Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #947 Day Care Data with Jenet Erickson
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for.
- 0:07Speaker 2: The time poor parent who just wants answers. Now, back
- 0:11Speaker 2: when I was doing my undergraduate psychology degree, we're going
- 0:14Speaker 2: back a couple of decades now. During the developmental psychology
- 0:18Speaker 2: course that I took, I was introduced to the work
- 0:20Speaker 2: of j Belski. Jay Belski is has been and continues
- 0:24Speaker 2: to be one of the world's foremost experts on childcare.
- 0:27Speaker 2: What we do with our kids when they're too little
- 0:30Speaker 2: for school, but we need them to go somewhere to
- 0:32Speaker 2: be looked after, because well, life is complicated. What I
- 0:36Speaker 2: found when I was doing that research surprised me. It
- 0:39Speaker 2: seemed that the ideological positions that people took on childcare
- 0:43Speaker 2: were not consistent with what research showed. But whenever I
- 0:45Speaker 2: would point that out, I kind of got shouted down. Now,
- 0:48Speaker 2: I recognize that this is a really sensitive topic and
- 0:51Speaker 2: I want to tread carefully here, But I recently came
- 0:53Speaker 2: across an article written by Jay Belski and Janet Ericson.
- 0:57Speaker 2: I've reached out to Janet Ericson to give me a
- 1:00Speaker 2: bit of an overview and help us to understand what
- 1:03Speaker 2: research is actually telling us about kids and childcare, so
- 1:08Speaker 2: that we can well when our kids need to be there,
- 1:10Speaker 2: when we need that double income, when the economy demands
- 1:13Speaker 2: to parents working, what we can do to help our
- 1:16Speaker 2: children to thrive, when childcare does not always support them best. Now,
- 1:20Speaker 2: before we start, I want to highlight I recognize that
- 1:22Speaker 2: for many people it's simply essential. Secondly, I want to
- 1:24Speaker 2: recognize that people who work in childcare in the main
- 1:27Speaker 2: are exceptional and loving and committed people who really want
- 1:31Speaker 2: the best for our kids. But the research doesn't always
- 1:34Speaker 2: point in the most helpful direction. So that's what this
- 1:36Speaker 2: conversation is about, just so that we can know what's happening.
- 1:40Speaker 2: Janet Ericson is a Fellow at the Institute for Family
- 1:44Speaker 2: Studies in the United States, also a Fellow of the
- 1:46Speaker 2: Wheatly Institution, and an Associate professor in the School of
- 1:51Speaker 2: Family Life at Brigham Young University. Ericson's research, specializing in
- 1:56Speaker 2: maternal and child well being in the context of work
- 1:58Speaker 2: and family life, has been feedured in all of the
- 2:01Speaker 2: big major news outlets, and as a Social Science Research
- 2:04Speaker 2: Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, she completed an extensive review
- 2:07Speaker 2: of research on the effects of non parental care on
- 2:10Speaker 2: children's development, especially for policymakers. Jennet, I really appreciate you
- 2:16Speaker 2: giving some time staying up late in the United States
- 2:18Speaker 2: to talk with me about this conversation. Thanks for joining me.
- 2:21Speaker 1: So good to be with you. Thank you.
- 2:23Speaker 2: Justin Jennett, You've got a couple of kids yourself. Personal question,
- 2:27Speaker 2: But can I ask did you put them into care
- 2:28Speaker 2: or did you have the privilege and luxury of having
- 2:31Speaker 2: them at home with you for a few years.
- 2:32Speaker 1: Yes, I did have the privilege and luxury of being
- 2:35Speaker 1: at home with them. I sometimes laugh that they got
- 2:37Speaker 1: too much of me, but it was important to me
- 2:41Speaker 1: to be able to do that, and I was able
- 2:43Speaker 1: to do that. My husband, he was put in daycare
- 2:46Speaker 1: when he was six weeks old for forty hours a week,
- 2:49Speaker 1: and I'll talk a little bit about his experience and
- 2:51Speaker 1: the findings that kind of track his experience.
- 2:54Speaker 2: I thought you were going to tell me that you
- 2:56Speaker 2: could explain it all because of the forty US very
- 3:00Speaker 2: ploued me to say that, So, what does the research
- 3:02Speaker 2: point to when it comes to daycare? My recollection from
- 3:05Speaker 2: all those years ago was that too little and too
- 3:07Speaker 2: much are definitely not healthier for kids. But there was
- 3:10Speaker 2: I guess, an optimum number of hours where the kids
- 3:13Speaker 2: seemed to settle in, feel good about the routine, and
- 3:15Speaker 2: do reasonably well. Yes, how's the research changed since well,
- 3:19Speaker 2: the last time I looked at it twenty years ago.
