
Is daycare bad for affluent children? - Gimpei
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/704075
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benji_is_me
[https://sci-hub.tw/10.1086/704075](https://sci-hub.tw/10.1086/704075)

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scarface74
I get redirected to localhost.

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jdc
Try another host: [https://whereisscihub.now.sh](https://whereisscihub.now.sh)

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throwaway857384
As a parent, sending my child to daycare is a necessary evil.

I've not liked it, but from a financial perspective, we have little choice.

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jmpman
Was this including Waldorf schools? My friend’s daughter goes there, and she
couldn’t read until she was in 4th grade. Seems like that would seriously
impact standardized testing scores.

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dpark
I spent some time reading through this (managed to access via Sci-Hub) but I
lack the statistical background to fully understand their Regression
Discontinuity Design. Some things I find interesting:

1\. The study seems fairly large, with 444 children included in the IQ
comparison.

2\. Taking the claim of 0.5% in IQ per month in daycare at face value, and the
included age range of 4 months to 36 months, you have an expected drop of 16%.
They include daycare from ages 4 months to 36 months, yielding an expected
drop of 16% for a child who spends the full time in daycare. That's more than
a full standard deviation in IQ and equivalent to the drop expected for >250
micrograms/dL of lead in the bloodstream (for reference, lead poisoning is
defined as 50 micrograms/dL).

3\. For an effect this strong, I'd expect you could simply scatter plot
"months in daycare" as one axis and "IQ" as the other and see the effect. I
don't see such a chart.

4\. The ".5%" per month claim seems to be derived from a single drop
associated with acceptance into the child's preferred daycare program. There
is a 3% drop and also a ~6mo increase in typical attendance as a result. They
seem to have turned this into a claim of .5% per month without evidence of a
continuous month-by-month effect. I am perhaps misunderstanding.

5\. There also seems to be little to support the notion that less affluent
parents will provide lower-quality home care, which is the entire hypothesis
behind the measured effect. Frankly from 0-2 you aren't teaching kids physics.
I'm not sure less affluent parents are really that much worse at being stay-
at-home caregivers. You take care of the kid, feed them, stack some blocks and
maybe read some books.

This whole thing seems really iffy to me. The supposed change is massive.

[1]
[https://tbiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4682...](https://tbiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4682-10-13)

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burfog
It looks like Betteridge's law of headlines is beaten for once. Daycare is bad
for affluent children.

The effect was huge. It was a drop of 0.5% of IQ _per month._ Not accounting
for compounding, that is a drop of 10% in 20 months. Dropping from 130 to 117
is pretty serious. That is nearly a standard deviation.

In some vague sense, the cause seems obvious:

a. shared time with a stranger who at best has an education degree

b. dedicated time with a family member who may be a lawyer, doctor, business
owner, engineer, etc.

The study claims to have eliminated disease and breastfeeding as possible
causes for the difference.

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dpark
A drop of .5% per month is so huge that it’s not believable. Normal kids
entering daycare could be exiting borderline mentally retarded. This doesn’t
pass the sniff test. It seems likely that this sort of massive decline would
be noticed already.

Unfortunately I can’t access the paper so I have no idea what it actually says
beyond this claim.

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burfog
Only the affluent kids get worse. Below-normal kids are improved, and normal
kids are not affected. It seems daycare pulls kids toward the middle, wiping
out the advantage or disadvantage of the family situation.

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dpark
I could believe that daycare pulls everyone toward the mean (that's what
school does in general, frankly), but I struggle with accepting the supposed
magnitude. They include daycare from ages 4 months to 36 months, yielding an
expected drop of 16% for a child who spends the full time in daycare. That's
more than a full standard deviation and equivalent to the drop expected for
>250 micrograms/dL of lead in the bloodstream (for reference, lead poisoning
is50 micrograms/dL). [1]

This drop is absolutely massive.

[1]
[https://tbiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4682...](https://tbiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4682-10-13)

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burfog
These are babies and toddlers with rapidly growing brains. Much larger drops
are observed in slightly worse daycare/orphanage/foster situations, so a drop
of 16% isn't surprising to me. In the bad situations, brain structure is
significantly changed.

[https://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-
kids-...](https://www.livescience.com/21778-early-neglect-alters-kids-
brains.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans)

There is simply no substitute for a good mother. Being affluent tends to mean
being industrious, conscientious, intelligent, and educated. It isn't popular
for such women to stay home and raise lots of kids, but it makes a huge
difference in the kids' lives and for the society that those kids will someday
grow up to run.

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raducu
Oh wow, I was just debating sending my 16 months daughter to daycare because I
feel she doesn't interract with children, it seems I need to do some more
research.

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feistypharit
Consider part time daycare. We only sent both our kids no more than 3 days a
week before they started kindergarten. They went M, W, F and that way they
could get proper naps and such the other days. Still get social exposure and
pre for kindergarten.

Kids still young, 5 and 7, but happy we've done it that way so far.

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notduncansmith
The real question is the effect of paywalled science on the non-affluent.

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perrygrande
yeah, i also don't like to send my child to the daycare

