Day Care, Effects on Child Development

Michael E. Lamb

Most infants and young children initially respond with distress to enrollment in a new child care setting. This distress diminishes over time and is replaced by smiles, vocalizations, and increased interest in peers, but there is no doubt that enrollment in child care is typically stressful. Furthermore, because enrollment in day care often coincides with other important family events, like mothers' return to work, it is quite common for the security of child-mother attachment to change when day care begins. Attachments become secure as frequently as they become insecure, however, and consequently day care is not associated with an increase in the proportion of child-mother attachment relationships that are insecure (Ahnert, Lamb, & Seltenheim, 2003; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD] Early Child Care Research Network, 1997). Although most scholars emphasize the importance of high-quality care, quality of care has been assessed comprehensively in relatively few studies ...

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