- 3:20Speaker 1: Yes, I think you said, roughly. What So, the United
- 3:23Speaker 1: States did this massive study starting in the late eighties
- 3:26Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, and it tracked children and it's still tracking
- 3:29Speaker 1: those children across all of development. And it was fascinating because,
- 3:33Speaker 1: as you recognize, this is very sensitive, politically sensitive, difficult
- 3:38Speaker 1: because it's getting to the core of what we care
- 3:40Speaker 1: most about, like as parents and doing whatever we can
- 3:43Speaker 1: to help our children. And so as they started out,
- 3:47Speaker 1: they were tracking data at six months and eighteen months
- 3:49Speaker 1: and twenty four months, and they found a little bit
- 3:51Speaker 1: of concern at twenty four months connected to what we
- 3:55Speaker 1: call early extensive daycare, which would mean putting day care
- 4:00Speaker 1: before nine months old for an extensive number of hours,
- 4:04Speaker 1: which would be thirty five to forty hours per week.
- 4:07Speaker 1: And they saw just a little bit of maybe concern
- 4:10Speaker 1: in terms of social emotional relationships those children had. By
- 4:14Speaker 1: thirty six months, three years, it looked like it disappeared
- 4:17Speaker 1: and everyone was like, oh good, that was just a
- 4:19Speaker 1: little blip. This isn't such a big deal. And then
- 4:23Speaker 1: at four and a half that challenge emerged strongly. And
- 4:27Speaker 1: what it showed is that children who had entered extensive
- 4:32Speaker 1: early hours of daycare that same idea within the first
- 4:35Speaker 1: year of life for thirty five to forty hours per
- 4:37Speaker 1: week where at significantly increased risk of social emotional challenges,
- 4:43Speaker 1: and that would be externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors, conflict with caregivers,
- 4:48Speaker 1: conflict with parents, and so all of a sudden, it
- 4:52Speaker 1: was Jabelski, who was on that massive project, who just said,
- 4:56Speaker 1: we have to think about this. We can't just ignore
- 5:00Speaker 1: or this. And then as they tracked the children across development,
- 5:04Speaker 1: it continued that kind of increased risk was seen in
- 5:08Speaker 1: kindergarten and then third grade and sixth grade, and it
- 5:12Speaker 1: showed up in a little bit different way ninth grade
- 5:14Speaker 1: twelfth grade, where there was increased risk for risky behaviors
- 5:20Speaker 1: and showing up in that internalizing, externalizing way. So I
- 5:25Speaker 1: think what it alerted us to is that this isn't
- 5:29Speaker 1: just something to be cavalier about as a culture or
- 5:33Speaker 1: as individuals. And when we look at early development and
- 5:37Speaker 1: this has become more clear as technologies allowed us to
- 5:39Speaker 1: look at brain development that you can see in the
- 5:43Speaker 1: very earliest period of infancy, that whole right brain, which
- 5:47Speaker 1: is the social emotional side, it's the affect side, it's
- 5:51Speaker 1: regulation of emotions, identity. It's really massively expanding one million
- 5:57Speaker 1: synapses a second, and so across that first year and
- 6:01Speaker 1: a half, this side of the brain that really impacts
- 6:05Speaker 1: our foundation. Social emotionally is a very sensitive period of
- 6:09Speaker 1: development and it's going to happen healthy when in connection
- 6:14Speaker 1: with another caring human being, So that attachment relationship becomes
- 6:18Speaker 1: really important in that early period, and it's a sensitive,
- 6:21Speaker 1: responsive caregiver parent really that's shaping that development. That's typically mother,
- 6:27Speaker 1: because a child and mother are hardwired for that experience.
- 6:30Speaker 1: And I think just appreciating it tells us a child
- 6:35Speaker 1: needs strong relationship from which to develop. And I think
- 6:40Speaker 1: that provides the answer to the daycare research in the
- 6:43Speaker 1: sense that it's saying when there's a lot of hours
- 6:47Speaker 1: that that child is in an environment away from that caregiving,
- 6:53Speaker 1: then they could be at increased risk because of the
- 6:56Speaker 1: developmental processes that are going on in the brain. And
- 7:00Speaker 1: at the same time, it tells us if those relationships
- 7:03Speaker 1: are strong, like mother father child relationships are strong, then
- 7:08Speaker 1: children are going to be okay. So the data showed
- 7:13Speaker 1: it didn't matter how much time a child was in
- 7:15Speaker 1: daycare in terms of impacting the attachment relationship. You could
- 7:20Speaker 1: have a secure relationship with that parent. It's a very
- 7:22Speaker 1: important relationship no matter how many hours in daycare it appeared.
