The Mother Load

By Amy Dickinson

Show me a study about children in day care, and I'll show you a study that's bound to make mothers feel bad. (Let's face it: the prospect of choosing the wrong breakfast cereal is enough to make most of us feel bad.) We moms get caught in the tension between academic studies (and our own fears) telling us that day care breeds ear infections and bad habits, and equally compelling research showing that if we rear our kids at home, we retard their social development. We worry when our toddler clings to us in the morning--and when she doesn't. Add the risk of little Tiffany calling the babysitter Mommy, and you have the ingredients for a daily drama at the day-care door.

A major new study to be released this week isn't going to help matters, with a press release announcing definitively that the vital bond between mother and child often suffers when babies are placed in day care. It's just the sort of news that grandmothers like to clip from the paper and send to their favorite daughters-in-law, so be prepared.

Having read the full study, though, I can report that the news is not all that bad. To be sure, the researchers--sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development--studied 1,300 children from birth to age three, in every child-rearing situation, and concluded that the mother-child relationship often takes a hit when babies are cared for by someone other than Mom. But it's important to note that this concern relates mainly to the child's first year, and especially the first four months. Placing babies in child care during this period can interrupt the process of attachment, when mother and child learn to read one another's signals and expressions--a journey that leads to the delicious feeling that T. Berry Brazelton aptly calls "falling in love." Once that secure attachment is accomplished, however, your child can benefit from socializing with other kids and adults at a day-care center. On that, the National Institute study and parenting experts like Brazelton are in agreement.

A mother should do everything she can in the early months of her baby's life to be the primary caregiver and to give her child the benefits of a confident attachment. That bond can then be strengthened by finding quality child care with trained, concerned staff and a good ratio of no more than three babies to each adult. It's also wise to choose caregivers who will give you loads of information about your child's day. Some day-care centers have parents fill out a chart on their baby's status in the morning (how he has slept and eaten, his general mood, etc.). A caregiver then fills out the back of the chart in the afternoon. She should tell you, for instance, that your baby sometimes falls apart when he sees you not because he's angry at having been abandoned, but simply because he's tired.

When you get home, give your cranky baby a snack and a drink and get one for yourself. Sit on the floor with him and swap gurgles about the office and the playpen. Full-time mothers face a different challenge: to help their babies gain, perhaps through a play group, the social and developmental skills they might otherwise pick up in day care. Chances are, the researchers will be after them next, giving a different set of moms a headline to feel bad about.

For more on the debate over day care, please see our website at time.com/personal E-mail Amy at [email protected]