The five-year project, Families, Children and Childcare, which began 18 months ago, involves 1,200 families - 600 in London and 600 from Oxford and surrounding rural areas - and is following their children from birth to school. The study is looking at the different kinds and combinations of care that young children experience, from day nurseries and childminders to nannies, grandparents and fathers.
Mothers were asked when their babies were aged three months and again when they were ten months old about what they thought would be the ideal form of childcare, if money was no object. At three months around half of the mothers said they wanted to care for their babies themselves, and did so. When it came to care provided by someone else, only 4 per cent said a childminder was ideal. The most popular choice of carer was the child's grandparents. Fathers came bottom of the mothers' list, preferred as a carer by less than one per cent of mothers.
But when their child was ten months old, those mothers using formal and informal childcare said childminding was both their most used and preferred option. More than half of the mothers using childcare had childminders, and they gave childminding more top ratings than any other type of childcare.
The mothers also said they rated their own relationship with childminders more highly than their relationship with any other type of carer, even the child's grandparents.
These initial findings were revealed by Dr Penelope Leach, president of the National Childminding Association and one of the study's authors, at the Childminding Changes Lives conference held in London yesterday for National Childminding Week (15 to 22 June), part of National Childcare Month.
Dr Leach said, 'Our early enquiries into what families want and need call into question some outdated assumptions, not least about childminding. When mothers have childminders they rate them very highly, so it's regrettable that childminding is rarely their first choice when their babies are very young.'
She called on the Government 'to offer a wider range of childcare options'
and added, 'That includes promoting childminding as quality care.'
