One of the factors that need to be considered when expressing the positive effects of day care is the child’s history of past childcare experience they might have had before entering into kindergarten. There are two articles one by Julia Dmitrieva and another one by Erik Andersson they are both studies that focus on the various behaviors that a child portrays both in their academic performance and in their social interactions. The study written by Dmitrieva was conducted by The Psychology Department and the Institute of Child and Family Studies at the University of London and the other was conducted by the Stockholm Institute of Education in Sweden. The main idea particularly gathered from Dmitrieva’s study showed that the amount of time spent in daycare facilities and the age at which the child enrolled, impacted their behaviors. Andersson agrees that the age at which a child attends day care is important to their academic and social environments but Andersson stresses more that the type of day care a child attends is equally as important.
The first study conducted by Dmitrieva continually points out that the kindergarten children who had no history of child care before they entered kindergarten had trouble and “externalized their behavior”, meaning these children liked to mainly fight and argue with not just their peers but their teacher as well. It was shown that if a child had been to daycare before that their academic performance and social interactions with other fellow peers were noticeable and they seemed to fit in more. (Dmitrieva, pg 1) Not only the past history of childcare but also the influence and history that the parents provide are important too. “Sixty three percent of American children under the age of five years old receive some form of nonparental childcare” (pg. 2, para 2). It is concluded that most of the parent or nonparent supervision happens throughout the first year of the child’s life. The other thirty seven percent of American children are raised with parental support (pg 1, para 3). This is important to consider because a parent provides a lot of the outside opinion that is very different from what the child receives in the classroom. When a child acts out in kindergarten some sociologists believe that their attitudes came from a dysfunctional and possibly financially burdened family. But that theory is not completely true because Dmitrieva’s study shows that the personal experiences in the classroom and with the peers, ends up triggering the child’s social and academic development more so than family support would. (pg 1, para 3)
Throughout these studies the scientists needed to take into account the various demographics of the children they were studying. The physical demographics that were considered were mostly based on societal class or socioeconomic status, sex and age. The education of the child’s parents was also an important factor to consider because that shows how motivated the parents are to give their children an education. Most of the kids had both parents and at least one of those parents or even both had been to college and had a college degree. In Andersson’s study the focus for the family background is mostly based on the mother’s education, the family’s occupational status and the family type (Andersson, pg 4, para 28). It was observed that the children who come from mothers who are highly educated and whose family had white collar jobs, tended to go to school at an earlier age (Andersson, pg 5, para 29). Taking these physical variables in mind, it is important for the readers to understand the school demographics because based on if the school was located in a suburb, small town or big city the atmosphere and setting of the school makes a difference on the child’s behavior (pg 2 para 5). Usually in the inner city context the children don’t have all the support that they need from an authoritative figure than a child might have who grows up in the