Is Day Care Bad for Babies?

By Claudia Wallis

Expert opinion on child rearing is no less subject to fashion than the length of hemlines. Witness the advice given to parents by Psychologist John B. Watson in his influential 1928 handbook Psychological Care of Infant and Child: "Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit in your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning."

The views of child-development experts on day care have also fluctuated, often reflecting the prevailing political winds. They have swung from very negative in the 1950s to positive in the late '70s back toward negative in recent years. At the moment the field is deeply divided, with opposing camps interpreting the same evidence in different ways. At the heart of the debate is a question that could affect the psychological well-being of a generation of children and of their guilt-ridden working mothers: What are the long-term risks of day care?

The modern history of this debate began nearly 40 years ago with the work of ^ English Psychiatrist John Bowlby, who reported on orphans raised in British institutions following World War II. These infants received minimal care: adequate food, a warm place to sleep, and clean diapers. However, the battery of nurses who looked after them rarely held or cuddled them. To Bowlby's horror, he found that the babies completely lost interest in life. They stopped eating, playing or even looking up from their cribs. The report, published in 1951, was interpreted as a stern warning that mothers should raise their own children.

In the late '60s, as more women went to work and more babies went into day care, experts began to re-examine the question. One problem quickly emerged: how to measure the emotional well-being of a child too young to be interviewed. The answer, devised in 1969 by University of Virginia Psychologist Mary Ainsworth, was the strange-situation test, usually conducted on children twelve to 18 months old. It consists of a series of episodes in which the child is alternately visited and left by its mother and by a stranger, culminating with the stranger's departure and the mother's return. The researcher watches the child's responses from behind a one-way mirror. Secure children, it was thought, are less upset by the stranger's arrival and are easily comforted when the mother returns. The assumption is that the best gauge of a baby's mental health is a strong maternal bond.

The first round of studies using this yardstick found no significant differences between toddlers reared in day-care centers and those attended by Mom. In 1978 Psychologist Jay Belsky of Pennsylvania State University co- authored a report concluding that day care can be perfectly fine for young children. Around the same time other studies suggested that good-quality day care may actually confer certain advantages to children from impoverished homes, such as promoting intellectual growth. Nonparental child care, it seemed, had the blessing of the professionals.

But not for long. Most early studies were conducted with children in high- quality day-care centers, usually at universities. Psychologists next began to look at more typical settings. The analysis of the strange-situation test changed, placing less emphasis on the child's reaction to the stranger than on its attitude toward the returning mother. Some initial results were unsettling. Day-care children were more likely to remain anxious even after the parent had come back. Some actively avoided their mother. Last September in a report published in the journal Zero to Three, Belsky reversed his earlier position. He concluded that babies who spend more than 20 hours a week in nonmaternal care during the first year of life risk having an "insecure attachment" to their mothers. He pointed to evidence that such children are more likely to become uncooperative and aggressive in early school years.

Belsky's report landed like a bombshell. In February four respected researchers issued a rebuttal, accusing him of misinterpreting data and rushing to conclusions. Belsky, they said, had failed to consider such factors as the family situation and the stability and quality of the child-care arrangement. Says one of the critics, UCLA Psychologist Carollee Howes: "We find that the quality of care makes much more difference than the age at which the child is enrolled."

Some experts now question the use of the strange situation as a measure of adjustment. Children in substitute care are naturally going to respond differently to a series of separations and reunions, says Kathleen McCartney, a developmental psychologist at Harvard and another of Belsky's critics. "Kids in child care go through that every day." Tests measuring a child's energy level and attention span might be a better guide to emotional health.

The debate is about to be refueled. This fall Belsky will publish another article, contending that many current research findings do not support his critics' optimism about even high-quality, stable infant day care. A new study conducted by Psychiatrist Peter Barglow of Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital and colleagues supports this view. It concludes that even upper-middle-class one-year-olds, enjoying ostensibly the best substitute care -- at home with a nanny or baby sitter -- tend to be less securely attached to their mothers. "Is the mother by far the best caretaker for the child in the first year?" asks Barglow. "We think probably yes."

Most researchers do agree on a few things. During the first several months, babies appear to do best when tended to by one person, ideally a parent. For toddlers in day care, the ratio of children to adults is very important, and should be about 3 to 1. The size of the group may be even more critical. Two- year-olds do poorly in groups of more than ten.

The final answers will not be in until the current crop of day-care kids grows up. The next generation of research will ask more refined questions, & delving into the reasons why many young children do well in substitute care while others suffer. Says Belsky: "We've identified a window of vulnerability. Now we have to figure out what conditions open it and which shut it."

With reporting by Melissa Ludtke/Boston