Effect of Childcare on Child Wellbeing

Childcare is ubiquitous. I know this is a sensitive topic. I only ask that you read with an open mind, and understand that I’m not attacking anyone. This is a frank examination of what childcare does to a child’s short term and long term development. With knowledge, at least you can make better, more informed choices that are right for your situation and your child.

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Does it matter? It’s only for a few years.

The worst case scenario is one of the most horrific acts of collective child abuse (through neglect) in modern history. Romanian orphans, when deprived of a carer, failed to develop basic motor, verbal or social skills. They were fed, they were clothed, they were warm, they were clean, but they never received individual attention, love, or care. Almost all were nonverbal, some never left their beds:

his fellow orphans endlessly rocked, or punched themselves in the face, or shrieked (1)

I don’t mean to imply modern childcares are anywhere as bad as socialist Romanian orphanages. There is no comparison; the latter was… beyond words. I bring this horrific example up to dispel the notion that childcare is a purely financial or short term decision. It has real and lasting long term developmental effects. It shows that children need more than just food and water and nappy changes. They need love and touch and googoogaga talk and lots of interaction with caring adults. And the more of that they get, the better off they are. And the earlier they are deprived of it, the worse off they are later in life.

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What’s the data?

There’s lots of data out there about this, and as with most research topics, it is conflicting. There are certainly studies that measure positive effects and I will go into them later. However, I’d like to direct your focus to the analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) by Baker, Gruber, and Milligan upon the introduction of the Quebec Family Policy; which provided a clear control group (the rest of the nation, and children in previous waves of the NLSCY), and a large sample size (2,000 children at each age per year).

The Quebec Family Policy began in 1997 with the extension of full-time kindergarten to all 5 year olds and the provision of childcare at an out-of-pocket price of $5 per day to all 4 year olds. This $5 per day policy was extended to all 3 year olds in 1998, all 2 year olds in 1999, and finally all children aged less than 2 in 2000 (2)

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We also find consistent and robust evidence of negative effects of the policy change on child outcomes, parenting, and parent outcomes. Child outcomes are worse for a variety of parent-reported measures, such as hyperactivity, inattention, aggressiveness, motor/social skills, child health status, and illness. Parental interactions with children are worse along all measured dimensions, and there is some evidence of deterioration in parental health and a reduction in parental relationship quality. To our knowledge effects on parenting and family outcomes have not been previously investigated. Most of these outcomes are parent-reported, but the consistency of the results suggests that more access to childcare is bad for these children (and, at least along some dimensions, for these parents). There are, however, interpretations of these findings which are more benign. While some of these explanations appear inconsistent with the data, we cannot rule out the possibility that our findings represent a short term adjustment to childcare, and not a long-run negative impact. (2)

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For anxiety, the results imply a 12% rise relative to the mean score of 0.967 for the intention to treat effect; this implies that work/childcare use led to a 62.6% to 158.5% rise in anxiety for the treated. (2)

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For mothers, however, we have striking evidence of an increase in depression: the mother’s depression score is estimated to increase by 0.428, or 10.2% of the mean. (2)

They return to this hypothesis in 2019, publishing a follow up study of the long term effects, a longitudinal analysis on the NLSCY dataset, which now had 10 more years of data on the same cohorts it reported on previously.

We do, however, find a significant decline in self-reported health and in life satisfaction among teens. Most strikingly, we find a sharp and contemporaneous increase in criminal behavior among the cohorts exposed to the Quebec program, relative to their peers in other provinces. We illustrate graphically a monotonic increase in crime rates among cohorts with their exposure to the child care program, and we show in regression analysis that exposure led to a significant rise in overall crime rates. We also report that these effects are primarily for boys, who also see the largest deterioration in noncognitive skills. (3)

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What about high quality childcare centres? What about non-commercial childcare arrangements, eg with friends or family?

All of the following are from a review paper which summarised hundreds of other papers and studies on this topic. Among those studies reviewed is the Study of Early Child Care (SECC), in which mother-child interactions were observed at 6, 15, 24, and 36 months for more than 1000 families.

