Outrage Greets Child Care Study
The Age
Wednesday May 3, 2000
A study that found children were better off in formal child care than when they were left with babysitters, relatives, friends or neighbors has angered family groups.
The nine-year study of 127 children up to the age of six found that informal care was likely to have a detrimental impact on children's emotional, social and academic development.
But the study, by New South Wales researchers, concluded that formal care provided in a government-regulated centre or family day-care scheme had no detrimental effects.
The national secretary of the Australian Families Association, Bill Muehlenberg, said yesterday the study was a ``slap in the face" for thousands of grandparents and relatives who cared for children.
Mr Muehlenberg said his three children, aged six to nine, had never spent time in formal child care, despite both parents working. They are cared for by his mother-in-law or a neighbor.
``I'd much rather have them with someone I know and trust than leave them with some stranger," he said.
Mr Muehlenberg disputed the study's finding that formal child care had no detrimental impact.
The study - the first of its kind in Australia - also found that children cared for by a parent made the best academic adjustment to school.
But one of the study's authors, Linda Harrison - a senior lecturer in early childhood at Charles Sturt University - said this was not significant. The issue was not where or by whom children were cared for, but the quality of that care.
Dr Harrison said it was nonsense to suggest that parents abandon informal child care because of the study's findings. What was needed was government support to improve the quality of informal child care.
``This data is saying that we need to give informal care just as much attention as we give formal child care," she said.
This could be achieved by accrediting informal carers, such as grandparents, and educating them about child development.
``It would be a self-study process where people learn about how they might improve the child care they provide," Dr Harrison said.
Ann Sanson, a senior researcher at the Australian Institute of Family Studies, said she was surprised by the study's negative findings on the effects of informal care.
Dr Sanson said government cutbacks to child-care rebates meant many parents could not afford formal services.
© 2000 The Age