Daycare: Good or Bad?
Introduction
I. Daycare has been around for several hundred years but recently a very interesting debate has emerge.
A. Does daycare help or harm one’s child?
II. [THESIS] The answer to this debate is no simple matter. Experts from all different fields disagree on this due to a lack of solid evidence from both sides. Day care has both its positives and negatives and should be a carefully thought out decision by the parents dependent on the situation at hand.
III. [3 Main Ideas]
A. The Positives of Daycare
B. The Negatives of Daycare
C. ??
3 Main Ideas
Main Idea 1) Positive Effects
I. Research has shown that high-quality early child care can have a significant impact on children’s well-being, and now a new study in the journal Child Development finds that it’s important for Mom too.
A. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin looked at data from more than 1,300 children whose care settings were evaluated at various intervals from the time they were a month old until they turned 4½. Their mothers were interviewed too. Those moms whose kids were cared for early on in “high-quality nonparental care” settings — either in day care centers or in others’ homes — were more likely than mothers who cared for their kids themselves or sent them to low-quality day care to be involved in their children’s schools starting in kindergarten(Rochman par. 1 and 2).
II. Multiple studies, including the NICHD study, have found that, after statistically adjusting for the effects of social class and other potential confounders, kids enrolled in high quality child care given by non relatives develop slightly better cognitive and language skills—as measured at various points in their lives, all the way up through age 15—than do kids in low-quality care(Moyer par. 8).
A. Higher quality early child care also predicted youth reports of less externalizing behavior(Vandell 1).
III. Low-income children exposed to high-quality program care show better academic outcomes through high school and higher rates of employment and less criminal activity as young adults
IV. In this study, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) found that graduates of high-quality child care had more years of education and were four times more likely to have earned college degrees than members of a control group — 23% compared to 6%
A. They also were more likely to have held a job and to put off childbearing at least two years beyond the control group, while being less likely to have used public assistance. (Rochman par. 7).
Main Idea 2) Negatives Effects
I. Nearly 11 million children under the age of 5 in America are in some kind of child care every week, according to Child Care Aware of America.
II. ...placing children in daycare can lead to a number of negative effects, such as aggressive behavior and poor social skills.
A. Children who are in daycare for a year or more have been shown to be more disruptive in class as long as into the sixth grade, according to a New York Times report on the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.
B. A study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, reported by CBS, also found that children who spend long hours in day care are at increased risk of becoming aggressive, in addition to developing other behavior problems(Magher par. 1-2).
III. Children who spend more hours per week in non-maternal child care are more likely to exhibit problematic social–behavioral adjustment, including less social competence and cooperation and more problem behaviors, negative moods,