In a controversial book, which will disturb the hundreds of thousands of parents who use both state and private nurseries, psychologist and best-selling author Steve Biddulph argues that nurseries aren't just bad for infants under three years old, they damage them for life.
For his book Raising Babies, he conducted a review of the evidence of the effect of nurseries on youngsters and combined it with his own research. Biddulph, a father-of-two, has concluded that children who go to nurseries before they are three have "inferior quality childhoods" that increase the risk of them suffering mental health problems, including depression and aggression, later in life.
One in five children put into nursery too early will go on to develop such issues, he says. As adults, they may turn to drink or drugs to cope. And the problem, he argues, will only get worse as increasing numbers of parents put their offspring into nurseries. With 100,000 under-threes at full-time nurseries in Britain, the numbers have quadrupled in just ten years and look set to continue growing as the government provides more spaces through its policies.
Mr Biddulph's strong views are all the more surprising because he was an ardent supporter of nurseries and helped set them up. The reason for his change of heart lies in the rising number of very young children being left in such institutions for as long as 60 hours a week. Biddulph believes that if parents really must get care for their babies they would be better using registered childminders. If they can afford it, a nanny is best because they can give a child one-to-one attention.
However, he argues that no youngster should be cared for by anyone except the parents or close family members for the first year of life. Before the age of two the most they should spend with a carer, ideally on a one-to-one basis, is one day a week. The earliest a girl should attend nursery is two-and-a-half and then only for two days, or no more than six hours, a week. Because they develop more slowly boys should not go until they are three. In short he says parents should be making financial sacrifices so one of them can stay at home for the first couple of years to bring up the baby.
Inevitably his views will cause anger among thousands of mothers whose families simply could not afford to live without two salaries. However, Biddulph is not trying to demonise working mothers; rather he is critical of the system of nurseries, which cannot give children the level of care they need.
Twenty years ago, nurseries catered only for children over three, and even then just for a few hours a day to help prepare them for school. Today in the UK around 5% of under-threes are cared for full-time in nurseries. Of these, 30,000 are not even 12 months old.
Once those who set up nurseries were idealists who loved children and wanted to help out working parents by providing the best care. Now large corporations have taken over, and Biddulph says that profit, rather than love, is their primary concern.
Staff are employed on low wages so turnover is huge and experience and morale are low. It is these changes that have convinced Mr Biddulph that nurseries stop youngsters from developing normally and prevent them learning to love, care and form strong bonds with others.
At best he says, nurseries "struggle to meet the needs of very young children"; at worst they are "negligent, frightening and bleak: a nightmare of bewildered loneliness that was heartbreaking to watch."
The research Biddulph uses includes studies by the National Institute of Child Health and Development in the US, the Government-sponsored Effective Provision of Pre-School Education study in the UK and the childcare expert Penelope Leach.
(Daily Mail, 15 March 2006)