Is it better for children to be raised by stay-at-home parents?

Yes

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by Lisa H Warren

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In general, babies and preschoolers are better off being raised primarily by a stay-at-home parent. That assertion, however, is based on the presumption that the parent is a loving, capable, mature, parent with enough common sense, understanding of child development, and parental instinct to adequately meet the child's developmental needs.

That number of qualifying traits may at first seem a little restrictive, but a good percentage of parents who are generally emotionally stable and mature enough to be parents have what is needed. Not all do.

Much of a child's development occurs during the years from birth to school age, with a substantial degree of development occurring in the first three years of life. A baby comes into this world in need of nurturing that will encourage optimal development of his brain, central nervous system, large and fine motor skills, and ability to develop attachment. A substantial portion of the development of brain connections occurs during the first three years of life, with yet additional skills developing in the first five. With the right nurturing a child's brain will form connections that will serve him for the rest of his life. Two very important functions of the development of the right brain connections include the development of a properly functioning stress response system and immune system.

The good news is that a parent need not be a expert in neurology or have advanced degrees in child development to be able to offer a child the high-quality nurturing that each and every child needs. When a child has a parent who meets the needs of children from birth to preschool that child has the opportunity to reach his optimal development. While infants and toddlers certainly require a lot of care, they don't - when it comes down to it - have many needs. They need food, sleep, clean clothes, and a clean home to meet their physical needs. Emotionally, they need to feel safe, secure, and loved.

The bad news (at least for some parents) is that brain connections are not just related to the stress response system, the immune system, or even language development. They're related to every part of the developing brain, including those parts that determine whether a child feels emotionally secure, bonds well with people close to him, and, in general, has the skills needed to function well in life.

What many people often overlook, however, is that babies and toddlers need a parent who gives them plenty of attention (engages them and encourages attachment), talks to them (makes them feel a part of the world, encourages language development, and generally encourage feeling valued), and responds to them (teaches trust in the parent and, to some extent, the people in general). Babies and toddlers also need a parent to protect them (at least to some extent) from the demands and insults of the world outside the home until the child has the cognitive, emotional, and physical development to be better able to cope.

The four-year-old in preschool understands the very reasonable concept of taking turns with a playmate. The eighteen-month old toddler in day care is not able to understand such a concept, emotionally capable of graciously dealing with having a toy taken away "out of the blue", or feeling capable when faced with a two-year-old who takes away that toy. The two-year-old who hits a playmate for taking away his toy doesn't understand the reasoning behind, "It's not nice to hit." Having acted out of his own inability to control his emotions (because of his age), a two-year-old feels victimized by the playmate who took his toy and doesn't understand why he is the one being scolded. Children, of course, must learn to deal with playing with other children; and being exposed to other children in small does is a good way for them to begin learning. Generally, however, children learn this (and other social skills) once they reach a stage in development when learning is possible.

The more a child is thrust into the outside world when he is not very skilled at dealing with it, the less time he is spending in an environment where his needs are being met and where he feels safe, secure, and unthreatened by a world that can be difficult to understand.

It is known that it takes much of the first year of a baby's life for him to grasp the concept that he and his mother are not "one person", and that his is separate from her. It makes sense to question whether having a different caretaker (or a set of them) in the first year of life could interrupt "the normal flow of development" in an infant under one year old. One question is whether a baby may experience negative effects by being separated for too long from the person with whom he views himself as "one person". Another question is whether spending a substantial portion of each day away from his mother may actually damage the kind of bond that otherwise becomes established.

In the second year of life a child continues to develop a rapid rate. A one-year-old may be wobbly when walking, while a two-year-old is solid on his feet. Although nurturing language development begins earlier, between one and two years old a child makes giant strides in that area. Still heavily relyiant on his mother/parent, a child between one and two is at a stage when he's learning to master his own body. The child under two is extremely attached to his mother/parent, because it is't until he reaches two years old that he begins to realize he has the ability to think for himself and have a substantial amount of control over his immediate world.

The growth that takes place in the first two years of life is focused on the development of the child, himself, and on his relationship with his mother/parent(s). Children develop at different rates; but, in general, there is a universal "system" to the whole process of evolving from a newborn to a separate, independent, little person (who knows that's what he is).

