'Day-care affects a child's social, emotional and cognitive development.' DISCUSS

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'Day-care affects a child’s social, emotional and cognitive development.' DISCUSS

there has been many concerns raised by the various child psychology theories from people such as Bowlby as to whether disruption in the infant-mother bond at an early age by entering into a day-care facility for effects the child ability to socially interact, be emotionally stable or their cognitive development. Much research has been conducted on this topic as it’s raised a lot of concern among parents, particularly working mothers.

Concern with day-care began to emerge when woman broke free from the traditional “housewife” role and became empowered to work. With more and more children attending day-care due to the increase in women in full time employment research into day-care became more relevant to ensure that the quality of the day-care was sufficient enough for our children and to monitor any adverse effects that might be caused from disruption in the maternal bond at a young age.

When examining the effects of day-care on emotional development (i.e. “learning to perceive, appraise, and express emotions accurately and appropriately, to use emotions to facilitate thinking, to understand and analyse emotions, to use emotional knowledge effectively, and to regulate one's emotions to promote both emotional and intellectual growth” (Gerrig and Zimbardo 2002), the attachment bond is examined using Ainsworth’s “strange situation” technique where in which the infant and mother are situated in a room with a stranger. A series of uncomfortable and slightly distressful episodes occur including the mother leaving the child with the stranger and shortly returning, the child's behaviour during separation and again on reunification are observed to see whether the child is securely attached

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Egeland and Hiester (1995) used the strange situation technique when comparing attachment types of children who were home-reared with those who attended day-care. They found that children who were securely attached to their mother experienced adverse effects from day-care compared to insecurely attached children who appeared to benefit. The insecurely attached children tended to show little stress and sometimes ignored their mother when she returns; it could be concluded that day-care may provide a safe, stable environment in which they miss their parents but look forward to reunification. Egeland and Hiester believed that insecurely attached children may benefit ...

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