With many new parents having to work, go to school or take care of other time-consuming tasks, the need to put newborns in day care is becoming more commonplace. While child care may seem to be a practical solution to parents’ time-management, there are negative effects that must be taken into consideration. Choosing a day care that is a healthy fit with your needs for your newborn is a difficult process, because you are entrusting the day care workers with your child.
Attachment
The relationship that evolves between a child and his parents begins when the child is born. Healthy attachment, especially between an infant and his mother, is integral for proper social, emotional and cognitive development. When an infant is around others more than he is around his parents, he may not form secure bonds and possibly will feel abandoned. Research on child-mother attachment published in “Child Development” and conducted by the Society for Research in Child Development found that infants were less likely to form secure attachments when low parental sensitivity and responsiveness was combined with day care.
Environment
The environment of the day care affects whether it is a positive or negative experience for your child. A day care facility that is small and overcrowded may have an abundance of noise that negatively affects your newborn. Some cheaper day cares may not be licensed, which means nonregulated conditions and possibly inadequate caregivers. Facilities that are highly structured with professional, educated employees are most likely to influence your infant's cognitive, social and emotional development positively.
Attention
All children need attention, but newborns are incapable of doing anything for themselves. For this reason, if you must put your newborn in child care, make sure that adequate attention is given to ensure proper feeding, changing and nurturing. In addition to their basic needs, newborns require a certain amount of physical contact to become accustomed to other people. Very young children who receive enough attention at home as well as in day care are more likely to be positively affected by it.
Positives
In some cases, placing a newborn in day care has a significant positive effect on the child. Primarily, this occurs when the infant’s home does not have the resources that child care facilities have. In children from very low-income or uneducated families, day care centers of good quality foster better intellectual, physical and social development. High-quality child care also is less likely to negatively affect infants from any background if it is used only sometimes as opposed to every day.
