Can child care programs ameliorate mental health problems in very young children?

Despite negative results, researchers double- and triple-down on the liberal concept of human Fragilism

CATEGORY: CONTROL OF LANGUAGE AND IDEAS

Michelle Bosquet Enlow, PhD, Harvard Medical School

Source: Development and Psychopathology
Read time: 2.3 minutes
 
This Happened
In December 2024, a study was published that aimed to show how out-of-home child care could lessen mental health problems of very young children. It didn’t work.
 
Who Did This?
The first author was psychologist Michelle Bosquet Enlow, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. She specializes in infant mental health with a focus on trying to prove that there is an intergenerational impact of parenting on children’s mental health and neurobiology. She has first- or co-authored over thirty publications on this topic.
 
The Claim
As interest in trauma has grown, advocates for early child care have sought to hitch their cart to the trauma wagon by claiming that child care can improve psychological problems. Based on their belief that prior studies had shown cognitive and academic improvements from early child care (which was a cherry-picked misinterpretation), the researchers’ hypothesis for this study was that the more time children spent in early child care, the better would be their general mental health.
They claimed that their hypothesis was likely to be true because child care:

• Can provide stimulating play and quality social interactions
• Can teach strategies to cope with adversity and build self-regulation
• Offers a supportive environment which is lacking at home
• Has emotionally responsive educators

 
They analyzed data from 2,204 children in the 3- to 5-year age range who had been in child care for an average of 26 hours per week. They were forty-nine percent Black and thirty-seven percent White.
 
The results found no effect for their hypothesis. The amount of time spent in child care had zero impact on both internalizing and externalizing problems. Results were the same for private care or center-based care.
 
Analysis
The study likely failed because it was based on the premise that psychiatric problems are environmentally caused. Since it is far more likely that psychiatric problems are largely genetically-based, there was no good reason to think nurture could reverse them.

​In the discussion section of their paper, Enlow and colleagues, however, never considered the possibility for a biological basis of behavior. In fact, they doubled-down on their nurture theory by speculating that the risks these children face are “chronic or fixed” beyond age 3 years, and they need extra support during their entire childhoods.
 
Then they triple-downed by concluding the paper with an inexplicable call for future research because “Evidence that childcare can protect or optimize child mental health would support federal and state policies to expand availability of quality childcare.”
 
This study is the extension of the liberal argument that institutions such as child care, as opposed to home care by poor and often single mothers, can better provide for the emotional care of children.

​The researcher’s bizarre hypothesis only makes sense if one believes that humans are highly fragile, that imperfect parenting behaviors and living in poverty cause psychiatric problems, and that part-time care by non-related adults has super nurturing capacities.

None of those beliefs, however, are well-supported by evidence.
 Even if the liberal belief in fragile human nature was true, the better solution would seem to be to strengthen and promote stable two-parent families instead of endlessly subsidizing single-mother households and substitute care.
​
Why Did This Happen?
For over half a century, liberals have fought for government-funded child care as part of the Great Society that was supposed to lift America’s poor out of poverty. 

Head Start was launched in 1965—with no evidence it could work—for three- and four-year-olds. It originally focused on school readiness and raising IQ, but, after dismal results, shifted to social competence goals. Early Head Start was launched in 1995 to extend this model to ages zero to three. Multiple reviews have shown the lack of effectiveness of these programs, while proponents are able only to point to weak effects inconsistently across studies [1].
It’s clear, at least from this study, that the child care advocates continue to oversell their product.

References
[1] Bailey DB, Bruer JT, Symons FJ, Lichtman JW (editors) (2001). Critical Thinking About Critical Periods. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.: Baltimore.