lack of paternal leave and support compared to our European counterparts.

I don't know as much about Norway but the German government makes sure your infant is supported - kindergeld, extensive maternal and fraternal paternity leave, free medical, free kindercare (not the US branded day care - that's what the German public preschool system is called - which when I visited my little sisters class, was nicer than anything I've seen in the states). In the U.S.

I've had a number of friends who had to start their child in daycare before 3 months! That's unheard of in 2/3s of the countries represented in this study.

Since daycare in the U.S. can range from sitting in front of a TV all day locked up in a room with two other kids and some toys (my childhood daycare experience) to a warm engaging and stimulating environment and anything in between - not to mention how significantly different it is from at least the German system - methinks the study author is introducing some serious bias.

 

[alamaris]

@scooper8 I haven’t seen Tulsa mentioned in the discussions on this topic in this sub before. If you have a chance, could you share the highlights or where I should look into more info?

 

[scooper8]

@alamaris This page has a good listing of the research Georgetown has done! https://www.crocus.georgetown.edu/

 

[aletheiaslavik]

@damacri As a parent of two teenagers who went to daycare, the only difference between them and their peers who did and didn't go to daycare is... nothing.

Glad this study supports that observation.

 

[emclane]

@aletheiaslavik Yup. My sister went to day care as a child, my grandma was here to help babysit me when I was a baby/kid. No difference whatsoever.

 

[sitsatdeskwithpen]

@aletheiaslavik Do you feel one had more social skills going into school (if they weren’t homeschooled) than the other? Or did it really seem to create no difference?

 

[netwaxer]

@damacri I don't have access to full article, could someone tell me what age ranges they analyzed? As from previous research the conclusions were very much depending on child's age (e.g. no benefit before 3yo, potentially harmful before 2yo etc.).