On the other hand, there have been many studies that suggest day care improves the cognitive development of children. Andersson believed that day care boosted children’s learning capabilities and educational skills throughout later life. He conducted a study over a long period of time by assessing a group of over 100 children. He found that school performance was highest in children that had received day care from before the age of 1 and was lowest from those children who had received no day care. This study suggests that day care improves children’s cognitive development. However, like Ermisch and Francesconi’s study, this too is correlational. This means we cannot determine an IV for the results in the DV. The correlation could be due to quality of care or individual differences within certain children and may have nothing to do with the fact that the children were separated from their mothers because of day care.
Another suggestion put forward was the idea that day care may only benefit low-income children. This meant that children who were perhaps from poorer backgrounds or less fortunate families may have benefited from day care more than those children whose family had a high income and healthy family background. One study that supported this idea was The Headstart Project. This was based in America during the 1960’s and consisted of ways of enhancing the development of disadvantaged children’s social skills and cognitive abilities. The idea was that disadvantaged children should be able to catch up to the skill and standard of better off children by the time they start school. The project succeeded during the first year when the IQ of most children seemed to raise by as much as 10 points but then this sadly disappeared and the children were back to being less socially and cognitively developed. However, in the long run, these children were found more likely to obtain a higher education certificate than those underprivileged children who had not received care. This suggests that, although day care may impede certain children’s cognitive development, it seems to improve the development of children who may perhaps be poorer or have a poorer background.
There has also been research conducted into the effects day care has on the social development of children. To study social development, researchers operationalised it into things such as the ability to make friends, the tendency to seek the company of others, negotiating skills, showing enjoyment with other children etc. Bowlby’s theory suggested that it was the continuous emotional care from a primary caregiver that founded the basis of all later relationships. So, although Bowlby is saying that separation due to day care may severely damage the social development of a child, it could be argued that suitable alternative emotional care could avoid this from happening, as long as the care was of good quality.
However, research conducted by Belsky and Rovine (1988) used The Strange Situation to assess the social development of children who had been receiving day care for more than 20 hours a week before the age of 1. These babies were found to be more insecurely attached than those who didn’t attend day care. This implies that day care damages the social development of children if it is before the age of 1, therefore agreeing with Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis. A study conducted by the NICHD showed that children who were separated from their mothers for more than 10 hours a week tended to be more aggressive later on according to their mothers and teachers. This also supported Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis, suggesting that day care harms children’s social development. Stroufe believed that the first year of a child’s life was crucial to the development of mother-child attachment and the forming of child-parent relationships. He suggested that day care should be delayed until eh second year of the child’s life.
In spite of this, there has also been research to show that day care has positive effects on children’s social development. Clarke – Stuart et al. examined 150 children between the ages of 2 and 3 and found that children who had received day care had better negotiation skills and formed better relationships with the other school children. They also developed the skill of coping in certain social situations better than those children who had been brought up at home. This contradicts what Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis suggests, attending day care has enhanced children’s social skills and not severely damaged them. Schweinhart et al. conducted follow up studies of children who had been in a project called High/Scope Perry Preschool for disadvantaged children. They found that at the age of 14, there were decreased rates of delinquency than those who had not been in the programme. This also suggests that day care improves the development of social skills and disagrees with Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis.
A study conducted by Vandell et al. (1988) suggested that it was the quality of day care that depended on the development of a child’s social skills. This meant that depending on which day care centre was assessed, it may damage the social skills or cognitive abilities of children simply because it is not high quality care from the staff. The NICHD found that only 23% of infant-care providers gave “highly” sensitive care to children. 50% was considered moderate and 20% was said to “emotionally detached from the infants under their care”. A study conducted by Andersson (1992) looked at children in Swedish day care. This was considered to be of an extremely high quality. He found that children in day care before the age 1 did better at school than children who hadn’t been to day care. This supports Vandell et al.’s claim that it was the quality of the care that mattered, not whether the child was in day care or not. It could be argued that mothers who have to work wouldn’t provide good quality care at home and therefore would damage the social and cognitive developments of their children. Schaffer and Emerson said that children weren’t always attached to the person that they spent the most time with, suggesting that attachments aren’t related to quality, but in fact quality.
Overall, the studies seem to suggest that day care only damages the social and cognitive development of children if they receive worse care than they would receive at home from their parents. There seems to be more studies to suggest that day care may improve the skills of the children, especially in the social development as they are put into a social situation. This disagrees with Bowlby’s maternal deprivation hypothesis and causes us to question the development of a child’s social and cognitive development at home.
