Further to the government’s report on Non Parental Childcare and Child Cognitive Outcomes at Age 5. part of the Growing Up In Ireland study…
Liggy writes:
The Irish Independent has published their interpretation of the latest Growing Up in Ireland Study.
Their amazing conclusion was: Child’s development suffers if mum works full-time, says study
Got that? All children suffer if their Mother works full time.
Kind of rude to fathers who do the childcare. Not to mention how outdated, anachronistic and 1950s the attitude is that Mum should be the one looking after the children.
So I read the report: Amazingly, it made the point in many instances that where a care-giver (in or out of the child’s home) is better educated than the parent who works full-time, the child will have better vocabulary and non-verbal reasoning skills.
So logically if the full time employee is the best educated person in the child’s life, they will not have the same skills in these areas as children of a parent of a similiar educational level who stays at home. Nowhere in the report does it conclude that this role is best played by the Mother.
P8
Looking at change over time in vocabulary scores between three and five, a modest positive effect was found for non-relative care (e.g. childminders), meaning that children in this type of care made more progress between the two time points than those in full-time parental care at age three.
It goes on….
Positive effects of centre-based care were also found for the Foundation Stage Profile results at age five, and these were stronger for children with less-educated mothers.
P10
None of the findings suggest a significant negative effect of non-parental childcare on either vocabulary or non-verbal reasoning at five for the full sample of children. On average, children attending different types of care at age three fared as well in terms of cognitive outcomes at age five as children in full-time parental care.
P11
For children whose whose Primary Caregiver had Leaving Certificate qualifications or higher, there was a modest positive effect of relative and non-relative care on change in vocabulary scores between three and five compared to full-time parental care
P19
At nine months, the authors (Byrne & O’Toole, 2015) found infants in the care of a relative had higher scores for communication and personal/social development, while those in the care of a non-relative had significantly lower communication and problem-solving scores.
Infants attending centre-based care had significantly lower communication and gross-motor scores than those in full-time parental care. However, as noted in McGinnity et al (2013), in the majority of cases the children had been in non-parental care for a very short period, and therefore it is not possible to attribute causal relationships.
P74
For children of Primary Caregivers with lower secondary educational qualifications, the first model (Table 4.3) shows that there is no significant effect of any form of non-parental care at age three, compared to children in full-time parental care, on vocabulary at age five. Adding vocabulary scores at age three (Model 3) does not affect this pattern of results for childcare. There is no evidence of a positive association between non-parental childcare and vocabulary at age five for the children of low-educated Primary Caregivers in this sample.
For the children of Primary Caregivers with upper secondary education or higher, it was found that all forms of non-parental care at age three years had a significant small positive association with vocabulary scores at age five, but these effects did not remain statistically significant once child and other family characteristics were held constant in Model 2.
Interestingly, in Model 3, home-based care types, relative care and non-relative care are associated with slightly higher increases in vocabulary between ages three and five than sole parental care, though the coefficients were not statistically significant.
This echoes the finding from Hansen and Hawkes (2009) that the children of more highly educated Primary Caregivers show vocabulary gains from home-based care, albeit grandparental childcare in their study using the Millenium Cohort Study. This effect is not found for children in centre-based care.
Download report here
Well All I can say is mine were the better for it
Childcare outside the home that is
From 3 months old ish
To entering 6th class
Let parents make their own decisions
And stop writing reports about them
FFS
Spend more time worrying about the kids going to school hungry this morning
The Growing Up In Ireland reports are good things (IMO). Articles drawing conclusions from a cursory reading, less so.
Agreed about the kids going hungry. The child poverty situation is appalling and will have massive repercussions. http://www.barnardos.ie/what-we-do/campaign-and-lobby/the-issues/child-poverty.html
Where’s daddy?
Right here *adjusts spiked leather choker*
I always find that mothers who work full time always have a guilty complex about “not being at home for the children”. With the cost of child care, would it not be better staying at home. Probably more fun at work i suppose.
