Outline and evaluate research into the effects of day care on social development (12 marks).

Day care has shown to increase the number of friends a child has a school. Field (1991) found that the amount of time a child spent in full-time day car was positively correlated to the amount of friends they have in school. Therefore this study shows there is a link between day care and sociability. Infants in day care have more practice in social situations and therefore gain more friends. However day care doesn’t cause an individual to have more friends it is just purely correlated; there is a link between the two factors not causality.

Day care has shown to have negative effects on a child’s social development; day care can lead to increased aggression.  National Institute of Child Health & Human development (1991) did a longitudinal study on parents and children. The children were assessed at age 5 and were found to be more aggressive than children looked after at home. They were also 3 times more likely to show behavioural problems. Therefore prolonged exposure of day care can cause increased levels of aggression in later life. However this study was a longitudinal study and therefore participants may have dropped out along the process meaning we cannot be certain how many participants there were at the end.  In addition Viollata and Russell (1994) concluded that day care for more than 20 hours per week has a negative effect on socio-emotional development.

Children in day care are less likely to be securely attached and securely attached children have been to proven to be more popular. Belsky (1988) found that children who experience day care for more than 20 hours per week when under the age of 1 are more likely to be insecurely attached. Therefore this leads us to assume that children in day care are less likely to be securely attached and as a result of this less successful in peer relations.

This essay has looked into the various findings of research on day care and has shown that day care can have positive effects on a child’s social development. However there are many problems with research into this area.  Firstly there are many forms of day care and as a result different research focuses on different forms and the findings cannot be compared. Secondly there are mediating factors as mentioned and different variables such as amount of time spent in day care, quality of care and the age of the child. Research has found to be correlational however some misinterpret it as being causal. A variety of different data collection techniques are used which leads to methodological problems. Most importantly it is difficult to reach a firm conclusion from these studies of day care as the effects of day care are complicated by a number of variables. It is difficult to pull out the social effects as a result of day care and those as a result of other variables that may exist such as physical deprivation. Research has shown that day care is considerably out of date and as a result of this the UK government have invested money and resources into the provision of day care and day care now has its own assessment criteria similar to that of schools.