A new study led by Penelope Leach found that young children who are looked after by their mothers do significantly better in developmental tests than those cared for in nurseries, by childminders or relatives.
Although the report will be leapt on by those who believe that mothers should stay at home after childbirth, others point out that it is often the quality of care outside the home which is at issue. Leach insisted her findings should not be interpreted as a demand that mothers stay at home. Instead, she described it is as supporting a demand for ‘developmentally appropriate high quality childcare’.
Sound good, but I haven’t seen the actual study yet. No time for more comments, because the kids are off from school today. We’re off to the mall to do chores and eat fried potatoes at the food court.
Apt. 11d 
The English expressions nursery and childminder are much better than the American equivalents.
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I wonder about young children cared for by a father …. how come that category is never included in these studies?
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because there are so few full time dads. These studies are making generalizations about large groups of people. They don’t have enough stay at home dads to say anything with statistically accuracy.
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I’d guess that there are some stay-at-home dad’s in her study, and she counts them as moms. Just a guess.
The hard question is: is it feasible to get the quality of childminding that Leach wants? In order to get it you need a lot of regulation and monitoring (which the UK already has, one of the causes of its serious shortage of supply), which raises the costs considerably (to someone: families, employers, or governments). Me, I’m a little sceptical, even with a government which has a major committment to supporting families in which two parents work (which I think the Labour government does have).
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is it feasible to get the quality of childminding (and yes, Tom, great word) that Leach wants?
I’m not sure if Leach really gives details of what she wants in a childcare situation. The study hasn’t been released yet. I’m curious if she does more than look at outputs of childcare v. nannies v. moms. Does she look at the inputs? What goes on in home settings that doesn’t happen elsewhere? Can that be replicated? Can that be replicated with reasonable costs?
My bet is that she doesn’t think that can happen judging from other things she has written. That last line about improving childcare was an upbeat way to end a depressing study.
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Forgive me for just plunging in without introduction….
Three years ago, Salon did an interview with the authors of a 2002 study that used the Bracken index “to measure the impact on cognitive skills of maternal employment in a child’s first year.” The interview tackled a lot of the problems of this sort of study:
http://tinyurl.com/csxhl
And the year before that, there was the study about childcare contributing to bullying tendencies:
http://tinyurl.com/7alhn
Which makes me ask: Are we SURE that fathers weren’t grouped in with the second-best “friends or grandparents or other relatives?” Where will the skirmishes between the AP parents and their opponents over these findings break out (because I find those battles perversely amusing)? And what are we in the USA supposed to do with this information, anyway? “Fix childcare” has been a public-policy mantra for almost forty years now. An unfunded mantra, more to the point. If this UK story gets picked up at all, it’s only going to fuel the mommy wars. It makes we wish people would find something else to investigate, already.
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My guess is that stay-at-home parenthood is strongly associated with other factors known to impact performance on developmental tests, income, education of parents, and parental investment in children. That last factor is difficult to observe, although you can control for the first two to a great degree. And I’m sure there’s an interaction effect between the education of the mother and her stay-at-home status – it’s quite plausible that more educated mothers would be likely to interact with thier children in a way that stimulates them more developmentally. Ditto fathers.
But really, does it matter? I’m sure many mothers would prefer to be home with their young children and that many children would benefit from them being more at home. But there’s a mother in here too, and if a caring mother decides her family would suffer without her income, or that the threat of divorce is too real to risk plunging her children into poverty should they split – I’m not about to wave these studies in her face and tell her she’s morally bankrupt. Nobody’s spending tons of grant money studying the harmful effects of father’s working on childhood development, despite the fact that we all realize most kids would benefit from more time with Dad. To use an extreme example, if all we really cared about was maximizing child outcomes, well, we’d all be using Einstein sperm and importing our eggs from leggy Swedish supermodels with perfect health backgrounds, right?
Love your children, and make the best decisions that you can. Good luck with the speach therapy and thanks for keeping up the blog.
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Thanks, Matilde.
Both Matilde and Jody say that we shouldn’t do these comparisons, because it’s unlikely to improve childcare and it’s rude to women who have to work.
Oh, that seems so sad to me. If we can figure out how to improve kids’ lives, I think we should. I don’t think we should ignore a problem, because of the political complications. If average childcare are not adequate, I would like to see solutions discussed and debated. I haven’t given up on other policies that have little chance of happening. Why should I give up on the kids?
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