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September 19, 2005
Nanny Stress.
A report out:
Toddlers starting at
nursery after being at home since birth experience high levels of
stress in the first weeks after separating from their mothers, and are
still showing "chronic mild stress" as long as five months after their
first day in the new environment, according to a study measuring
hormone levels in young children.
Levels of the stress hormone cortisol doubled even in secure youngsters during the first nine days of childcare without their mothers present, compared with their normal level at home. The levels fell but were still significantly higher than for the same infants at home five months later, even though the children (aged between 11 and 20 months when they started nursery) by then appeared to have settled and no longer showed outward signs of distress.
In a further insight into the way young children react to daycare - an increasingly common experience for UK toddlers as more and more mothers return to the workplace - a related study also reveals that children at nursery do not see a drop in cortisol levels over the day as they would at home. Instead, they remain "unusually aroused or stressed", and, a research paper to be published next spring and drawing on the cortisol studies concludes, they need extra time and attention at the end of the day to help bring them back to "emotional equilibrium" ready for the next day at nursery. Without that comfort from a parent, says the paper, the children start the following day "hyper-aroused", which can lead to behaviour problems or disobedience.
Isn’t this what Polly Toynbee wants to be made mandatory? The raising of all children in State Podding Hutches?
Who’s she working for, the Ritalin manufacturers?
September 19, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
No Tim, not "Nanny Stress", group daycare stress.
Care by a nanny (a good one anyway) is about individual care similar to that provided by a parent. This report refers to group daycare where children do not get the same individual care.
Toynbee has always been pretty rude about nannies, not because of the quality of care they provide, but simply because they're a private sector solution that can't be provided by state institutions.
Posted by: HJHJ | Sep 19, 2005 9:22:18 AM
Pretty soon those toddlers will become addicted to the stress and will all end up as city traders.
Posted by: rub-a-dub | Sep 19, 2005 10:32:08 AM
Is there any aspect of decisions that women have to make about their children that doesn't have someone shaking their head in horror? Apparently we're either feckless teenagers using babies as accessories and to get flats and benefits, or we're old women who should have put procreation above education, building a career and becoming financially secure in case we 'forget' our fertility declines and assume IVF will always succeed.
Personally I don't like group care for children under three, but it has to be about what choices are available to working mothers. I've met a lot of damaged kids who have had 1:1 care from inadequate mothers, so I don't necessarily think that's a solution.
Posted by: mrs mcmuffin | Sep 19, 2005 7:40:42 PM
Come along Mrs McMuffin: "but it has to be about what choices are available to working mothers. "
Quite so: it's just that working mothers need to know what the impact of their choices will be.
As for your damaged kids from inadequate mothers: you can't argue that the average is wrong by appealing to outliers.
Posted by: The Pedant-General | Sep 19, 2005 10:38:00 PM
Dear Pedant General, there's a real lack of concern for fathers in all this, isn't there? It's almost as if they don't exist or don't have a choice in the matter. Perhaps we should stop focusing on the evil mothers out there and look at the evil fathers who fail to earn massive amounts of money to keep their partners barefoot and in Laura Ashley and their babies brastfeeding exclusively until they're of school age, or who refuse to stay at home and look after the kids. Bad men, blaming their inadequacies all on women!
Posted by: mrs mcmuffin | Sep 20, 2005 8:28:16 AM