Alpha Mummy: A report from Unicef you could have written yourself?

Parents and governments are taking a “high-stakes gamble” with the long-term wellbeing of children by subjecting them to long hours of formal childcare from a very young age, according to a Unicef report.

The study, which has prompted Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, to complain to the UN agency, recommends that all children should where possible be cared for by parents at home during the first 12 months of life. Children from the poorest homes face the double disadvantage of being born into material deprivation and receiving sub-standard childcare, Unicef says.

The research, which draws on a wealth of scientific and psychological studies, as well as government data, is bound to reignite the fraught debate on whether overexposure to formal childcare is bad for very young children.

It is also likely to provoke concerns over whether growing political, social and economic pressure on parents, particularly those on low incomes, to return to work soon after their child is born is at odds with emerging research into children’s brains showing the importance of stable one-to-one care in the first year of life.

The study suggests that government policies on maternity leave and childcare provision could be at odds with “today’s knowledge of the critical developmental needs of the very young child”.

The report ranks Britain joint 11th out of 25 developed nations for the quality of its childcare policies and calls for government expenditure on the sector to be raised to 1 per cent of GDP. To achieve this, Britain would have to double its present levels of spending.

David Bull, the executive director of Unicef UK, said that despite spending on preschool education in England having quadrupled in the past ten years, “high-quality childcare is not yet available to all, and parental leave provisions remain inadequate”. He added: “The report is also clear that rich nations have often been guilty of making policies based on economic considerations, not the best interests of the child.”

Last night Ms Hughes that she had written to Unicef to complain that the report was full of factual inaccuracies that misrepresented Britain’s position on childcare and early learning in a number of ways and that it may well do the same for other countries.

The report has been published at a key point in the childcare debate. Children born today into the rich world are part of the first generation in which a majority will spend a large part of their early childhood in childcare. In Britain about 80 per cent of those aged 3 to 6 are now in some form of formal childcare or education. For those under 3, the proportion is now 25 per cent.

In part, this reflects new opportunities for women to be employed outside the home. But it also reflects new pressures, particularly on the poorest, to return to work as soon as possible after a birth – often to low-paid jobs.

The report notes that high-quality formal childcare can bring huge benefits to children, particularly those from disadvantaged homes, expanding their social and cognitive development and providing them with stimulation that they might not get at home.

But it cites research from Britain and the US suggesting that children who spend too long in formal childcare at too young an age may suffer from long-term effects, including behavioural problems, aggression, antisocial behaviour, depression and an inability to concentrate – although the effects are thought to be relatively small.

The report, drawn up in consultation with governments and academic experts from several countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and with the World Bank, suggests that the age at which group childcare becomes appropriate is somewhere between 1 and 2.

The report also notes that, despite considerable investment in early-years care, particularly through the Sure Start programme for under5s, Britain is among a small number of countries where the provision of good childcare is being hampered by a lack of well-trained staff.

“Employment in nurseries and daycare centres is often seen as suitable for those who are very young, unqualified, transient, or all three,” it states, adding that “such views are dangerously out of date”.

Because poor families are under the greatest pressure to find cheap childcare at the earliest opportunity, their children are most at risk, the study says. To counter this, it recommends that childcare services provided for the poorest be heavily subsidised.

Sue Owen, of the children’s charity NCB, said that British parents should not panic at the findings: huge strides had been made in the past decade to improve childcare provision. The importance of one-to-one care for infants aged under a year was already recognised by most formal childcare providers. “The concept of having a key worker who builds up a one-to-one relationship with your child has been very strong in Britain for years,” she said.

Maria Millar, the Shadow Minister for Families, said that urgent action was needed to ensure that the poorest families had access to high-quality preschool services so that the cycle of poverty could be broken.

The report follows a controversial study by Unicef last year claiming that Britain’s children were the unhappiest in the West . That report led to the Government’s ten-year Children’s Plan, which aims to make Britain the best place for children to grow up.

For: Daycare creates confident adolescents

— A study of the effectiveness of the Early Head Start programme in the US, based on 3,000 families in 17 programmes, has shown that participating children have better cognitive and language development, are more capable of sustained attention and behave less aggressively towards others

— The Canadian researchers G Cleveland and M Krashinsky found that “good childcare can compensate, at least partially, for a disadvantaged home life”. They added: “Although early childhood education and care benefits all children, much of the evidence suggests that the largest benefits flow to children from the most disadvantaged families”

— The 2005 report The Economics of Investing in Universal Preschool Education in California found that children who attended preschool were more likely to graduate from high school, earned higher salaries as adults and were less likely to become involved in crime. The authors claim that even if only 25 per cent of California’s children benefited from universal preschool education, the state could still expect a return of $2 for every $1 invested

— The Effective Provision of Preschool Education study in Britain concludes that preschool enhances children’s cognitive and social development and the effects are greatest for disadvantaged children

— A long-term study of the effects of early childhood services in Sweden by Bengt Erik-Andersson found that “early entrance into daycare tends to predict a creative, socially confident, popular, open and independent adolescent”

Against: It fosters disobedience and aggression

— According to the Effective Provision of Preschool Education study conducted in Britain, “high levels of group care before the age of 3 (and particularly before the age of 2) were associated with higher levels of antisocial behaviour at age 3”

— Research from the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development concluded: “The more time children spent in childcare from birth to age 4=, the more adults tended to rate them . . . as less likely to get along with others, as more assertive, as disobedient and as aggressive”

— The Australian psychologist Steve Biddulph argues that childcare is inappropriate for under3s. “The best nurseries struggled to meet the needs of very young children in a group setting,” he says. “The worst were negligent, frightening and bleak; a nightmare of bewildered loneliness that was heartbreaking to watch. Children at this age – under 3 – will want one thing only: the individual care of their own special person”

— In The Science of Early Childhood Development by the Centre on the Developing Child at Harvard University, researchers describe the intimate and constant back-and-forth interaction of parent and baby as the “serve-and-return” relationship. “It works best when it is embedded in an ongoing relationship between a child and an adult who is responsive to the child’s own unique individuality,” the study says. According to Professor Jack Shonkoff, director of the Harvard University Centre on the Developing Child, excessive levels of stress hormones in babies “literally disrupt brain architecture”