Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward wrote:
I was all excited to get a spot at our neighbourhood daycare centre
for my 22-month old, who has been at home until now, but a naysayer
relative has made me wonder if I'm hurting my daughter more than doing
her good by putting her in daycare at this age, in winter, no less.

Asking whether daycare is harmful is a lot like asking
whether food is harmful. You don't know the answer without
knowing a lot more about the situation. There are obvious
negatives to things like poor quality daycare, too much daycare,
etc. There's not a whole lot of support for the idea that
reasonable amounts of high quality daycare is problematic.
There were two highly publicized studies that showed
some potential behavioral issues, but I think it's also important
to look carefully at those studies and not leap to conclusions
based on a couple of tidbits. Those were relatively complex
situations being looked at, and lots of things going on in
them. It's very simplistic to jump to the conclusion that
"daycare is harmful" based on those two studies. I think
they do give some things to look out for. If I had a shy
child, I'd probably look for care that was closer to 1-1
and a place that was very calm, rather than a big center
with lots of rambunctious kids. I'd look for ways to keep
the number of hours in daycare down. I'd look for high
quality. I'd look to balance my life in such a way as to
maximize quality interaction with my child while we were
together. You're probably already doing all those things.
You also have to keep the magnitude of the results
of those two studies in context (small overall) and the
fact that neither study was designed in such a way as to
prove causality. It's not so hard to imagine, for example,
that the few children who were predisposed for other reasons
to have more behavioral issues were more likely to be in
more hours of daycare to begin with!

Best wishes,
Ericka