The issue of childcare is now firmly under the spotlight again, after RTE’s Prime Time expose of mistreatment at a number of creches in Dublin and Wicklow.

Much of the commentary has focused on weak inspection levels by the HSE, a lack of training among childcare staff and breaches of regulation.

But in a searching article for the Irish Examiner, author Victoria White argues that instead of looking to better crèches as the solution, we should be looking to home instead.  

She says there is an intrinsic problem with crèches, namely “the lack of a strong emotional bond between individual carers and individual children in corporate creches [which] creates an environment favourable to child welfare abuses”.

White, who has written about childcare many times, says that evidence from a number of countries shows that a lack of a one-to-one relationship between carer and child militates against optimal child development.  

She writes: “Very small children’s brains develop primarily through interaction with one very special person. Regulation child to staff ratios in creches are insane — one adult for three babies under one year, one adult for five toddlers under two and a half and one adult for a whopping 10 older kids.  

Creches, she says sell corporate professionalism, which parents think means “training, safety, oversight”  

“But were you not looking for the wrong things in the first place? All your baby needs is love,” she says.

“This is where the idiocy of a name like “Little Harvard” comes in. Babies and very young children don’t need education, they need loving care. However, unlike love, education can be measured and traded and this is why creches promote it to parents anxious to give their children every advantage in a competitive economy.

And she critiques the current vogue for “early childhood education”.  

“Minister Frances Fitzgerald herself has described early childhood education in the Dáil as “crucial to a child’s emotional, cognitive and social development” and cited returns to the economy of three to 10 times the investment made.

“And it’s not true. It is true is that preschool education has been shown to significantly benefit children from disadvantaged backgrounds. But as the National Economic and Social Forum’s Early Childhood and Education said in 2005, the benefits of preschool to more advantaged children are ‘modest, if any.’

The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) study in the UK found that kids made more “school ready” by preschool quickly lose their advantage over the kids who didn’t go to preschool once big school starts.

“Disadvantaged kids will not benefit from preschool if their preschools are ghettos of disadvantage and this is what makes universal preschool a worth a shot if it helps ‘level the playing field’.

“However, preschool is for three and four-year-olds and it lasts three or four hours. It is not for babies. It is not for one-year-olds. It is not for two-year-olds. It should not last all day.

“The most comprehensive international research makes negative findings for extensive group care before a child is three years old. In the US, the National Institute of Child Health and Development study showed young children who had over 30 hours of institutional care every week were three times more likely to have behaviour problems as those who had group care for less than 10 hours a week.

“In the UK, the EPPE study found that high levels of group care before the age of three were associated with higher levels of anti-social behaviour at three years.

“Child psychologist Penelope Leach led the Families, Children and Child Care research study in the UK which found nursery-cared babies and toddlers to have higher levels of aggression than children in one-to-one care and to be ‘inclined to become withdrawn, compliant and sad’.”

The debate on childcare is in danger of getting stuck on how to ensure we get as many children into creches and “early childhood education” as possible. White’s piece is a welcome attempt to shift it back towards prioritising home over crèche.