Just saw this …

“If you thought that the quality of the child care your toddler got wouldn’t matter when he or she was a teenager, think again.”

A new longitudinal study of more than 1,300 children finds the quality of child care does matter, even having an impact on them when they are teens.

Poor quality child care, and your kid is more likely to end up as a hoodlum, one of those teenagers who do drugs, petty crime and the rest …

The study by Society for Research in Child Development makes me wonder again why the United States does not have federal mandated requirements for child care accreditation for all child care centers, no matter where they are.

Am I wrong to think the U.S system is a patchwork of state rules and regulations, which vary depending on where you live?

When I worked in Australia as press secretary the Federal Minister for Family Services, Senator Rosemary Crowley, one of the most vicious fights we had was to introduce national accreditation, which tied government funding to a center’s accreditation. We wanted, and did, make accreditation compulsory and not voluntary, the way it is in here in the United States.

The centers hated us, and our fax machines (yep, it was the mid 1990s: The days when the fax ran hot!) spewed protests for weeks … The fight was vicious.

Back to the most recent research: The study was the first to document the “long-term effects of routine, nonrelative care in a large sample of children from economically diverse families.”  It was carried out under the auspices of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
The researchers sought to determine if early child care quality, quantity, and type predict children’s achievement and behavior problems at age 15.

They looked at children born in 10 cities across the United States from the children’s birth in 1991 until they turned 15, measuring
quality, hours, and type of care during the early years; collecting results of standardized tests of achievement; and obtaining reports from teens, their families, and their schools. The children were from diverse backgrounds, including middle-class as well as low-income homes and two parent
as well as single-parent families.

The findings:  “The effects of early child care at age 15, while small, are comparable in size to those previously observed in early childhood and  elementary school. Specifically, teens who attended programs with higher-quality care during early childhood scored higher on tests of cognitive and academic achievement than teens who attended programs with lower-quality care.”
“Furthermore, teens who spent more hours in early child care during the first four-and-a-half years of their lives reported more risk-taking and greater impulsivity than teens who spent fewer hours in care.”

Bad childcare, bad teen?

The researchers also found that teens who participated in higher-quality child care programs had fewer behavior problems—including rule-breaking, arguing, and hanging out with peers who get in trouble—than teens who had attended poor-quality child care.

“This evidence of long-term effects of early child care quality is noteworthy because it occurred in a large economically and geographically diverse group of children who took part in routine nonrelative child care in their communities,” notes Deborah Lowe Vandell, professor and
chair of education at the University of California, Irvine, who is the lead author of the report.

“These findings suggest that the quality of early child care experiences can have longlasting, albeit small, effects on middle-class and affluent children, as well as those who are economically disadvantaged.”

My view:  Once again we have research confirming that there needs to be more action to ensure affordable and quality child care across the United States.

We know early childhood education makes a big difference on results, even earning power according to another new study.

And for many women, good quality child care is unaffordable.

We  need more choice, we need more subsidies, and in my  mind, we need to ensure that women in the U.S. have equal access to quality child care.

National Accreditation for all child care centers … mandatory, compulsory … or no license!  and not voluntary.

There! I’ve said it. Just grateful that my fax machine no longer works.

Comments below … and be nice.

You can read more about the study here

Background on current rules and regulations on child care.