It’s not all about cost, what’s the mother supposed to do when the children are gone and no employer wants to know because they’ve been at home for years.
Why would you go back to work? As the kids get older; doesnt trying to juggle work and the kids not get way way more difficult. So instead of doing one thing well ie bring up the children, you end up doing 2 things badly ie working and bringing up the children. Plus your completely stressed out. Is it really worth it? Still feeling guilty as well.
My parents “juggled work” and looking after my brother and I just fine. I had a wonderful childhood and we’ve both done well. I think I respect them more for it and my mam hasn’t fallen into a depression since we moved out because she still has a life and a role that isn’t all about mothering.
So kindly go fupp yourself judging other peoples’ families. I’m proud of my mam for being a brilliant, caring mother alongside being a badass bitch in the office.
you turned out alright you say? with your moving to london and breaking your mammy’s heart, and on d broadsheet all day saying ‘gerrup’ when you should be working..
this isn’t true to be fair,
It’s only true if your pal made management while you were “on leave” and you expect to slot into that level.
but if you leave on a level you can expect to return to that level assuming you had some qualifications in the first place.
I worked in IT in a bank once and many women came back after a break with kids.
but essentially it boils doing what you want or feel is the best.
nobody has a divine entitlement to get everything they want.
For every decision made it opens some doors but closes others….that’s just life
In a profession such as law, if you take a few years off there’s no getting back. All that study and training down the drain. Some people want to and that’s fine, but being a full-time parent is not for everyone – as is clear from all the fathers who continue with their careers rather than become stay-at-home Dads.
“being a full time parent is for every one” Why?? whats wrong with it Frida? Im purely interested by the way not having a go.
Not being flippant but why don’t you ask your wife? Whatever decision she made, she’s guaranteed to have at least considered both sides.
If this has been your experience, perhaps that’s because they’ve been subjected to torrents of evidence-free crap like this news story over the years? So instead of suggesting that the answer is for them to give up work, perhaps you might advocate the newspapers stop making up fake stories?
Tbf, newspapers always misinterpret research to their own end. I haven’t seen one who does it well.
Check out Ben Goldacre’s bad science blog. It’s pretty good for ripping apart bad articles.
Yeah, he is great for this kind of stuff. My biggest bugbear at the moment are articles that write about research but don’t link to the original. That’s really not that hard to do and it means people can read it for themselves and make up their own minds.
Nope I’m pretty well informed as is my OH. One wage house, not as much mulah but happier kids having at least one of us around all the time rather than a complete stranger and loads of stress. Again i repeat it, working mothers always ooze guilt about not being around for the kids.
lol
Women, always oozing something….
It’s why I drape my numerous Chesterfields in antimacassars
Ha! Quote of the day!
hahahahahawhooops
I bring a tarpaulin everywhere I go, just in case…
in your case don, charm ;)
*bats lashes, listens to bat for lashes*
Judgmental bottomholes looking down their noses at them sniffing for traces of guilt and insecurity can’t help either.
nice of you to judge someone on that
Since you put it that way, now I’m oozing guilt over it. Maybe it’s the effect you have on people?
funnily enough the guilt your oozing is brown and stinks; you should clean it up, its staining the comments section Nigel. So sorry you ooze at my opinion.
Yup. Definitely the effect you have on people.
Must disagree. I know some who are quite happy to escape the drudgery of domestic life by going to work.
One size does not fit all. Some working mothers (never, ever a discussion on fathers involvement) work because they have to, some because they want to maintain their sanity by interacting with the adult world, some because they want to and don’t want to waste years of training.
Each family makes decisions based on the needs of the whole, some work, some don’t.
But if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
I’m a stay-at-home mother, not by choice. The company I worked for closed in Ireland while I was on maternity leave. I love being here to look after my daughter. I think I’m lucky that I have this chance. But there are days where I’d give anything to go back out and work, just so I can feel like an adult, not just “mammy”. But the money I would make would just be absorbed by childcare. So what is the point?
meadowlark, the only reason people go back to work is for the free stationary.