Interestingly, in a study performed in Japan (where the average quality of care is higher), spending many hours in care was not associated with increased behavioral maladjustment. (4)

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Consistent with recommendations made by the APHA and AAP, research demonstrates that high caregiver-child ratios, small group size, and well-trained caregivers result in higher-quality care. (4)

Note: APHA: American Public Health Association, AAP: the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Consistent with this argument, the SECC observed positive developmental outcomes, controlling for maternal educational level and parenting quality, when children attended centers that were in compliance with the APHA’s and AAP’s recommended guidelines. Children who attended centers that met child-adult ratio standards displayed fewer behavioral problems and more positive social behaviors. Similar relations emerged between structural or caregiver characteristics and child developmental outcomes in child care homes. (4)

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When child-adult ratios were higher and caregivers were more sensitive and positive, children appeared more prosocial and positively engaged with peers. Children were also rated as more cognitively competent in child care settings that offered more opportunities for art, blocks, and dramatic play and in settings where caregivers had college degrees and more early-childhood training. (4)

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Consistent with their greater educational focus, children who attended centers scored higher on cognitive assessments, controlling for family demographics and parenting. … Least advanced were children with caregivers in their own homes. (4)

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A major limitation of studies on child care quality is that the poorest-quality child care settings have been difficult to observe; thus, the effect of quality may well be underestimated. Such an underestimation is particularly problematic given that quality estimates derived from the SECC suggest that child care quality is not high. Positive caregiving was rated as “not characteristic” in 60% of the settings that were observed, and only 10% were rated as “excellent.” (4)

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What are the known risk factors?

• Age

For children 0 to 2 years old, we find evidence that child care leads to declines in motor social development scores throughout the distribution. (5)

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Newborn children experience large declines in motor social developments scores once access to universal subsidized care is made available. The magnitude of these intent-to-treat estimates falls by approximately 50% among 1 and 2 year olds. For children who are 3 or 4 there is no significant relationship between access to universal child care and either MSD or PPVT scores. A similar time varying pattern is observed for “Child in Excellent Health”; there is a large and statistically negative intent to treat for newborn children, the magnitude of the effect is cut in half for children between 1 to 3 years, and the effect becomes statistically insignificant for children 4 years of age. (5)

Note: MSD is Motor and Social Development, PPVT is Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Both are scores obtained from the NLSCY.

... evidence has indicated that spending large amounts of time in child care from early infancy can have negative consequences. (4)

• Gender

For developmental outcomes, we find the policy leads to greater peakedness in the distribution for girls relative to that of boys. When examining hyperactivity and inattention scores, we observe that the policy significantly increases variation in these measures for boys but led to a significant decrease for girls, which may explain why Baker et al (2015) report exacerbated behavioural consequences later in life for boys from the availability of child care (6)

• Hours in childcare

More hours in child care were linked to less maternal sensitivity and less positive engagement between the child and the mother, controlling for quality and type of child care, family income, maternal educational level, marital or partner status, maternal depression, maternal separation anxiety, child sex, child temperament, and ethnicity. (4)

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Overall, research indicates that being in care for 30 or more hours a week is associated with small but statistically significant increases in behavioral problems. Children who had 45 or more hours of care per week from ages 3 to 54 months had the most behavioral problems as kindergartners. (4)

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Does childcare offer any benefits?

Yes, it does, in cognitive measures and social skills.

We find benefits from access to universal child care on developmental scores among three year olds, with the largest of these effects for children in the lower percentiles of the distribution. This result suggests that access to subsidized child care at 3 years of age may help the most disadvantaged and is consistent with evidence from numerous studies including those evaluating the The HighScope Perry Preschool Project, a well-studied program that offered preschool to disadvantaged children at ages 3 and 4. (5)

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Evidence has shown that spending time in nonparental care increases children’s social knowledge and skills. Morales and Bridges found that children with experience in child care were more accomplished at entertaining themselves and managing challenges. A French study showed that children who spent time in child care manifested more self-confidence, were more outgoing, and showed less distress in new situations. (4)

However, these findings should be tempered by the following.

In a series of analyses through grade 5, family factors were found to be consistently stronger predictors of children’s cognitive, language, social-emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Family effects, on average, were 2 to 3 times as large as the effects of child care. (4)

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Works Cited

1. Greene, Melissa Fay. 30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact. The Atlantic. [Online] 23 June 2020. [Cited: 14 May 2022.] https://archive.ph/KORga.
2. Baker, Michael, Jonathon, Gruber and Milligan, Kevin. Universal Childcare, Maternal Labor Supply and Family Well-Being. s.l. : NBER Working Paper No. 11832,, 2005.
3. The Long-Run Impacts of a Universal Child Care Program. Baker, Michael, Gruber, Jonathan and Milligan, Kevin. 3, s.l. : American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2019, Vol. 11.
4. Childcare and the Well-Being of Children. Bradley, R.H. and Vandell, D.L. s.l. : Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2007, Vol. 161.
5. Do the Perils of Universal Childcare Depend on the Child’s Age? Kottelenberg, Michael J. and Lehrer, Steven F. 2, s.l. : CESifo Economic Studies, 2014, Vol. 60.
6. Does Quebec’s subsidized child care policy give boys and girls an equal start? Kottelenberg, Michael J. and Lehrer, Steven F. 2, s.l. : Canadian Journal of Economics, 2018, Vol. 51.

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Inspiration: Stefan Molyneux, Freedomain: The Rise of the Daycare Generation