In its latest findings, federally funded, Early Child Care Research Network, says that at age 15, those who spent long hours in day care as preschoolers are more impulsive and more prone to take risks than are teens whose toddler years were spent largely at home.
The study is going to be published on Friday in the journal Child Development. This finding in the study has not been well received by working parents.
According to the findings of the study, teens rated themselves 16% more rash in their behavior for every additional 10 hours they spent per week in day care as a preschooler.
The relation between risk-taking behavior and time spent in day care was less pronounced. Ten more hours a week in day care prompted the average teen to answer one out of 30 questions with an admission of more risky behavior.
The study’s authors, defending it from a barrage of criticism by working parents, said that their findings were significant though a little surprising.
The behavioral difference appeared across the income and class spectrum and was evident at 15 years of age.
Some 2.3 million children under age 5 go to day-care centers — about a quarter of preschoolers whose mothers are employed, according to the U.S. Census. About 17% are in the care of a nonrelative in family day-care settings and other, less formal arrangements.
That, says psychologist Jay Belsky, an author of the latest study, is what makes the changing behavioral pattern far reaching.
"You end up with contagion effects," said Belsky, a professor of psychology at Birkbeck University of London.
