Is day care good or bad for children?

“We know day care doesn’t do any harm especially if it’s good quality”

–Tony Munton of London University

“When a child’s mother dies it is a terrible tragedy. Why impose this tragedy every day?”

–Katy Gyngell of the Full-Time Mothers Association

The intro powerpoint is here. Over the next few lessons we will explore some of the research into day care.

Privation

We've looked recently at what can happen if a child doesn't form an attachment - this is privation. We discussed two case studies - Genie and the Czech twins and you need to know the details of one of these. We also looked at a longitudinal study on privation by Hodges & Tizard (ppt here).

If an attachment has been formed but is broken then this is separation. In the short term this will result in separation anxiety in a securely attached child, but if the separation is longer than a few minutes then the PDD model (protest, despair, despondency) will be relevant. Remember the video clip that we watched of Little John who sought comfort in the large teddy bear and tried to elicit attention from the nurses:

We also covered institutionalisation (ppt here), a specific form of attachment that can result in disinhibited attachment.

Today I set a 12 mark homework essay. This is due in a fortnight. 'Discuss the effects of privation' (12 marks).

Key terms that you should know: Privation, Separation, Institutionalisation, PDD, Disinhibited attachment.

Stress short tests

Here are the questions from the three tests we have done on the stress topic. If you missed one, or scored less than half-marks, do it as soon as possible:

Test 1
Outline two ways in which the body responds to stress. 4 marks + 4 marks

Test 2


Test 3
a) Outline the conclusions of one study into the workplace as a source of stress. 3 marks
b) Give one criticism of this study. 3 marks
c) Outline the method used in a study of the effects of personality on stress related illness. 3 marks
d) Describe the findings of this study. 3 marks.

Stress Management Techniques

As of this year you do not need to learn about 'problem-focused' and 'emotion-focused' ways that people cope with stress in their everyday lives. You do need to know about physiological (affecting the nervous system) and psychological (talking-therapy) techniques for managing stress. This means:

Physiological - two types of drugs - benzodiazepines (reduce brain activity) and beta blockers (stop the stress response in the body).
Psychological - two types of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) - Stress Inoculation Training and Hardiness Training.

Here is a short presentation introducing the different types of therapy, and here is a longer one with some more detail.

On Tuesday 21st February we will have a test on the whole of the Stress topic.

The effects of day care

After half-term we will be looking at the effects of day care (nurseries, childminders etc) on children. There is a vast body of research on this topic with very often contradictory findings.

I would like you to have a look at a current UK longitudinal study on childcare - the Families, Children and Child Care (FCCC) project. The website address is here. Have a read of the homepage and the page about the FCC and then the findings. Find the page of published results and have a look at some of the abstracts (summaries of the journal articles).

AS long reports

The sheet for you to write your comments in is here.