This is Part Two in a two-part series examining the harmful impact of daycare on children.
Click here to read Daycare Deception, Part I: The Rise of Feminism
Daycare is often viewed as a convenient alternative to stay-at-home parenting by many working mothers and fathers, but decades of research show staggering life-long consequences for children raised by daycare workers. The truth is, no one can replace the presence and care of a nurturing mother or an involved father – least of all a stranger paid an hourly wage to care for some 20 children at a time.
Psychoanalyst and clinical social worker Erica Komisar shared that from the age of zero to three, children experience their first critical period of brain development. Having a mother or primary caretaker present in their life during that time is essential to their healthy development. “Babies are not born resilient; they’re born neurologically and emotionally fragile,” Komisar explained. “They require the physical and emotional presence of their mothers or primary attachment figures in the first three years to provide them with a sense of safety and security and trust.”
Without a mother or father’s active presence during a baby’s first three years of life, the child will enter a state of hyper-vigilant stress through increased cortisol levels, which can lead to “anxiety, early signs of aggression, ADHD, and depression” in later years.
Conversely, when a baby is nurtured primarily by their mother for the first three years of life, they are “protected for the most part from a great deal of stress,” and thus “remain very physically and emotionally close to their mothers, their primary attachment figures.” Komisar explained that this “helps them to incrementally learn how to tolerate stress,” rather than throwing them into a stressful situation, like daycare, with little time to adapt. Such immense stress is “very bad for an infant’s brain.”
Children sent to daycare may develop anxiety and aggression in early childhood, but the consequences don’t end there. Longitudinal studies show that “children who are not properly attached to their parents when they are one year old are also insecurely attached 20 years later, with a higher rate of anxiety, depression, ADHD, and behavioral problems.”
Of course, not every family can afford to have one parent stay home and raise their children. In the case that both parents need to work, Komisar said the best alternative is to have a relative or a trusted friend who is invested in the children care for them, rather than sending them to daycare. Komisar offers a metaphor as to where priorities should lie:
If you’re in an airplane and the airplane can’t carry the weight in the plane, and it’s going down, what are you willing to throw overboard from the airplane or the helicopter to keep it flying? … Luggage, material things. You’re not willing to throw people overboard. So, you’re willing to throw just about everything materially out other than the people. In society, we’ve taught young people to throw the people out first … So, when you say they can’t afford it, first ask yourself if you’ve thrown every shoe, every bit of luggage, every vacation, every clothing allowance you have, every dinner out, everything that is material if you’ve thrown that out before you throw your baby out.
###
If you’re passionate about creating change in Washington, please consider joining our team of DEFENDERS to advocate for your values in the public square and beyond. You can learn more about FPIW’s policy views in our Issues Booklet, which can be found here.
- Want to Change Our Culture? 500,000 DEFENDER Prayer Warriors Are Needed.
- Want to be Heard in Olympia? 200,000 DEFENDER Activists for Political Power Are Needed.
- Want to Change Washington’s Laws? 450,000 DEFENDER Signers of Initiatives & Referendums Are Needed.
- Want Lasting Change? 1.7 Million DEFENDER Voters for Conservative Candidates Are Needed.
Join us! Please sign up to become a DEFENDER today. To support the cause financially, please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to FPIW, or click here to make a donation to FPIW Action (not tax-deductible). FPIW Action is a 501(c)(4) organization that allows us to speak out more freely on specific political issues. Your small monthly donation of $10 or $25 makes a tremendous difference to help defend Washington State.