- 7:27Speaker 1: But apart from that, lots of hours could increase the
- 7:32Speaker 1: risk for some children of experiencing social emotional challenges and
- 7:38Speaker 1: to be aware of it. So I think for us,
- 7:40Speaker 1: you know, Canada experimented with this in Quebec and there
- 7:43Speaker 1: was a lot of news about it.
- 7:45Speaker 2: I'm kind of a study. I was going to actually
- 7:46Speaker 2: ask you about it, so I'm glad you brought it up.
- 7:48Speaker 1: It was painful because the idea was, let's expand women's
- 7:52Speaker 1: access essentially right to employment and increase productivity that way,
- 7:56Speaker 1: and so provide a government funded daycare at a cheap rate.
- 7:59Speaker 1: It's like fifteen a month or something, and so everybody
- 8:03Speaker 1: kind of got massively propelled into daycare and it wasn't
- 8:09Speaker 1: It was really hard to maintain the quality that you
- 8:11Speaker 1: would want in that massive expansion and so quality was compromised.
- 8:16Speaker 1: But even when we consider quality factors, that early extensive
- 8:21Speaker 1: lots of hours was a predictor of challenges, not for
- 8:25Speaker 1: every child, but a chunk of those children even into
- 8:30Speaker 1: crime rates as they were young adults. So for us
- 8:33Speaker 1: in the US, right, that was a caution that a
- 8:38Speaker 1: massive expansion of daycare may cause a huge number of children,
- 8:44Speaker 1: some of whome will be at greater risk for a
- 8:47Speaker 1: large number of hours, and that that could compromise social
- 8:50Speaker 1: emotional health.
- 8:54Speaker 2: Several questions on this, I'll try to stick with one
- 8:59Speaker 2: thing at a time. First off, you've used the word predictor.
- 9:02Speaker 2: You've talked about the relationship between these extended hours from
- 9:05Speaker 2: a very early age in childcare and the potential negative
- 9:08Speaker 2: outcomes in later childhood and adolescents, whether it's social and
- 9:11Speaker 2: emotional things or whether it's risky and sensation seeking behavior.
- 9:15Speaker 2: The idea of something being a predictor, for those who
- 9:17Speaker 2: are not familiar with the psychological sciences, when we talk
- 9:20Speaker 2: about a predictor or an association, you're not saying that
- 9:23Speaker 2: somebody who goes to daycare for extended hours from a
- 9:27Speaker 2: young age is going to become a criminal. That's not
- 9:29Speaker 2: what you're saying. What you're suggesting is that the risk
- 9:33Speaker 2: of less optimal outcomes increases the more that that thing happens.
- 9:38Speaker 2: So you also use the word risk factors. What other
- 9:42Speaker 2: risk factors exist that I guess increase the potential but
- 9:46Speaker 2: things might not go well. And I guess, as an
- 9:50Speaker 2: extension of that question, what are the things that are protective?
- 9:54Speaker 2: If parents are literally saying my hands are tired, I
- 9:56Speaker 2: don't have a choice. I mean, we've got an Australian
- 9:58Speaker 2: government that is very much about growth and getting everybody
- 10:01Speaker 2: into the workforce because that drives the economy. And to
- 10:04Speaker 2: buy a house is just so expensive or even to rent,
- 10:08Speaker 2: so a lot of people feel trapped. They feel like
- 10:09Speaker 2: they have to So I'm sure a lot of people
- 10:11Speaker 2: listening to this and saying, I want my child to
- 10:13Speaker 2: be socially and emotionally strong, I want to reduce the
- 10:15Speaker 2: risk of any risk taking behavior in sensation seeking US behaviors.
- 10:19Speaker 2: What are the risk factors and the protective factors in
- 10:21Speaker 2: those early years?
- 10:23Speaker 1: Yeah, so so helpful. So a few on the child side,
- 10:28Speaker 1: And I think interesting that for the Americans United States data,
- 10:33Speaker 1: what it showed is that daycare centers themselves were particularly
- 10:38Speaker 1: at greater risk. So having a child in a family
- 10:42Speaker 1: kind of care situation, right, the neighborhood care center seemed
- 10:46Speaker 1: to be less consistently a predictor of increased risk than
- 10:50Speaker 1: the daycare center. So it suggests that you can provide
- 10:56Speaker 1: a center, you know, a daycare situation that is more
- 10:59Speaker 1: like a family situation.
- 11:02Speaker 2: Then, So would that be that's a quality of K
- 11:05Speaker 2: issue on a stability of KGIVA issue. Well, I appreciate
- 11:08Speaker 2: that two central variables it.
