A new study, published in the March/April 2007 issue of Child Development, has concluded that kids who spend more than two years regularly attending day-care centers show slightly more behavioral problems in kindergarten through sixth grade than those that do not. Are There Long-Term Effects of Early Child Care? is drawn from data collected by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, which includes 1,364 children at 10 sites around the country who have been tracked since birth (and are now aged between 15 and 16). NEWSWEEK’s Julie Scelfo spoke with Margaret Burchinal, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina and a co-author of the study about what these findings mean for parents of young children. Excerpts: Newsweek: Most of the kids in your study spent a year or two at a day-care center prior to entering kindergarten. How did that affect their behavior later? Burchinal: For those kids who have one or two years of day care, their level of problem behavior is typical. For children who spent more than that in center-based care, teachers report slightly more disruptive behaviors than are typical. In other words, […]