From the UK Telegraph. (H/T Dina)
Excerpt:
Academics at Oxford University discovered that exposure to some forms of early education contributed to bad behaviour and could be linked to emotional problems.
The study, based on an analysis of infants from almost 1,000 families, showed that the strongest influence on children came from within the home itself.
Children raised in poor families with high levels of parental stress or mental health problems were most at risk of developing emotional problems by the time they started school, it emerged.
The research also uncovered trends relating to children who were in formal child care — away from their parents.
The disclosure will revive debate over the best way to raise children amid a surge in the number of under-fives enrolled in nurseries and with childminders in the past 20 years. Figures from the Department for Education show that 441,000 children under five are in day nurseries while another 272,000 are being looked after by childminders.
[…]In the Oxford study, researchers recruited 991 families with children aged three months. Mothers had an average age of 30.
Researchers assessed children at the age of four through questionnaires about their behaviour and emotions completed by teachers and parents. They also observed care provided by mothers and observed non-parental care for at least 90 minutes for those children placed in formal childcare settings.
The report, published in the journal Child: Care, Health and Development, said that “children who spent more time in group care, mainly nursery care, were more likely to have behavioural problems, particularly hyperactivity”.
The study, led by Prof Alan Stein, of Oxford’s Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, found that “spending more time in day care centres, over the total period was a predictor of total problem scores”.
“Children who spent more time in day care centres were more likely to be hyperactive,” it said. “Children receiving more care by childminders were more likely to have peer problems.”
The authors added: “The findings in relation to childminding suggest that it might be out of home care rather than group care that raises the risk of behavioural difficulties.”
The researchers also tracked other forms of early years care and found benefits to different approaches.
They found that children who spent more time in pre-school playgroups – normally for a few hours a day, rather than a full-time nursery – had fewer problems.
More time with a nanny in parents’ own home predicted higher levels of “pro-social behaviour”, showing willingness to help others, it emerged.
The study said: “These findings suggest that interventions to enhance children’s emotional and behavioural development might best focus on supporting families and augmenting the quality of care in the home.”
A study like this will be useful when debating people with open minds, but hardcore feminists and socialists, who want women to work in order to fund bigger government, will not be moved. Because for them, it’s not about evidence. It’s about ideology. That’s why we have to be careful about letting people like that get elected.
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WINTERY KNIGHT 
Thanks for this, WK! But even so, our government will continue to pour money into programs like Head Start, which cost millions of dollars and provide no benefit.
I was interested to see that children in the study who were cared for at home seemed to do fine. I have worked part-time since becoming a mother (two half-days per week); my mother-in-law has watched our children part of the time and my next door neighbor who is retired and a grandmother herself has watched them part of the time.
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Hey Sunshine Mary! I was *just* on your blog reading that response to Amanda Marcotte. I think she is really struggling to understand that everything she believes is actually helping the worst sort of men.
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