As is often the case with these studies, this one comes with no realistic solutions. Cut back day care hours, Belsky said, blithely, at the news briefing on the results. Either they go to work and the child goes to day care, or they both go on welfare. Somehow, living in poverty seems a wee bit more detrimental to any child's long-term development than being placed in an environment in which she might pick up some aggressive and defiant tendencies. The study also doesn't address the failure of the federal government to provide any kind of reasonable subsidies for child care, which often means our kids are cared for by people who make less than a living wage.
Family life is full of that in many ways.
Well, those effects pale in comparison to the effects of family background. Things that happen in families are far more important to a child's experience than child care. A mother's well-being, for example, he says, is a much bigger factor in a child's development than day care. So maybe it's not the 35 hours per week in day care that is the problem. Maybe it is the guilt Mommy feels because of it.