Nursery World - Editor's view - Two camps are arguing over whether children should be in daycare

Fresh evidence on childcare costs and parents' increasing difficulty in paying them has highlighted how Government policies are making it less affordable to work for some families, rather than more.

But it has also raised voices that had become rather muted in recent years - the lobby that believes that the state should not give any help with childcare costs, that no-one who isn't well off should have children, and that mothers of under-fives shouldn't be in paid employment at all!

I encountered several men (there are women too) with this attitude as I was commenting on the childcare costs story on a couple of radio stations recently.

This all seems to have led seamlessly on to the 'neuroscience' debate about the effects on children from their early experiences. At one end is Aric Sigman, trawling research studies to warn that rising cortisol levels in children in daycare should tell us that there could be severe negative implications from what may not be a benign 'lifestyle practice'.

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