Because of a federally financed 10 year study from Birkbeck College, it’s now a well-known fact that daycare for children can have devastating consequences.
If you choose to believe the official line, every additional minute under the supervision of a trained child care professional will bring your little ones closer to psychotic aggression.
In “the largest study of its kind”, 17% children who spend more than 30 hours per week in daycare are likely to become aggressive.
You probably believe it. Most people believe it because they are compounded with the double whammy of being clones and having absolutely no statistical comprehension skills.
The problem with such an outlandish statement about the fate of children in daycare is that it ignores everything about the research study itself.
Research studies are published in “scholarly journals”. Every scholarly article that runs in a scholarly journal is between 25 to 75 pages of 6 point, single spaced type. A lot of information goes into a single study.
Among the data, researchers will often indicate the strength of the data using various obscure terms such as “Chi” and “Tau-B”. The strength of the data determines everything. It is the difference between 17% of children forced to live in a box and 17% of children in the hands of competent professionals becoming aggressive. Strength of the data determines whether the hypothesis is false or not false.
Instead, all major media outlets failed in their duty to distinguish and summarized complex information into simpleton terms.
The researchers could have easily concluded that the 17% number tells us nothing. It could be equally likely that 17% of children will be aggressive no matter what. We don’t know. The media chose not to go any deeper.
This study is now a political football.
It serves the right wing by creating “proof” that women should return to a subservient role in order to save the “white race” or “America’s children” or whatever euphemistic term they choose. It serves the left by creating “proof” that it is the government’s responsibility to throw more money at Child Development programs to mitigate the aggressive byproduct of prolonged daycare.
Disinformation is a good description of the media coverage regarding this daycare study. Ignore it.
