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More and more research is emerging showing the negative effects of placing very young children in long day care. International best-selling author, Steve Biddulph, in his new book “Raising Babies: Should Under 3s go to Nursery?” says putting children under three in child care can damage their intellectual and emotional development.  Those placed in child care from the age of six months could become anti-social and aggressive. [In Australia some babies as young as three months are placed in long day care]. Biddulph says child care facilities struggle to meet very young children’s needs.  “The worst were negligent, frightening and bleak - a nightmare of bewildered loneliness that was heartbreaking to watch”, he said.

More than a third of Australian babies are regularly cared for in their first year of life by people other than their parents. Mr. Biddulph said nothing equalled one-to-one care for a child under two: “Infant’s brains need to be stimulated by loving inter action if they are to develop properly. Nannies can work well as a halfway solution if parents are very lucky with the person they find.... Care by family or a friend is a much better option”. Biddulph’s greatest concern was for “slammers” - urban professionals who put their children in full-time care from 6 months until school age.

Early childhood researcher, Margaret Sims, said most of the research was done in the US where child care was of poorer quality. This is typical of the response of feminist “experts” who wish to placate career women. Margaret Sims does not acknowledge that the breastfeeding relationship between mother and baby is fractured if the baby is put in long daycare. With all the concern about childhood obesity, one would have hoped she would recommend that under-twos be with their mothers and breastfed as the UN recommends. Nor has she acknowledged the occasionally serious problems with day care centres in Australia. Recently the manager of the Hallam Childcare Centre was convicted of assaulting children in her care. The Centre lost its licence.

Even more significantly, ABC Developmental Learning Centres Pty. Ltd., a leviathan of the childcare industry which in January completed its purchase of major US chain, Learning Care, making it the world’s largest publicly limited child care corporation, has refused to provide Victoria’s government watchdog, the Department of Human Services, with reports about adverse events in the centres - such as toddlers wandering away from centres. In fact the ABC company is seeking a Supreme Court order preventing it from having to answer DHS questions or hand over records.

In February ABC Developmental Learning centres Pty. Ltd. announced a half-yearly net profit of $38 million. The company’s 2.5 billion empire was built largely on the back of the Howard Government’s child care subsidies which account for half its revenue. ABC’s Chief Executive Officer, Eddie Groves, is one of Australia’s richest people under 40 with a personal fortune of $175 million. [Source: Herald Sun, 19/2/2006 and 4/3.2006]