Day Care and Child Development - Term Paper Example

Day Care s Employers are demanding long hours and thus this has become difficult for parents to spend time with their child. When both the parents are working it becomes affordable for the parents as well. There are a number of day cares that offer a myriad of varieties of packages that offer per hour service to day long services, some even offer night services for which they charge premium prices. If a parent stays at home with the child, a child is bound to be far healthier and more confident, plus the child and parent relationship grows to be stronger and more deeply bonded. The child develops self-confidence and has a greater sense of security. He knows he has someone who would be there in time of his need. A child is far healthier when he is brought up in home rather than day care. Despite so many negatives the best advantage that day care provides a child with is the ability to socialize better and accept diversity. Placing your children in day care gives both the parents a free reign to earn money and hence they can do over times and work longer hours without any hassle. DAY CARE Day care centers are a new breed of facilities that are now available to single parents. They provide child care facility to single parents or parents who work and need someone to care for their child. Since the economic crisis, there has been a dramatic increase in the working parents and thus the requirements for day care centers are on the rise. According to the recent statistics there are around 70 % children who are under the care of Daycares. This has all been due to the increase in the working mothers. Earlier there were many families which had the father and mother both juggling their work hours with the time they spend with the taking care of the child. It was an easy job, but the current economic crisis has made employers more demanding as they are aware that there are many more talented and hardworking candidates who are willing to replace any time. Although many people look for low cost care for their children so as to save unnecessary expenses, but this is declining as such help is not much readily available with the rise of cost of living standards. Also, the need for economical day care centers is high on demand as the number of parents requiring the need for day care is increasing (NICHD, 2005). Earlier the day cares were more of a babysitting service that was available to parents, but since the increase in the working hours of parents which proportionally increases the time the child spends at day care, day cares have become grounds where the early development of child takes place and hence they have gained a lot of importance psychologically in the life of a child. The day cares now play a very important and prominent part in the child development. A modern daycare today teaches the child about things and skills that he will require as he grows up. In short, they equip the child to face the world as he steps out to walk to his first school. The main reason because of which the day cares have evolved such is that parents today have started demanding quality care and skill development in their child. The care requirement and need for skill development varies with the age of the child. A child with age two or younger needs special attention with respect to his/her health requirement, the food he will consume and the extent to which he needs exposure to the environment in general. Compared to this an older child needs necessary tools to develop his cognitive, spatial and verbal skills. He will need to learn to communicate with different people and will also learn as to how to socialize (Martin & Fabes & Fabes, 2006). Since the demand for the day care is so high that there are many day care centers that re running today are unregulated ones and hence they hire anybody and everybody who applies to the vacancies. Many a times it has been observed that the nannies that work in such day cares have a past criminal record and thus it becomes a reason for parents to be very careful when placing kids in the child care (Seigel, 2001). Government Support The government provides care to children whose parents are working or are on some sort of training; they get a scholarship or fund kind of thing to support them. This is for the parents to support the care of the child. The parents have to apply for the assistance. The money is only given if the parents enlist the care of a regulated child care. The money that is covered by the government is highly dependent upon the income of the family. If the income of the family is vey less than the funds provided by the government for child’s day care facility will be higher in percentage as compared to a family that has higher income. The amount of the fund also depends on whether the child belongs to a single parent family or both the parents live together. Once the family enlists the help from the government in lieu of childcare they have to give the name of the regulated childcare. The child care is monitored by the government agency so that there is no illegal kind of activity being carried out in the day care and all the employees are legal citizen of the country. In case of being a single parent it is easier to get the funds from the government to help raise the child. These funds help out with the costs so that the single parents can bring up their child without the help of a second income. The grants are easily available to single parents so that each and every child can get his due share of education and right upbringing. But to gain the grant the parents should submit the papers that they are divorced and they have no help, and another condition is that the other partner has abandoned the child for a year and pays nothing to support the child. Another condition is that a partner is imprisoned and will be in jail for a long time. Government helps by providing day care facility, food stamps and housing and financing assistance (Seigel, 2001). Psychological effects It has been found that the children who have had to spend their early childhood in daycares are very different from the ones who get to spend their early childhood with their parents. It is a natural factor that during the early years of life the child forms a bond with the caregiver. The child who is brought up at a daycare then the child has no specific bonding with anyone. The child grows up to be a solitary one and avoids social company as a habit. The child is a very insecure kind of person and he will never be able to grow a bond with his peers and friends. Kids who have had majority of their early years in day care end up having behavioral problems. Such a person continues to suffer as a person in his social and personal life as well. Such a child is a very insecure person and will never be able to grow It is generally seen that a child who is brought up at a day care is a very intelligent child. He absorbs many things that goes around him and picks up things and words that he would never be exposed to such things. The intelligence that he gains in his early productive years of his life will have positive effects in his life later on. A child spending his early years in the day care will have a lot of exposure to all kinds of people and the higher level of vocabulary; such kids pick up better words and hence have far more better verbal skills than their counterparts (Martin & Fabes & Fabes, 2006). At the age in which the children are placed at day care the kids learn a lot of things about people and have a good understanding in how to deal with a variety of people. They are socially more conscious and accept diversity more easily, but once they grow they become socially adverse people and do not like mingling with people. People find that children who have spent quite a lot of time in day care have a lot of behavioral issues as they grow up. They have poor work habits and are slackers usually. They are very dependent kids and do not like to take decisions individually and prefer working in the shadow of someone. It is also usually seen as a trend in kids going to day care that they have poor health conditions as there are many kids to take care of and thus there is no individual care sort of facility available to those kids. While a child who is being brought up by a parent has a lot of care and healthy affection that a child in day care misses. There are a lot safety concerns too, the understaffed day care centers cannot always hover around your kid and thus he may have cuts and bruises and you will have to keep mum about it as well. The major issue is that a child may have a very poor parent –child relationship, as a child never got to interact with the parent well, and has never accepted him/her as an authority figure so there are many disobedience issues as well. A child always feels that the parents or the parent neglected him and didn’t have time for him. This sense of being not wanted makes a rebel out of the child. A young child at day care is exposed to a greater amount of stress than a child of his own age. The stress makes the child suffer psychological illness or pressures (NICHD, 2005). The child has increased ability to interact with strangers thus; he has lesser stranger anxiety as compared to children in similar age group who are not placed in day cares. Children have a more routine habit and therefore, parents do not need to put n extra effort to develop this in their kids. In day cares everything is planned and done in a more meticulous and orderly manner and thus makes a child more habitual to routine. REFERENCES NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2005). Child care and child development: Results from the NICHD study of early child care and youth development. New York: Guilford Press. Siegel, C. (2001). Whats wrong with day care: Freeing parents to raise their own children. New York: Teachers College Press. Martin, C. L., Fabes, R. A., & Fabes, R. A. (2006). Discovering child development. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. Read More