First, I would like to say that there is a definite place for nurseries, and that they fulfil a vital role. What I am concerned about, and the weight of research is also pointing out, is that parents are misusing nurseries, or overusing them, and as a result very young children are not getting what they need to grow up happy and well.
In fact, this is something that nursery and daycare staff have been telling me for 20 years. I have interviewed many childcare workers around the world for Raising Babies - Should under-3s go to nursery?, and they are very honest - in remarks from 'I don't know why some of these parents have children in the first place', to 'I hate it when they bring these tiny babies, they shouldn't be here'.
Another fact that nursery owners and staff are aware of is the wide variability in quality standards - from excellent to dreadful. The UK is far better in this regard than the US, where only 9 per cent of nurseries rank as high quality, and fully half are seriously substandard, according to the NICHD study quoted below. But we have room for much improvement.
Let's go to what the research is saying. Parents, and nursery staff, have been bewildered by contradictory announcements in the press - nurseries are bad for children, no, they aren't, yes, they are. The question became so vexed that several governments around the world funded multi-million-dollar, large-scale, long-term studies, including the UK's EPPE study, the National Institute for Child Health and Development study in the US, and Penelope Leach's Families, Children and Childcare study released last October, which was the largest, with more than 2,000 children.
All of these were 'birth to school and beyond' studies, and they were very different in design. But they all found the same thing: a multi-risk combination of three things identified first by Professor Jay Belsky as leading to poor outcomes.These were too much nursery care, at too young an age, and for too long a period. Children under these conditions were more anxious, and as a result more aggressive and less co-operative, and they often had weaker bonds with their parents.
The next question is, why? For that, we turn to two other kinds of research. Observations of nursery assistants, teachers and carers shows that they interact with babies and children in a very different way to parents. They are friendly, they cuddle them when distressed (at least most do - in some nurseries this is actually discouraged) and they attempt to keep them happy and stimulated. But when compared by trained observers videotaping and rating behaviour, carers are much less responsive, and colder, and less involved in their caring than parents usually are with their own children.
You are simply not the same with a group of someone else's children as you are with your own. Even if you want to be, it's not possible in the time allowed. And love and care aren't the same thing. Again, this was something the nursery staff told me - 'You can't afford to get too involved. You have a roomful of kids to look after. You have to share yourself around.'
We know that this is not enough for very young children, through a miraculously simple research breakthrough. Cortisol, a hormone that indicates stress, was discovered to be measurable in children's saliva, so accurately that even the effects of a hug or a smile could be measured.
Using cortisol testing, it was found that young children in nurseries got more and more stressed as the day went on, whereas children at home got more and more relaxed (at least until tea-time!). In another study, toddlers starting nursery were found to have double the levels of cortisol, and even after five months, they were still unhealthily high.
The shocking thing was that these children were perceived by staff and parents to be doing just fine. Children do not always show the stress they are under, especially if it is chronic stress.
Does this matter? Absolutely. Elevated cortisol levels mean that brain growth is slowed down, learning is impaired, and even immune response is weakened. Stress is not good for growing children. And group care is stressful.
But would they be better off at home? Not necessarily. Some children have such terrible home lives that nursery is better. But according to Penelope Leach's study, grandparents, one-to-one carers, or nannies are much better.
Aren't there studies that say nursery is good for children? Yes, but the whole question is: at what age? The EPPE study found that children do gain language and maths skills from time spent at nursery. And children from impoverished families benefit from early learning exposure. But these studies relate specifically to three- and four-year-olds. For the under-threes, the picture is very different. These age groups need one-to-one care. They don't show a benefit; in fact, the reverse is true.
Interestingly, EPPE found that 20 hours a week is enough for the full pre-school benefit. Any more hours are actually wasted, as far as learning goes.
So what can nurseries do? We can certainly learn from the cortisol studies that children need more cuddles, and more one-to-one time, which means better staff ratios. We can learn that nurseries probably need to be quieter and more homely. And we can start letting parents know that there is such a thing as too much nursery care, and that it should be something you slide into gradually as children reach two or three years, not slam into at three or six months.
It is up to governments. For example, the UK government spends 0.3 per cent of GDP on childcare. The Swedish government spends 2 per cent - that's six times as much. And the remarkable thing, quite shocking to most people, is that Swedish parents no longer put babies into nurseries. There are fewer than 300 babies in Swedish daycare centres, whereas in Britain there are 30,000 (and 100,000 under-threes).
The greatest evil affecting UK parents is the cost of housing. Tackling this would take off the relentless pressure of a family needing two jobs to live. But many families, whom we have written about in the book, find that if they make sacrifices, they can manage to get by on one job for a few years. It isn't easy, but they have few regrets. Even if you can manage to stay home for three months, or six months, or a year longer, your child will benefit.
I was very hesitant about releasing Raising Babies, but friends in the sector as well as workers with children urged me that it was time for more honesty. Many people in nurseries have told me they feel positively schizophrenic, conveying to parents that everything is fine, when their innermost feelings are 'who do you think you are kidding?'. We want to offer a service to parents, but we feel it isn't really what they need. And it's certainly not what children need.
In the future, I think that the nursery of the year 2010 (which isn't that far away) might be a bit like a cigarette packet. It might carry warnings to parents, saying things like 'research indicates that children under two are better off with a loving parent or grandparent at home' or 'daycare of more than 20 hours a week can harm your child'. The emphasis will switch back towards the three- and four-year-olds, and staff will work with higher ratios and be much better trained. We will realise that if you want quality care it costs a great deal of money, and governments have to pay. But above all, fewer and fewer parents will use long hours care. Good nurseries will be an adjunct to parents rearing their children, and not a substitute for it.
I would love to hear your views on this.
Steve Biddulph's book Raising Babies - Should under-3s go to nursery? is published this week (Harper Thorsons, 7.99). See www.stevebiddulph.com
