Daycare Pseudoscience

I read a bunch of pop psychology books (by supposedly respectably authors who were academic researches on this stuff) on child development when my kids were in that age. Weirdly, the author of this leaves out a completely relevant variable from the discussion: the child's age.

As far as I recall from my readings, daycare might be harmful for very small children (around age 2 and below), who are still very attached to their mothers. Above that, it is a matter of how large the group size is and how professional the daycare teachers are. Children below the age of 6 or so benefit from very small groups, because they don't yet have the social intelligence to navigate multi-person interactions. All children left on their own tend to develop anti-social behavioural patterns (such as taking toys from other by force, etc.), and a qualified daycare professional is supposed to watch for and weed out that kind of behaviour.

Peoples' home lives and school lives can be so varied that I wonder if an A vs B comparison is even appropriate. Are the kids going to be playing outside? On an iPad? With the neighbours? Watching Christian TV? Are there bullies at school? Does their home feel safe?

And even if there's an impact one way or another, daycare has a much bigger role in helping keep women in the workforce. Many don't make it back in after a 5 year break to raise kids. Daycare helps stop them from falling off the career ladder.

I only know a little about this subject,but I was a youth camp counselor for 8 years, 6 of them specialized in 3-6yo.

I agree with the author on the '2yo is too young' point. Obviously it depends on the children, we are all different, but I have noticed that even some early 3yo have trouble 'socializing' (or what count as socializing at this age, before ~4-5 yo, I.e stealing from each other, fighting over the stolen objects, then learning to share.).

I also agree that we don't know much, but: I would 100% advise every parent to attend least send their children to a youth camp during summer around 5-6yo (4 even if you think he is early in his development). If the counselor is great, you will get back children who have sung with other for a week (once two of my charges started harmonizing by themselves, without me prompting them to, this was great), learn enough knots to impress you (especially considering the focus and dexterity of a 4yo child), and tell you stories about building homes for forest fairies. And even if the counselor isn't _that_ great (I will stop giving myself flowers someday, today's not the day though), your child will socialise for a week, probably learn interesting stuff (and probably sing too, this is like counselor 101).

I'm reminded of Bloom's 2 sigma effect. Classroom education is to tutoring as daycare is to parenting.

Or course it helps the disadvantaged. Indeed if the neglect is bad enough, you may get superior parenting from the people at daycare (or indeed at school)!

Personally I had a nice time at daycare. There were toys there, and friends, and people who paid attention to you.

I'm not in that debate at all (this was actually the first time I heard there is an "anti-daycare movement" at all) but I found the section on cortisol to be extremely unconvincing.

The anti-daycare camp claims they have evidence of a clear relationship between elevated cortisol levels and daycare visits - to which the author responds with a bunch of irrelevant, deflective points like "cortisol is an important part of the metabolism and it fluctuates all the time anyway and look, here is an incident of it being low in people who are stressed!" None of which addresses the concrete issue that the camp brought up.

That's "the climate has changed before" kind of arguing.

The irony is that he made a better argument at the end ("are they really stressed or just excited and in an unfamiliar environment, meeting lots of new people, etc etc") but only after doing all this handwaving before.

Does anyone commenting actually have kids in daycare or experience with the alternative - being responsible for your kids 24/7 with no help?

I could not do what my kid's daycare teachers do every day, emotionally or physically. Without daycare, home life would be far more stressful for everyone. Plus the effects of me not being able to have a job anymore. In our house, without daycare we would be completely underwater. With daycare everyone is doing great.

reading it I notice that the argument against daycare was referencing an American and the arguments for daycare were referencing Europeans. Can it be that the cultures have two different approaches to daycare? Either that or, as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49496012 says it's a bunch of crap. I tend not to flag but the article seems close enough to anti-vaxx but where daycare is concerned that I am sorely tempted.

Also they cookie banner is the most annoying bit of passive-aggressive UI I've seen in a long time, and now I feel stupid and dirty because I decided oh well I'll be nice this time and just Accept All. UGH. Curse me for my clemency.

This is junk both-sides-ism. I wasted minutes waiting for the delivery of reasonable studies that support and oppose daycare but ended up seeing the authors repeat the trope of dismissing studies of hundreds of participants wtihout trying to understand if the experiment was appropriately powered at that sample size.

This link should be flagged and removed.