How Nurseries ‘Still Breed Aggression’

Children who spend a lot of time in nursery are more likely to be aggressive and disobedient throughout primary school – no matter how excellent the nursery, according to study published today.

Primary school teachers are more likely to say that such children – even at the age of 11 – are still “getting into fights” or “arguing a lot”.

The findings, from a continuing study of nearly 1,400 children, reignite the debate about whether working women damage their children’s health by putting them into nurseries too young. They also provide ammunition to those who accuse the Government of pressurising mothers back to work too early to reduce the benefits bill.

However, the findings are controversial. Other experts say that so many factors account for behaviour – genes, parental income and education, family life – that it is wrong to blame nurseries and alarm parents. Even the study’s authors have fallen out about the way the findings are being presented.

One of them, who wished to remain anonymous, accused lead author Jay Belsky, the director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues at Birkbeck College, University of London, of “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre by exaggerating the negative.

The study also found, for example, that children in high-quality care were more articulate at the age of 10, with a bigger vocabulary.

The research, published in the Easter edition of the journal Child Development, and carried out by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in America, began studying 1,364 children at one month of age.

The most comprehensive study of child care to date, it measured the amount, type and quality of care that the children experienced from birth through to the age of four and a half, and their emotional and linguistic development to 11. Prof Belsky said the findings were important because it had been assumed that poor-quality nurseries were bad for children, not high-quality ones.

“Good quality care simply does not protect against these developmental consequences (like aggression), I am truly sorry to say, at least not in the USA,” the psychology professor said.

Parents frequently pay £12,000 to £16,000 a year in places such as London and the Home Counties to send children to a local nursery.

For example, Little Unicorn Day Nursery in Canary Wharf, east London, costs £16,200 a year for a child under two, and £13,500 for an older child attending full-time. This compares with the annual fees charged by public schools such as Dulwich College (£11,895) and St Paul’s (£14,000).

Unlike schools, however, nurseries operate 51 weeks a year and are often open between 7.30am and 7pm.

But other authors involved in the research stressed that parenting quality was a “much more important predictor of child development than type, quantity, or quality, of child care”.

Walter Gilliam, the assistant professor of child psychiatry and psychology at Yale University, who was not involved in the project, said the study had limitations.

“The relationship between the amount of (nursery) care a child receives and behavioural problems may not be due solely to the child care, but to parents working longer and later hours, the stress and home difficulties that may go along with those work conditions, and other factors related to families that need to work difficult hours,” he said.

Prof Belsky acknowledged that it was a “developmental mystery” why children exposed to nursery were more aggressive – although lack of trained staff, and lack of time to tackle rows over toys or activities were factors.

Prof Belsky caused controversy in the US in 2001, with researchers questioning whether their controversial work on another study had been misrepresented. Their findings showed that the more time children spent in child care, the more likely their teachers were to report behaviour problems such as aggression in kindergarten.

The professor retorted that they were “running from this data like a nuclear bomb went off” because they were committed to putting an approving stamp on child care.