Studies show that good daycare is very good for children, there's just very little of it. Berkowitz points to the daycare centers affiliated with Yale. Berkowitz doesn't think so. The important factors in preschool are the social and nurturing elements. Sedlis says that this rush to academics is particularly a problem in New York City, where she lives and practices.
Children begin to apply to nursery schools at the age of one or two.
They go on a round of interviews and many of them get rejected. There's enormous anxiety over this and parents believe if you don't get into the right nursery school, you won't get into the right ongoing school, then the right college, and then the right job. I sometimes have to remind parents that the age at which you first eat green beans is not on the application for Harvard. It's the end of your sophomore year. You go to your mailbox and find a letter from the dean.