- 11:10Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly right. So a ratio that's that's right,
- 11:14Speaker 1: more adult to child than you might find in a great,
- 11:17Speaker 1: big center, right, could be helpful. Now, having said that,
- 11:22Speaker 1: there's no questions certain children are more susceptible than others.
- 11:27Speaker 1: And I think parents are remarkable at being attuned to,
- 11:29Speaker 1: you know, for this child, it's really hard for them
- 11:32Speaker 1: to be away for this one. They don't seem to
- 11:35Speaker 1: have the same experience, and so it's clear that children
- 11:39Speaker 1: themselves are different. And then I think the other key
- 11:42Speaker 1: factor is looking at that early period especially, so it's
- 11:46Speaker 1: that early entrance, in that first year of life when
- 11:49Speaker 1: the brain is really at a more sensitive place in
- 11:52Speaker 1: terms of that kind of development that I think being
- 11:54Speaker 1: mindful of that time. So when we ask parents in
- 11:57Speaker 1: the United States, like, what's your ideal work family kind
- 12:01Speaker 1: of situation?
- 12:02Speaker 2: What do you do?
- 12:02Speaker 1: Are you interested in full time daycare outside the home?
- 12:05Speaker 1: Are you interested in part time? Like you know, what
- 12:07Speaker 1: does it look like? And really parents are what they
- 12:10Speaker 1: want to do with young young children is they want
- 12:12Speaker 1: to handle the care themselves to the best that they
- 12:15Speaker 1: can and then have something more akin to family dynamic,
- 12:20Speaker 1: to a family dynamic when they need outside of home care.
- 12:23Speaker 1: Like there's just low interest in center care for children
- 12:28Speaker 1: for long hours.
- 12:29Speaker 2: Americans like Australians on that, we've got to striyan out
- 12:32Speaker 2: of the points in the same direction I have whelmingly
- 12:34Speaker 2: Astrolian parents say yeah, I absolutely want to be with
- 12:37Speaker 2: my kids for as long as I can as someone
- 12:39Speaker 2: as I can do with the economic realities that I'm facing.
- 12:42Speaker 1: Yes. So my thought is, and I think this is
- 12:45Speaker 1: born out in research, is as we increase flexibility around
- 12:49Speaker 1: work place time and really emphasize that, then we facilitate
- 12:54Speaker 1: more of that dynamic. Because what happened during COVID for
- 12:57Speaker 1: us is when you know parents in a certain works
- 12:59Speaker 1: back from came home they were able to experience this
- 13:03Speaker 1: dynamic of kind of shared caregiving and flexibility around all
- 13:06Speaker 1: of that, and they liked it. It was healthier, healthier
- 13:09Speaker 1: for men and healthier for women. So you're trying to
- 13:12Speaker 1: help provide a situation that's high quality for families who
- 13:16Speaker 1: are at work, right to put children in a care
- 13:19Speaker 1: situation for as few hours as you can, right, but
- 13:22Speaker 1: recognizing it's the stuff we do at home that matters.
- 13:25Speaker 1: So I think you're recognizing that, but you're also trying
- 13:27Speaker 1: on the other side to push for greater flexibility that
- 13:30Speaker 1: will allow parents to do what they really want to do,
- 13:33Speaker 1: and that's to manage that care themselves. And that's kind
- 13:37Speaker 1: of an all hands on deck effort right on both
- 13:39Speaker 1: sides of the policy world.
- 13:41Speaker 2: Jenna, I'm listening to what you're saying. I'm thinking this
- 13:43Speaker 2: is the podcast for the time pole parent who just
- 13:45Speaker 2: wants chances. Now, as you've described the challenges that are
- 13:47Speaker 2: associated with having children in care for extended periods from
- 13:50Speaker 2: a long from a young age, you've just highlighted what
- 13:53Speaker 2: we do at home meta so much. You've talked about
- 13:55Speaker 2: the importance of that attachment relationship. Great thing about Australia
- 13:58Speaker 2: and another US doesn't have this, but in Australia we've
- 14:01Speaker 2: got a paid parential leave scheme. My understanding is that
- 14:04Speaker 2: it's based on the weekly national minimum wage trade which
- 14:06Speaker 2: is somewhere around about eight or nine hundred bucks a week,
- 14:09Speaker 2: and the employee you can get paid for up to
- 14:11Speaker 2: eighteen weeks and the money's either given directly to the
- 14:14Speaker 2: employee or it goes via the employer to the employee,
- 14:17Speaker 2: which is wonderfully helpful for parents for the first eighteen weeks.
