Critically consider the effects of day care on cognitive and/or social development

The underlying assumption of Bowlby's Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis is that continual disruption of the attachment between infant and primary caregiver could result in long-term cognitive, social, and emotional difficulties for that infant. If this hypothesis is correct it implies that sending a child to day care will have negative effects on social and cognitive development – so is this hypothesis correct?

Vandell & Corasaniti (1990) studied 236 predominantly middle-class 8-year-olds of which 84% were white, 8% Black and 3% Asian American. The sample also consisted of 72% two-parent families and 28% of single-parent mothers. Procedure: a number of techniques were used to assess the children's cognitive development, for example: retrospective parental recollections; teacher ratings, academic grades and standardised tests. Findings showed that children with more extensive day care experiences since infancy were rated as having poorer academic and conduct report card grades and lower standardized test scores. The researchers therefore concluded that day care has a negative effect on cognitive development.

While this study is relatively recent and therefore less likely to suffer from a historical bias it does however use a biased sample in that it only used predominantly middle-class and therefore it lacks external validity because it is not a representative sample meaning that findings cannot be generalised to all children in day care. Furthermore it should be noted that this research used a natural-experimental method and such a method can never establish that it is simply attending day care that caused the negative effect on cognitive development but could well be the quality of day care as the following study reveals.

Whitebook, Howes, & Phillips (1989) (National Child Care Staffing Study) carried out a study involving 227 day care centres for High, middle, and low Socio-economic status families. In...