I send my baby to full day care and I am very Glad I do. A study by the NICHD (American childcare dept) compared children who attended child care centres with children who attended home-based care (e.g. a home-based daycare, or care within the child’s home by someone other than the child’s parents).
They found that centre-based child care was linked to:
somewhat better cognitive and language development
better pre-academic skills involving letters and numbers
fewer behaviour problems at ages 2 and 3
more behaviour problems at age 4 ½ (such as disobedience and aggression)
Therefore, there appear to be pros and cons to both centre-based and home-based child care settings, but there are more pros than cons.
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