By Uttama
Seventy percent of the people I asked said no. This was something they did not want to talk about—no interview, no questions, no intrusion. Just plain, ‘No.’
It may come as a surprise that we’re simply talking about childcare—putting children in a daycare service, or hiring domestic help. But the ‘controversial’ aspect comes in when we look at how childcare affects a child’s development; and what role it plays in interfering with the parent-child bond.
The results are not what you (or rather, what I) expected.
“I can spend quality time with the children, and the maid can’t do that,” says Rita, mother of an 8-year-old daughter and a year-old son. Rita says she spends maybe an hour or two per day alone with her children, without the maid (who works 8 to 10 hours) and other domestic help and/or family and friends.
Now an hour or two may seem very little, but studies show quality is far more important than quantity. Findings revealed that although working mothers spent less time with their children, they compensated for this time by spending more social quality time with them otherwise.¹ The quality of time spent together with children did not differ at all between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers.
“Having a nanny is wonderful for me as well as my child,” says Samitha, stay-at-home mother of a 7-month-old. “It allows me to spend time resting from the 3-hour wakeups that breastfeeding requires; it has given me the opportunity to get back in shape (as I attend yoga lessons) and it has given me time to spend with my husband one-on-one.”
This focus on the parents’ personal wellbeing in addition to the child’s is a new phenomenon to the older generation of South Asians. “I don’t understand this me-time bakwas (nonsense),” Renu says, mother of two adult daughters. “When you are a mother, there is no ‘me’”.
But there comes a time, and dare I say the time is now, that we need to start recognizing a new sociological reality. Working mothers are becoming the norm; and the question no longer remains whether or not they should continue to work, but that they do–so what can we now do to make our childcare choices as beneficial as possible to children’s development?
This is where it becomes tricky.
Although studies across the board show that high-quality institutional daycare does not adversely affect children’s cognitive and emotional development², the research on home-based care is slim. And what does exist is scary.
A study in the American Sociological Review, the first expansive research into the safety of child care, found that the rate of death among children receiving care in private homes was 16 times more than that of children in daycare centers.³ The most common deaths resulted from infants being shaken too much by the caregiver, who was stressed by the constant crying of the baby.
There are risks in every type of childcare (childcare centers had the highest rate of near-miss accidents), and it’s a matter of what parents are comfortable with.
But there were some horror stories I found difficult to brush aside.
“Sometimes they (nannies) are in need of money so they give information about the family to strangers,” Binita from Mumbai tells me, the mother of two grown children. “Also they draw blood from the kids and sell it.”
These are extremes, but they are still truths. Binita, however, is not at all surprised by them.
“If you don’t take care of what is yours, you can’t expect others to do your job. Nannies feed the kids and clean them and take them to the park, but looking after the kids in this way builds a strong bond that cannot be created any other way. There is a lot of competition amongst parents to look great and to show society that their kids are the best. There is more concentration on the child’s dressing and behavior compared to their inner self and human values.”
As we continue to change our parenting patterns and choices, let’s not lose sight of the critical role we play in our children’s lives. The effects of parenting greatly outweigh the effects of childcare—so what is happening at home, in the time we do spend with our children, is crucial.
Perhaps we don’t have to take the nanny with us everywhere, and for one evening, we can assume responsibility for the tantrums as well as the treats. Sometimes it’s OK to get down and do the dirty work—give a bath, change the diaper, calm the storm.
We also can’t ignore the gaps in literature, nor the knowledge that comes from simple experience and observation. Most research is based on daycares; the developmental effects of nannies caring for children are understudied. Also, we know very little about what happens in the long-term. What do teenagers and young adults, who have developed the cognitive ability to ‘think’ about their parents’ rearing style, feel about having been raised by an outsider? Why have fathers been sidelined in the studies? There is just as significant a shift in paternal patterns as more fathers stay at home, and working fathers get more involved in childrearing. It’s important to remember there are edges around the stories that are untold.
In so many ways, parenting patterns are changing for the better. Let’s make our childcare choices reflect the same.
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Notes:
¹Booth, Cathryn L., K. Alison Clarke-Stewart, Deborah Lowe Vandell, Kathleen McCartney, and Margaret Tresch Owen. “Child-Care Usage and Mother-Infant ‘Quality Time.’” Journal of Marriage and Family 64:16-26. 2002.
²Gerrig, Richard J. and Philip G. Zimbardo. Psychology And Life. Pearson Education. 2002.; Peisner-Feinberg, Ellen S., Margaret R. Burchinal, Richard M. Clifford, Mary L. Culkin, Carollee Howes, Sharon Lynn Kagan, and Noreen Yazejian. “The Relation of Preschool Child-Care Quality to Children’s Cognitive and Social Developmental Trajectories through Second Grade.” Child Development 72:1534-1553. 2001.
³Dreby, Joanna and Julia Wrigley. “Fatalities and the Organization of Childcare in the United States, 1985-2003.” American Sociological Review, 70. 5:729-757. 2005.