I still have a whole cupboard full of pens… I’ll swap you some blue pens for a couple of post its.
blue pens are no good to anyone – you’ll never shift them. next job you get though, make sure you nick a computer bit by bit each day then we’ll talk.
how are people going to afford to live?
house prices are going to keep rising, both parents will HAVE to work, not a choice
“Kind of rude to fathers who do the childcare. Not to mention how outdated, anachronistic and 1950s the attitude is that Mum should be the one looking after the children.
So I read the report”
(Somewhat ironically) I haven’t read the report, so I have no idea whether the rest of your piece makes any sense or not, but it sounds a bit like you disagreed with the study before actually reading it and then read it purely to poke holes in it.
Or, you know, critiquing a study…
Yeah but if everyone went into every study they read only looking at it with their own preconceived biases, instead of being objective and trying to actually learn something, we’d all still be living in caves and hunting down animals with our bare hands. Or something.
Read it first, then critique it.
The first critique is of the headline the newspaper used in relation to the report, not the report itself.
Because we are people, we are never objective, being completely objective is a fallacy. Better to address that before and during your critique than ignore it.
She did far for to substantiate her skepticism than you did to justify your ‘sounds a bit like.’ Subjecting studies to scrutiny did far more to get us out of the caves than sitting a corner saying ‘sounds a bit like.’ (Thog’s groundbreaking study ‘On The Effectiveness Of Banging Rocks Together To Make Hot Shiny Thing’ was subjected to fairly stringent peer review.)
And since I haven’t, and probably won’t, read the article, I don’t really have a leg to stand on here, to be fair. And yes, critiquing of studies is a key part of the scientific method. And another thing, I tried to make a joke about caveman studies but none of them worked out, so you got me there too.
Ah, you’re all right edalicious.
IT’S LIKE RAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIAAAAYYYYYYYYYNNNNNNNNNN
guilt complex as soon as she read the title.
Alright, calm down Kenny. You and your SO have made the decision for one of you to stay home (her I am assuming). Please respect the fact that other people will make different choices for different reasons.
Don telling me to respect other peoples opinion. Can i have some of your stones to throw at glass houses please?
lol I never said I respect your opinion – I think you’re coming across like a total knob. But I respect the choice of your SO to do what she wants.
ha ha read your previous so called comments and come back to me on that you gobpoo
It was the women oozing wasn’t it? Too much? Poor flower..
nope just this article on broadsheet; its hilarious when people act all up themselves and then get reduced to calling people names when they dont like the opinions mentioned Don. Bit of a crack starting in that mirror there.
Der, mirrors are tools of the patriarchy Kenny
No, they were skeptical of the headline and found it unwarranted based on their reading of the study.
“However, there is a notable divide between children from less advantaged families and those with better educated parents.” – home care or not – there you have it, fight the poverty, not creches (but reform these).
Mine was through creche, loved the peers, had interested teachers, imaginative curriculum, some of pre-school friends ended up in the same primary and then secondary. BTW, the vocabularies (incl.non-english) exploded when the creche started. I find it sad that our experience is an exception. And no, it was not priced above average, it was so-called going market rate.
+1 – schemes like SureStart in the UK tried to remove the effect of poverty somewhat by having free care for all kids from a certain age, regardless of parental income.
http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/child-care-2482047-Dec2015/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/bryonygordonblog/100267623/why-i-dont-feel-guilty-about-coming-back-to-work/
“How am I finding it? I’m finding it just hunky-dory, thank you very much. I’m finding it totally and utterly fabulous, now that you ask. The company of adults, the ability to go to the loo without the door open, the fact that I can just pop out and have sushi (sushi! So sophisticated!) whenever I damn want… what’s not to love?”
Telegraph beats the journal as well.
Thanks for playing.