Children are Spending too much times in Day Cares

Parents may want to think twice before sending their children to day care full-time. Research shows that spending numerous hours a day in day care settings can actually be detrimental to children. Capizzano and research assistant Main (2002) discovered that an astounding forty-two percent of children five years and younger spent at least thirty-five hours a week in child care facilities. Nowadays children are spending up to sixty hours a week in child care facilities. Some may think this is a wonderful opportunity for children to enhance their skills and socialize more among their peers. Although these children may be more sociable, they are not necessarily receiving more education. There are many harmful effects to extended day care.

One bad effect is children are not bonding with their parents. Lindsey (Sept. 2008), a full-time preschool teacher at a day care center in Massachusetts, declared “a lot of children here are getting dropped off at six thirty in the morning and are not leaving the facility until six o’clock pm. That is way too long of a day for them! It’s not like we do curriculum at the end of the day either. The entire curriculum is done in the morning, so they are just basically sleeping or resting for two hours and at free play the rest of the evening!” Lindsey felt that too many hours spent at school is not good for the child. She thought that young children should be spending time bonding with their families.

There are many physical problems associated with long hours spent at day-care. Dr. Gunnar (1998), a professor of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, observed that many young children were under a lot of stress:

Cortisol levels of children in childcare centers were the same as or lower than cortisol levels in children at home in the morning, but by mid-afternoon levels had risen to a significantly higher level for children in childcare than for the children who stayed home; children in half-day preschool programs did not show this increase in cortisol (cited in Clarke-Stewart and Allhusen, 2005).

Cortisol is caused by stress. The more stress you have, the more cortisol your body secretes. Too much cortisol increases your blood pressure and glucose levels and weakens your immune system. This is not conducive to the health of young children. These high stress levels can accumulate into bad behavior.

“Children in settings with more children come down with more illnesses.” Sroufe and Belsky (2005) stated that children are around many other children in child care facilities, and therefore are being exposed to more pathogens. (cited in Clarke-Stewart and Allhusen) Infants, who spend long hours a day in child

care settings, are not bonding with their parents. This bond that begins early in a child’s life can affect his or her emotional, cognitive, social, and psychological development

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