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

@testoffaith See my edit! That’s the first time point they measured externalizing behaviors, not when the infants entered daycare. The study includes infants who started younger than that.
 
@netwaxer You can find it free on Boston College website (bc.edu).

And seems to support the research from before, they analysed 7 studies and at least 6 of them started collecting data at 24+ months.
 
@netwaxer I can't access the full article either, but the summary mentions toddlers and preschoolers so I'm assuming we're talking at the very least about children older than 1 year of age.
 
@spiritlead2013 That also makes sense because here in Germany, for example, there is almost no daycare available for kids under 1 year. I remember when we were looking for our first, the earliest we found offered was 10 months. It would be very hard to do an international study of babies in care situations because of selection bias.
 
@saulfactuspaul Yes one of the cool things about this study is that it looks at changes in a given child’s behavior over time related to the number of hours they were in daycare over time. This accounts for those biases well.

Also, there are some studies included in this analysis where the children began daycare earlier than 1 year. See my edit!
 
@damacri Thanks. I work with kids with developmental issues and would like to see more studies like this. It’s hard to generalize, but for my experience I see toddlers at home exposed sooner and much more time to screens (phones, tablets, tv) than children in daycare, maybe that plays a role.

Edit - English
 
@cricafan93 This is a good question. Even with both parents home, our son tends to have a lot of screen time on weekends. Maybe 3-4 hours a day (split into smaller chunks). Compared to the week where he has 30 minutes whilst dinner is being made and his baby brother is being put to bed. Prior to his brother's arrival he'd still have 2-3 hours each day on the weekend, and zero during the week. I know if he was home with just one parent he would have equal if not more screen time during the week.
 
@inheretic This is such a good point re: screen time while at home. My first two kids went to daycare and I felt a lot of guilt about it. I stayed home with my 3rd and while I made concerted efforts to keep him stimulated and active there was more lazy time (screen time) than id like to admit. I actually started thinking he might get more out of daycare (socializing, learning to entertain himself etc) than he did with me.

I guess my point is that the grass is always greener and the guilt will always be there.
 
@damacri This is the beauty of science. We all have anecdotal experiences, and have probably seen something and made a conclusion based on our singular (or maybe small community) experience. Being able to do large scale studies, and see effects on a population level is crucial. Thanks for sharing!
 
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