Another NYTimes article providing statistical weight to something teachers and mothers already intuitively know: kids who spend time in day care are more disruptive in the classroom than kids with mothers at home.
The article is titled, “Poor Behavior is Linked to Time in Day Care” and outlines the findings of a $200 million, federally-funded research project by The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Here are the first three paragraphs of the article (read the whole thing here):
“A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.
The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved.
But the finding held up regardless of the child’s sex or family income, and regardless of the quality of the day care center. With more than two million American preschoolers attending day care, the increased disruptiveness very likely contributes to the load on teachers who must manage large classrooms, the authors argue.”