Study: Traditional Men Earn the Most

[Cairber]

Day cares must be a lot different in New Zealand, but, in my experience (having worked in day care here in the USA and also investigated a few back when I considered working) they are not havens of stimulation.

Also, the things you describe as negative are not negative to all people. You use the word "clingy" but others would see a strong bond between mother and child. It's pretty subjective. You might see a child who is independent, someone else might see a child with attachment disorder.

Anyway, here is the study I talked about on day care and attachment (note attachment and bonding are different things):

effect of day care on attachment

Evidence from 2 longitudinal studies of infant and family development was combined and examined in order to determine if experience of extensive nonmaternal care in the first year is associated with heightened risk of insecure infant-mother attachment and, in the case of sons, insecure infant-father attachment. Analysis of data obtained during Strange Situation assessments conducted when infants were 12 and 13 months of age revealed that infants exposed to 20 or more hours of care per week displayed more avoidance of mother on reunion and were more likely to be classified as insecurely attached to her than infants with less than 20 hours of care per week. Sons whose mothers were employed on a full-time basis (greater than 35 hours per week) were more likely to be classified as insecure in their attachments to their fathers than all other boys, and, as a result, sons with 20 or more hours of nonmaternal care per week were more likely to be insecurely attached to both parents and less likely to be securely attached to both parents than other boys. A secondary analysis of infants with extensive care experience who did and did not develop insecure attachment relationships with their mothers highlights several conditions under which the risk of insecurity is elevated or reduced. Both sets of findings are considered in terms of other research and the context in which infant day-care is currently experienced in the United States.

Another study on attachment theory:

The Legacy of Early Attachments

Also this book is good:

Understanding Attachment: Parenting, Child Care, and Emotional Development

I have lots of stuff here on attachment theory and the effect of daycare on the attachment between mother, father and child....also lots on why it is desirable to have sound attachment.

I have to go again but I'll try to post more later.

[Aaron]

Anyway, here is the study I talked about on day care and attachment (note attachment and bonding are different things):

Would you mind explaining the difference? This isn't an area of parenting that I have looked into much.

[Cairber]

The easiest way to think of the differences is that bonding is a short term idea that is experienced one way. A mother bonds with her child. It is instinctual and aided by something like breastfeeding. When a mother breastfeeds her child, she is relaxed by the hormone oxytocin and feels pleasure in her nourishing her child. This is a one way event.

Attachment, on the other hand, is two way. It is a relationship between parent and child wherein the child is an active participant. So this relationship develops over time (but the first 3 years are really important- thus, the arguments about daycare)


I'm breastfeeding and typing here so if the above makes little sense you have to give me a break

[Diomedes]

Day cares must be a lot different in New Zealand, but, in my experience (having worked in day care here in the USA and also investigated a few back when I considered working) they are not havens of stimulation.

When I was about 15-16, my mother worked for Barnardos, a childcare agency that would involve a caregiver such as her receiving children in our home, where she would look after and interact with them throughout the day - I can remember that being a very positive environment. In terms of my own experiences of childcare, I can only really remember a bit from when I was 3 and 4, and I can remember enjoying a couple of different day care centres. But that's anecdotal - the quality will vary significantly I'm sure (of course, quality of parents does as well).

Also, the things you describe as negative are not negative to all people. You use the word "clingy" but others would see a strong bond between mother and child. It's pretty subjective. You might see a child who is independent, someone else might see a child with attachment disorder.

Ok. Remember, I'm not trying to say that it is universally bad to have a stay-home parent. I'm more interested in testing the claim that it would generally be better if that were the case.

Something else I want to make a point of - the few things that can arguably be presented in favour of having a parent stay home only seem applicable to the first year or so anyway. The first study you cited (the second one I cant seem to access at all) deals only with first year issues as well. Now, regarding the breastfeeding example I think considering potential workarounds or partial workarounds it's not an incredibly strong point, and as you admit the attachment issue is somewhat subjective, but even if these do support having a mother present during the first year, that's all they would support. If Mike's claim were simply that it would be better if during the first year the mother stayed home, it would be a more easily defensible claim and one I'd be less inclined to even bother addressing.

Anyway, here is the study I talked about on day care and attachment (note attachment and bonding are different things):

effect of day care on attachment

Evidence from 2 longitudinal studies of infant and family development was combined and examined in order to determine if experience of extensive nonmaternal care in the first year is associated with heightened risk of insecure infant-mother attachment and, in the case of sons, insecure infant-father attachment. Analysis of data obtained during Strange Situation assessments conducted when infants were 12 and 13 months of age revealed that infants exposed to 20 or more hours of care per week displayed more avoidance of mother on reunion and were more likely to be classified as insecurely attached to her than infants with less than 20 hours of care per week. Sons whose mothers were employed on a full-time basis (greater than 35 hours per week) were more likely to be classified as insecure in their attachments to their fathers than all other boys, and, as a result, sons with 20 or more hours of nonmaternal care per week were more likely to be insecurely attached to both parents and less likely to be securely attached to both parents than other boys. A secondary analysis of infants with extensive care experience who did and did not develop insecure attachment relationships with their mothers highlights several conditions under which the risk of insecurity is elevated or reduced. Both sets of findings are considered in terms of other research and the context in which infant day-care is currently experienced in the United States.