- 14:20Speaker 2: But as you said, less than six months, in fact,
- 14:22Speaker 2: less than nine months is what we're trying to hang
- 14:25Speaker 2: on to. We want the kids with this. Ben. If
- 14:27Speaker 2: I am a time poor parent who just wants answers now,
- 14:31Speaker 2: and if I've got a young child, a young baby
- 14:34Speaker 2: who I'm feeling well, I'm feeling torn. I can't afford
- 14:37Speaker 2: to live because of inflation and cost of living pressures
- 14:40Speaker 2: unless I go back to work. What are the things
- 14:43Speaker 2: that I can do to help my child to thrive
- 14:47Speaker 2: in spite of the fact that they're going to go
- 14:49Speaker 2: to some sort of care facility.
- 14:51Speaker 1: I think you're looking for in every parent's doing this,
- 14:53Speaker 1: they're trying to find a care situation that is as
- 14:56Speaker 1: good as it can be. And we know that infancy US.
- 15:00Speaker 1: When an infant is put in daycare, they experience an
- 15:03Speaker 1: increase of cortisol over the day.
- 15:06Speaker 2: So that's a stress, that's the whole mind that makes
- 15:08Speaker 2: you go, oh, I'm a little bit right now, a
- 15:10Speaker 2: little bit stressed out.
- 15:11Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. And so I think we see that
- 15:13Speaker 1: there's a biological reality that and just being appreciative of
- 15:16Speaker 1: the fact that that can be a stressor for a
- 15:18Speaker 1: child to be away from this person, right that is,
- 15:21Speaker 1: they're barely able to understand that they are a separate
- 15:24Speaker 1: person from this person that they've attached to. So I
- 15:27Speaker 1: think appreciating that and trying to find the right kind
- 15:29Speaker 1: of care situation. But the other thing that's interesting that
- 15:31Speaker 1: you're highlighting is in the Quebec data, they found that
- 15:35Speaker 1: some of the effect, the negative effect, was carried by
- 15:39Speaker 1: healthy families who then stopped doing the practices they had
- 15:43Speaker 1: done before in terms of reading to children at night time,
- 15:47Speaker 1: with children at night. And I don't know if it
- 15:50Speaker 1: was that they thought, well, that's being taken care of
- 15:52Speaker 1: in the daycare center, so we don't need to do
- 15:54Speaker 1: that kind of thing, but it itself had implications for
- 15:58Speaker 1: the child's I think highlighting that even if that child
- 16:04Speaker 1: is away from you during hours, maintaining those connecting practices
- 16:09Speaker 1: of holding, of reading to of playing, of eating together,
- 16:14Speaker 1: of having consistent rituals of connection, they're very, very powerful,
- 16:19Speaker 1: and they can be hard to maintain, right because it's like, ah, there,
- 16:22Speaker 1: we got so much to do. But it's almost like
- 16:25Speaker 1: just the consistency of bedtime routines of connection, rituals that
- 16:30Speaker 1: even might not take a lot of time, but they're
- 16:32Speaker 1: reliable and consistent. They carry unbelievable weight in my experience.
- 16:37Speaker 2: I love that price rituals of connection.
- 16:39Speaker 1: Rituals of connection I've and they are powerful, and they
- 16:43Speaker 1: don't have to take a lot of time, they don't
- 16:45Speaker 1: have to take a lot of money. And children hunger.
- 16:48Speaker 1: They hunger for an experience of connection with parents, and
- 16:53Speaker 1: so I think protecting those when we can't protect all
- 16:55Speaker 1: the time that we might want, is to just highlight
- 16:59Speaker 1: the value of that time.
- 17:00Speaker 2: Janet Ericsson is a Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies,
- 17:03Speaker 2: a Fellow of the Weekly Institution, and Associate professor in
- 17:07Speaker 2: the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University. She's
- 17:11Speaker 2: done a whole lot of research on nonparental care, on
- 17:13Speaker 2: children's development for policymakers and Janet, just so grateful for
- 17:18Speaker 2: what you've shared with us in this conversation. I think
- 17:20Speaker 2: that what you've offered is reassurance and a way through
- 17:25Speaker 2: when we're sometimes dealing with the things in life that
- 17:28Speaker 2: we wouldn't necessarily choose for ourselves, but they're foisted upon
- 17:31Speaker 2: us because the world is what it is. So thank
- 17:33Speaker 2: you so much for your conversation with us today.
- 17:34Speaker 1: So good to be with you. Thank you. Justin.
- 17:37Speaker 2: The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from
- 17:40Speaker 2: Bridge Media. Craig Bruis is our executive producer. For more
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