Does day care make children misbehave in school?

A federally financed study found that keeping your child in day care for a year or longer increases the likelihood that your child's behavior will later disrupt a school class. The affect on behavior persists through the sixth grade. Moreover, this impact occurred regardless of the quality of the day care.

Child custody lawyers and litigants may use the study to support their cases. For example, a stay-at-home parent could propose a parenting plan that limits the amount of time a child spends in day care. Because the study has been widely reported (as in the New York Times), the study could be referenced by the parent's expert witness, such as a therapist or custody expert.

This tactic would prove especially frustrating for the working parent. The primary residency of the stay-at-home parent would be financed by the child support paid by the working parent. In this way, the proposal to stay at home would create a self fulfilling case.

The working parent could respond that the study strongly emphasized that behaviour problem effect was very small in comparison to the difference that parenting quality made to child development.

If your child was already enrolled in day care prior to the divorce, the working parent could argue hypocrisy in the proposal to stay at home. The working parent could also point out the self fulfilling nature of requiring child support to finance the proposal to stay at home.