Another study on attachment theory:

The Legacy of Early Attachments

Also this book is good:
Understanding Attachment: Parenting, Child Care, and Emotional Development

I have lots of stuff here on attachment theory and the effect of daycare on the attachment between mother, father and child....also lots on why it is desirable to have sound attachment.

I have to go again but I'll try to post more later.

It's a fascinating area, and I want to thank you for seeking an evidence based approach to this discussion. Looking through the related articles, Link struck me as interesting:

Maternal employment in a family context: effects on infant-mother and infant-father attachments.
Chase-Lansdale PL, Owen MT.

George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20037.

The relation between resumption of full-time employment by mothers of infants under 6 months of age, and subsequent infant-mother and infant-father attachments, was examined in this study. Attachment classifications and ratings of reunion behavior with mother and with father in Ainsworth's Strange Situation at 12 months were obtained for 57 nonemployed-mother families and 40 employed-mother families. No relation emerged between maternal work status and the quality of infants' attachments to their mothers, indicating that early resumption of employment may not impede the development of secure infant-mother attachment. A significantly higher proportion of insecure attachments to fathers in employed-mother families was found for sons but not for daughters. Joint examination of the infants' attachments to both parents revealed a trend suggesting that in employed-mother families, boys were more likely to be insecurely attached to both parents than were girls in employed-mother families or infants of either sex in nonemployed-mother families. These patterns are discussed in light of differences in maternal and paternal sex-typing behavior and of evidence suggesting boys' vulnerability to psychosocial stress.

So it may be even more complicated than at first appears, if the effect on boys is different from girls. In any case, notwithstanding the fact that studies seem to indicate that any disparities, psychologically or academically fade away over time, maybe the case can be made that there's a short-term advantage to having a mother stay home during the child's first year. I dont yet think it's conclusive, but if that's where the evidence points I'll accept that.

A couple of things though. As I said, even if it can be shown that for say the first year there's an advantage to a stay-home mum, that's a more limited claim than what Mike has been defending. Secondly, there's still the bigger picture to look at if the mother doesnt re-enter the workforce. I'm pretty sure I forgot to link this article way back - it's basically more indicating that when wives work, their marriages are more stable and longlasting - the strength of the findings even enough to turn some social conservative traditionalist campaigners around:

Working wives enjoy lasting marriages, studies show

WASHINGTON—The marriages of women who work outside the home are more likely to stay together than the marriages of those who don't, according to new studies that have converted at least one prominent social conservative.

The findings offer guilt relief for some of the 67 million married U.S. working women and reflect a growing equity among couples when it comes to income, decision-making, parenting and housekeeping. And if working wives promote stability at home, the trend is likely to buttress public-policy arguments for more paid maternal and paternal leave and more help with child care.

The main shift was away from breadwinner-homemaker marriages to what the authors call "egalitarian marriages." In them, husbands and wives share decision-making power more equally and housekeeping and child-care duties more equitably.

But anyway, looking at what's actually happening in the world is the proper way to get to the truth of this matter, and I think that truth is going to be a lot more complicated than applying industrial principles of efficiency into a realm where all sorts of complex interactions regarding psychology and child development come into play.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'd agree that there is no such thing as a child that is excessively clingy before about the age of five or six. The idea is ludicrous; the parent-child bond is by far the most important thing in our psychological development. Denying that is recipe for creating a dysfunctional neurotic.

Then, you have to handle the next 6 - 7 years just as delicately. The child should be progressively more independent over that period but it's a managed transition to that independence and extremely delicate. I would have to say that having more than two children when both parents work should be considered a criminal act and that in most such circumstances one child would be the maximum that the couple could give acceptable amounts of time to. Obviously that would require a society prepared to actually invest in children instead of largely neglecting them as our present society does, or being outright hostile to them by introducing them to religion (there is nothing more poisonous to the developing mind, and I still sometimes have nightmares over the religious indoctrination I received as a child, and periods of deep personal misery).

Of course we know that is unlikely to happen any time soon.

Personally the only way I'd ever put a child of mine in a daycare is if all the staff had bachelor's degrees in a presently nonexistent field of Applied Early Child Development, essentially people who took a 5-year course equivalent in intensity to an education degree, then had further intern work in the field before being allowed to care for other peoples' children on their own, and it was extremely focused on the neurological impact of being away from your parents at a very early development age and how to avoid that from taking place in daycare situations, while maximizing the future learning potential of the child through exercises formulated through serious investigation into the nature of childhood development to really encourage the exercise and development of the growing brain.

Daycares with such extremely highly trained and specialized staff should be provided free of charge by the government to families where both parents must work or to single-parent families. I'd also make the applicants for those positions pass psychological screening as rigorous as that given by the Secret Service or the CIA.