Morgan, P 1996 Who Needs Parents? The effects of childcare and early education on children in Britain and the USA. London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit

Looks at the idea of third-party childcare as being good and beneficial for the child. States that it is a hard issue to discuss as many get infuriated when questioning that day care/nurseries is “better” or at least “ harmless” compared to “parental care”.

Advantages
Childcare is seen as something that can benefit a child in preparing them for school and in a wider view into adulthood.

Looks into childcare as an Economic Necessity but not the same as Giddens; but rather employers need women to work to prevent the “shrinking numbers in the young workforce” (Edwina Currie, The Times).
Also, children create labour such as clothes and food, which increases jobs and employment. Childcare therefore creates economic advantages as they allow parents to go back to work and also provides jobs such as nursery workers/assistants, teachers, kitchen staff etc.

Page 3 Quotes

“It increases both the labour supply and the demand for labour”.

“Childcare is the most prominent way in which the personal services and functions performed by families are meant to enter the cash economy”.

“Industrialisation necessarily led to the dependence of all social life, and human interrelatedness, upon the market or ‘social production’ so that the population no longer relies upon organisations like family, kin or community.”

Disadvantages (Page 81)
Children that get placed into day care/ nurseries do not grow up with a good relationship with their mothers and this leads to stress and problems later on in life. Childcare is said to lower depression for mothers, but this is related to financial issues rather than actually caring for the child. The mother knows that if she works, the family income will increase and therefore the chance of depression decreases. “Poor parents make anxious parents”.

The changing of roles between the mother and the father and the impact on the family – either sex resulting in depression as they feel their stereotypical role is being questioned.

Chapter 8 deals with the idea of attachment between child and parent and the similarities/differences between the bond created between the two, if a child is placed into day care/nurseries or not – “Strange Situation” (Page 86-87)

Chapter 9 (Page 90)
“Childcare affects children, so employment affects parenting”.

Attachment depends on the following:

• The mother and fathers work patterns
• The parents’ attitudes and behaviour towards their children
• The family environment as a whole – as a family unit/in a home environment
• The child’s behaviour
• The care that the child is given:
  1 By parents
  2 Who is left to look after the child when parents’ are away?

Since women have increased in numbers within the “labour force” over the last century, it is extremely common to have both parents in full-time employment.
“The amount of ‘total contact time’ between parents and children, is calculated to have dropped 40 per cent for the USA during the last quarter century”. (Page 90)
Therefore, the time spent between the child and the mother/father is/has reduced dramatically. It is hard for parents to not treat their children like objects and to actually form relationships with them, if they are not around that often. If the only time parents get to see and play with their children is the evening when the child is meant to be sleeping it is harder to create and strengthen relationships.

The feeling of guilt within the mother (page 93)

Page 121 – Economic Issues
Children being the workers and employment of the future/ providers of the future, therefore parents should give time to make attachments with their children, as they will be the ones that are in control in the next generation. If they are all suffering from stress and depression due to lack attachment with their parents, then ‘we’ are all to suffer!