The third year of life can be difficult for someone who is brand new at finally being an independent little person. Two-year-olds don't have the emotional development to deal with a lot of the frustrations of life - even life in the small world of their home. Two-year-olds benefit from being given that extra little bit of time to get used to being their own little person in the smaller, safer, world of their home before being expected to deal with the larger world. That's not to say that two-year-olds don't enjoy a day at Grandma's or being at the park with a parent and a bunch of other children. It's just that, on a day-to-day basis, two-year-olds are pretty new to "being people" and still need to, most of the time, be kind of protected from those demands and insults of the larger world. (We wouldn't put a one-year-old toddler at the edge of a busy street and hope he would feel secure as well as make it across safely. For someone mature enough to cross a busy street, however, there is little sense of insecurity; and, in all likelihood, that person will make it across safely. The same would seem to apply, in a less dramatic way, to placing a two-year-old versus placing a four-year-old in an outside childcare situation.)

By three years old children have mastered most of the basic "being-a-person" skills they need. Three-year-olds seem to crave one-to-one attention from the adults closest to them, and the fourth year is the year when children expand their learning to learning about day-to-day living (as opposed to learning how to master their own bodies and function in their little world). Parents who have stayed home with their three-year-olds know how this seems to be a year in which the bond between parent and child grows even stronger. Looking to their mother/parent for guidance and information, while viewing that parent with admiration, the three-year-old's attachment to adults close to him seems at a peak. Still not being "cognitively sophisticated" to even think about some of the fears about the world that will eventually occur for him (fear of death, fear of lightning, fear of burglars, fear of hurricanes, etc.); and still even being too young to entirely grasp some concepts (for example, the concept that if something falls behind a large bookcase it has not disappeared into some "black hole" without the possibility of retrieving it); the three-year-old can seem to enjoy a very happy and peaceful world. It can seem as if this fourth year of a child's life is is the year in which he "firms up" his identity, his relationship with parents and family members, and his appreciation of the world.

When three-year-olds have had the benefit of a solid beginning they're often developmentally advanced enough to appreciate activities outside the home, with other children. Needier three-year-olds may need more time to appreciate such activities and be happy being with other children. The fourth year is a great time for a child to get the chance to practice having experiences in settings outside the home and with other children. There is, however, a reason that schools do not allow even advanced three-year-olds to attend kindergarten; and that reason is that a three-year-old is generally not mature enough to do well in such settings if left in them for too long.

At four years old (earlier for children who are particularly emotionally mature) children start to long to be out with other children. They may be completely happy at home or out with a parent each day, but they really start to seem to need time being out with other children their age. They seem to enjoy having their own world outside the home as well. This is, of course, when most parents believe their child will benefit from having some preschool experience. With preschool, as with kindergarten, however, there is the matter of how much of the outside world children can comfortably deal with before becoming tired. Four-year-olds are young children and becoming tired is something many do when outside the home for too long. (For that matter, six-year-olds can return home from first grade, exhausted each afternoon. It isn't until some children get past six or so that they seem to develop the truly boundless stamina of the primary school years. Before that children can have plenty of energy but only so many hours of it before becoming over-tired.)

All of these developmental realities would seem to point to a child's being better off with a capable stay-at-home parent (as opposed to a full-time, outside, child-care situation). The most wonderful, loving, capable, outside child-care provider in the world is not, and cannot be, bonded with a child in the same ways that his parent(s) can be. The combination of a parent's being capable, loving, and bonded as parents are with their children, make for a better and safer situation for a child. One-on-one attention contributes to that better scenario. A five-year-old girl in a daycare situation was killed when a bookcase fell on her. Parents can make sure there is no such hazard in their own home. A toddler was strangled by his carseat strap when an otherwise caring daycare provider while she left him and his twin sibling in their car seats until she made a quick run into the house.

There is no way to screen providers and eliminate the possibility that such isolated situations may occur, or to screen for judgment in every possible circumstance. It is true that children have been accidentally injured and killed by a parent's bad judgment as well; but as horrible as that it is, it does remain quite different from situations in which children are killed by a provider's mistakes.

