Outline and evaluate the impact of day care on social development.

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Outline and evaluate the impact of day care on social development.

Day care or child care is care of a child during the day by a person other than the child's  or , typically someone outside the child's immediate . Day care is usually provided in nurseries or crèches or by child minders, caring for children in their own homes.  is the occasional temporary care of a child during the absence of his or her parents, whereas day care is ongoing care during specific periods and is only temporary for periods, such as the parents' time at . Day care can also take on a more formal structure, with education, child development, and even discipline, all falling into the fold of the service. As a temporary term, day care is an emotive issue and research has suggested that there are negative, as well as positive, effects from day care. Bowlby’s prediction was that long to medium term separation from the mother could have consequences, and suggests that similar effects would occur if mothers of pre-school children went back to work, and used some form of day care for their children. Others studies have suggested that, provided day care is of high quality, it has no adverse effects on intellectual development and does not disrupt the child’s attachments, some imply that it might even make a positive contribution to the child’s development.

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One study that had positive effects was Peer relationships. There is a suggestion that day care can have positive effects on the sociability of the child, particularly in respect of relationships with peers. Using a variety of measures, including aggressiveness, closeness and frequency of interaction, Shea (1981) showed that children aged 3-4 became more sociable during their time in nursery school. This improvement was greater in those spending 5 days per week than those spending just 2 days. Clarke-Stewart et al (1994) showed that among 2-3 year old children in day care, peer relationships were more advanced compared with those ...

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This essay deals with a difficult topic which has a huge range of possible material to choose from. Given this, material has been selected well - a good range of key research studies has been cited and the central issues have all been addressed. However, the structure needs some work - the issues would flow more logically if dealt with in this order: Bowlby's theory, evidence for weakened attachment; impact on aggression; impact on sociability; quality as a mediating factor in positive and negative outcomes. This structure would have produced more opportunities for discussion, which is lacking here. The essay also suffers from a lack of precision in the language used, which does sometimes obscure clarity and could have been resolved by proofreading and editing. So it only gets 2 stars.