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The great nursery debate

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Are those playgrounds going to be less friendly? Are those neighbourhoods going to be affected? It's all the cars that do it. People are so ideologically opposed to these findings that instead of being thoughtful about them, they respond as if there is only one way to think about them — small, don't matter, ignore," he says. He is resigned to the way that parents, policy-makers and fellow academics recoil from his findings. The guy who first linked Aids with homosexuality back in the early s was accused of being a homophobe.

The same kind of idiotic, kneejerk, ideological reaction occurred here. People think I'm against daycare. What I say is, if the weather man says it is going to rain tomorrow, is that because he is against sunshine? People feel very defensive about this area. Belsky has been accused of catastrophising, and it's probably true to say that not all of his colleagues would agree with his account of his professional victimisation.

It is remarkable how scratchy, if not positively disparaging, many of the experts in this field are about their colleagues' work. Kathy Sylva , another American academic now based here, who has been involved in two major UK studies designed to assess the impact of nursery care on children here, comes to different conclusions.

The government-funded Effective Provision of Pre-School Education EPPE research, which has followed the progress of 3, children since found that if children had been in nurseries they had raised levels of aggression when they got to school at five, and which were still present at seven. A second study in , the Family Children Childcare , following 1, babies from three months, found no relationship between the amount of childcare experienced by a baby and behaviour problems at 36 months.

Sylva's suggestion that putting your child in full-time nursery care had no negative consequences, was greeted with delight in headlines earlier this summer. But her position is more nuanced than that. She says that the research is "very chequered" and that the question is still open to debate. She argues that there are no concerns whatsoever connected with putting a child into nursery above the age of three; between two and three, the research is mixed; and below the age of two, there are some "serious and valid concerns".

She is at pains to put those concerns into perspective pointing out in passing that she gets called by mothers "weeping about the decision" , and argues: If the child is a healthy child, in a family that is supportive and caring and goes to a high-quality childcare setting, the evidence is that the child is not at risk.

Emerging research on the effects of raised cortisol levels have further heightened parental unease about this subject. Cortisol is a hormone released in times of stress, and as it is present in the saliva, it is relatively easy to measure. Cortisol has its uses; in the morning when you wake up it helps to keep you alert; usually during the day its concentrations subside.

A Review and Meta-Analysis , concluded: We speculate that children in centre daycare show elevated cortisol levels because of their stressful interactions in a group setting. A lot of questions remain, though, about the long-term effects, and no longitudinal studies have been done to track this.

We still don't know how much cortisol is too much, allowing different childcare experts to treat the evidence with very varying degrees of alarm. Some, such as the child psychologist and Guardian columnist Oliver James, use the evidence to consolidate a strongly held belief that nursery care is not appropriate.

His position on putting small babies into daycare is clear. Unfortunately, this latter is the norm in the US and the UK. James no longer really dances around his conviction that babies are best at home with their mother, or possibly their father; if that is not possible, he offers a hierarchy of substitution that runs: How are mothers going to make good decisions, if nobody is warning them about the real situation? James came away from a Woman's Hour discussion of his book in May, feeling that he had been given a very hard time as he set out his argument.

Indeed, he made a formal complaint to the BBC Trust about the interview. But Justine Roberts, co-founder of the parenting website Mumsnet, who was also interviewed for the programme, says: It is the 'Get her back to the kitchen sink' response that causes such anger. Sue Gerhardt, the author of Why Love Matters and The Selfish Society, also writes about the effects of cortisol, but is critical of nursery care for broader reasons.

The great nursery debate | Life and style | The Guardian

She sees them as concepts favoured by parents, for their convenience, reliability and cost, but not geared towards the needs of children. All of this is about being with a responsible person — someone who soothes when you need soothing, who plays when you need it. You meet someone, you do small talk, you might find it pleasant or it might not be.

That person isn't really tuned into you. Then you move on to the next person. It is not really a relationship where someone is tuned into you. At nurseries, the turnover is so great that it is very difficult to achieve that kind of relationship," she says. It's just about money and convenience.

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Penelope Leach's work on childcare has been read by parents for decades. She, too, is concerned by the emerging research on cortisol and is sceptical of governments' preference for nurseries, arguing that they tend to be attracted by economies of scale. She is clear that the advantages of nurseries only begin to be felt when a child progresses to somewhere between the age of 18 and 30 months.

Until then, the arguments about socialising the child, giving it stimulation, a head-start educationally, are simply misplaced, she says. When the child is mature enough to understand the difference between morning and afternoon, what people are saying to it, that daddy will come back later — that's the tipping point," she says. We know from attachment theory that if they don't have an opportunity to attach with someone and trust them, then it's a disaster.

The last two strikes have raised the profile of early educators. Mel Armstrong-Jones, 47, a self-employed MC, celebrant and facilitator with a year-old son and five-year-old daughter says early childhood educators played an indispensable role in her life as new mother.

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They also helped set the stage for the trajectory of her working life. The educators we met had so much wisdom, empathy and kindness for our family and child. Later, it allowed me to work which gave me the sense of still being in the world. Kirstie Fildes, 42, works in a leadership role at a daycare centre in south-west Brisbane. Fildes, who gained her qualifications in and has spent 16 years as an early childhood educator is fuelled by the opportunity to shape young children for the better.

A lot of educators are struggling, paying for their professional development out of their pockets. In June , a nationwide Queensland University of Technology survey found that one out of every five workers in the sector planned to find a new job in the next 12 months. In Australia, as in Britain and the US, this value has never translated to financial compensation — despite the fact that early childhood educators, who increasingly hold university degrees comparable to primary-school teachers, have heavy professional responsibilities.

As Helen Gibbons, who studied to be a teacher before working with one and two-year-olds says: Starting Strong , a report by the OECD reveals that children from marginalised families reap the greatest benefits from high-quality early education.

But we provide both education and care and emotional care is as vital for development and cognition. Too often, caring for children is still seen as an extension of female nature rather than a form of unpaid labour that has largely benefited men throughout history. We believe in our rights. Clovelly Child Care Centre in Sydney.

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