Parental mistakes, of course, lead to the matter of when children may be better off being cared for outside the home. There are parents who aren't quite as capable or mature as is best for children. Some have few parenting skills, little patience, and/or little understanding of child development. Some may not have the time or instinct to make sure each child gets sufficient individual attention, and others may simply lack common sense to the detriment of their child. Unfortunately, too, there are parents use abuse drugs and/or alcohol enough to affect their parenting, attachment, and judgment even if not to the point of making them unfit to spend any time with their child at all.

When a child's parent(s) is not what a parent needs to be then that child would usually be better off being raised outside the home by skilled care providers. It may not be what is best for any child, but it certainly what is better for a child of parents who lack the ability to be the right kind of parents.

In her poem, "Children Learn What They Live," Dorothy Law Nolte's assertion that child's behavior and personalities are affected by the people around them is right on track. Babies and young children who spend a lot of time in a daycare situation are living with other babies and young children who are too young to (for lack of a better description) be good role models. In daycare situations aimed at offering care for children of disadvantaged or unskilled parents children are living with other children who may have behavior issues beyond those of the average toddler or preschooler. The best daycare situation in the world may minimize the "jungle-out-there" atmosphere that lower quality facilities may have; but no outside care can offer a child what his own capable, loving, parent can.

None of this is intended to be an indictment of all working parents or all outside childcare situations. Although studies have linked behavior problems (in five-year-olds, as well as in sixth-grade students) with the amount of time spent in outside care (including in the care of relatives), the National Institutes of Health has also reached the conclusion (at least as of this year) that the quality of parenting can offset risks of developing behavior problems as a result of too much time in daycare. Studies have also shown that an advantage of being in daycare can be a better vocabulary when a child reaches middle-school age. (As a mother who stayed home with my own children, who had amazing vocabularies as preschoolers and who continued to have excellent vocabularies right through childhood, I can only conclude that being cared for by a capable parent does not necessarily have any negative effects on vocabulary. Also, as a child who was cared for by own at-home mother, and as one who had an excellent vocabulary (as did my siblings), I do question the connection between better vocabulary and daycare. Of course, there is the fact that some daycare situations may offer better environments for the development of vocabulary than some homes do. Another consideration is that many working parents are well educated (and may or may not be particularly skilled at nurturing vocabulary development in their child).

How early a child is placed in daycare, the number of hours/days he spends there each week, and the length of time he will be there are all things parents need to consider. So is the age of the child and the degree of quality of parenting they are willing/able to offer the child.

We live in a time when so many parents and experts alike focus on the development of the brain connections that will help a young child learn to read and memorize sometimes phenomenal amounts of academic information. I'm not opposed to making parents aware that children need to be encouraged to learn early. My own children recognized words at two, memorized the birthdays of everyone in the immediate and extended families, and completed puzzles designed for children much older. They weren't "flash-carded". They were just curious and picked things up. Abraham Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs asserts that once physical needs are met a person's focus turns to having emotional/social needs are met. Once those are met the individual can then move on to higher thinking. I've always believed that this was what was in play when my own two-year-olds showed so much natural curiosity and love of learning more and more.

In this time in which we live, however, it can seem as if there is little focus on that most basic relationship between a baby/toddler and his mother - and that is that gradual "building of a little person" and of a relationship for those first few years leading up to when a child is ready to begin his journey in the "real" world on his own. The reason for this could be that people, in general, assume that the maternal relationship/engagem ent with a child comes naturally; but our society has enough increasing "epidemics" of one social malady or another to make us wonder if, in fact, that "right kind of engagement and attachment" really does come so naturally to children.

Children with capable, loving, good, parents are (in my opinion) always better off being cared for by their own parent(s). Children who are not so fortunate may not always be, but sometimes and in some ways, even those children are. Throughout most of the animal kingdom (there are species that deviate from this) mothers nurture their babies until their babies are ready to go out into the world. In our more sophisticated and complex human society it may not always be that simple, but it is always worth considering.

http://w ww.highbeam.com/doc/ 1P1-43615288.html http://www.csulb.edu /~kmacd/361daycare.h tml http://www.nytimes.c om/2007/03/26/us/26c enter.html http://www.classbrai n.com/artread/publis h/article_30.shtml

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