It was something of a surprise - a shock even - when the Daily Mail this week ran a headline saying 'Babies "are better off in nursery than being looked after by grandparents"'. You might expect this newspaper to just about admit that babies are better off in nurseries than being sent down the mines, but in general, group daycare gets a very hard time from the Mail.
The study referred to was carried out by researchers at the Institute of Education in London, and looked at nearly 5,000 children whose mothers worked when they were nine-month-old babies (see News, page 4). The findings should be encouraging for nurseries striving to offer a high-quality service to working parents.
At three years old, children who had been looked after in formal daycare had better cognitive development and fewer behavioural problems than those cared for by grandparents. The effects were greatest for those from less well-off backgrounds. Grandparent care could lead to better language development, but only for those from more advantaged groups.
The study's findings could be useful for the Government to back up its policy of extending free nursery care to two-year-olds as part of measures to eradicate the gap in outcomes caused by disadvantage.
The temptation to look at studies such as this as some sort of competition should be resisted, however. Parents have different needs and make different choices, and all types of childcare need support to be as good as they can be. Large numbers of working families rely on grandparents for their childcare, and this is unlikely to change. But a laissez-faire approach to informal care does not look to be the way ahead.
