Pitt Researchers Claim Child Care Findings Distorted

Every parent with a toddler in full-time child care sat up and took notice in mid-April when a researcher involved in the largest long-term study of child care in the country said that new findings showed youngsters in full-time child care are three times more likely to show signs of aggression by the time they reached kindergarten than children who were cared for by their mothers.

But Celia A. Brownell and Susan B. Campbell, professors of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and two of the lead investigators in the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care, claim those findings, released by study investigator Jay Belsky, were distorted and misrepresented in the media.

“The study findings simply do not and cannot lead responsible scientists to conclude that child care puts kindergarten children at risk for elevated amounts of aggression,” said Brownell.

The data was presented by Belsky, of the University of London, at a meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Minneapolis on April 19. He said that children who spent more than 30 hours a week in child care are “more demanding, more noncompliant, and much more aggressive” than those care for by a stay-at-home mom.

But Campbell and Brownell point out that the average scores for aggression, even among children with extensive child care, are all in the normal range. They also said that the term “aggression” includes a wide range of behaviors — including seeking adult attention, clowning around, and talking a lot — the researchers feel could have something to do with a child’s transition to school. And thirdly, when a statistical cut-off is used to identify children with above-average levels of aggression, that number in any typical population of children in the country is 17 – exactly the number investigators found in the kindergarten children who had experienced extensive child care from birth to age four.

So, according to Campbell and Brownell, those children are no more likely to be aggressive in kindergarten than would be expected in any normal population of children. Furthermore, they claimed, the good news out of the study was largely overlooked.

“We found, for example, that children who were in higher quality child care settings in which they received more language stimulation performed better on standard tests of language and cognitive functioning at 54 months,” said Campbell. The study also revealed that caregivers who work in settings with better adult-child ratios provide more cognitive and language stimulation to the children in their care, and are more responsive to the children.

The NICHD study enrolled just over 1,300 children at birth at 10 research sites throughout the country. The young participants were placed in a variety of child-care settings — care with relatives, care in someone’s home who was not a relative, and care at a center. The children have been monitored through infancy, while they were toddlers, and during their pre-school years.

Brownell said it is unfortunate that influential scientists and pundits “fanned the flames” of the recent headlines linking child care to aggression. She notes that it is more dramatic for news organizations to put a negative “spin” on the story.

“Bad news is much more likely to get the attention of the public than good news or no news,” she said. “But the reality is that the news about child care and aggression is not bad news at all.”

—Sharon Blake