Child Study Finds Early Child Care Linked to Aggression & Disobedience

Study Shows Family Instability Has Negative Effect on Children's Behavior

Marital Breakdown and Divorce Increases Rate of Depression

US Prison Bureau Suppresses Study Strongly Linking Child Porn to Child Molesters

Study Finds 49% of US College Students Are Abusing Drugs or Alcohol

LARGEST US CHILD STUDY FINDS EARLY CHILD CARE LINKED TO AGGRESSION AND DISOBEDIENCE: Results proved true regardless of quality of center-based care they received. Analysis of the largest, longest running, and most comprehensive study of child care in the USA has found that the more time children spent in center-based care before kindergarten, the more likely their teachers were to report such problem behaviors as "gets in many fights," "disobedient at school," and "argues a lot."

The study confirms research published last year which was undertaken in Canada which found that children in daycare were 17 times more hostile than children raised at home, and almost three times more anxious. The Canadian study also found negative effects on parents.

A 2005 study from England demonstrated that a mother's care was best for toddlers' development, with nursery care linked to "higher levels of aggression." An Australian study published in 2006 confirmed prior research finding that daycare seems to damage babies' brain chemistry and affect their "social and emotional development."

The current study, which appears in the March/April 2007 issue of Child Development, found that children with more experience in child care centers showed in early grades through sixth grade, a greater frequency of what the researchers termed teacher-reported externalizing problem behavior.

Teachers reported more frequent problem behaviours such as: child demands a lot of attention; argues a lot; bragging and boasting; cruelty, bullying or meanness to others; destroys things belonging to others; disobedient at school; gets into many fights; lying or cheating; screams a lot.

The study, led by Jay Belsky, Ph.D., Director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues and Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck University of London, also found children who had been in center care in early childhood were more likely to score higher on teacher reports of aggression and disobedience. This was true regardless of the quality of the center-based care they received.

The 1,364 children in the analysis had been tracked since birth as part of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Families were recruited through hospital visits to mothers shortly after the birth of a child in 1991 in 10 locations in the U.S. The children studied were not a representative sample of children in the U.S. population.
Canadian study coverage: Study Shows Canada's Universal Daycare Plan Has "Strikingly Negative" Consequences
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/feb/06020205.html. [March/April 2007 Child Development; 26March07, DC, LifeSiteNews.com]
 

 

 

STUDY SHOWS FAMILY INSTABILITY HAS BAD EFFECT ON CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOR: Family make-up –whether raised in a two-parent or a single parent environment - also linked to behavioral problems

FAMILY MAKE-UP LINKED TO BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS

A new sociology study from John Hopkins University [Maryland] confirms what pro-family groups have been saying for decades - family instability has a direct correlation to bad behavior in children. According to a Hopkins press release about the new study, “children who go through frequent transitions are more likely to have behavioral problems than children raised in stable two-parent families and maybe even more than those in stable single-parent families.”

Entitled “Family Instability and Child Well-Being”, the study was authored by Hopkins sociologists Paula Fomby and Andrew Cherlin and will be published in the April issue of the American Sociological Review. The data used for the Fomby and Cherlin paper was gathered from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data which is comprised of a 21-year project focusing on women and their children. The children studied in the test were between 5 and 14 years old in 2000. Data researchers utilized a cognitive achievement test, a mother-reported log of behavioral problems and, in the older age group of 10 to 14 years, a self-reported log of behavioral problems.

Fomby and Cherlin took the NLSY data and correspondently applied the number of marital and co-habitational alterations the children had respectively undergone.

Using a scoring process similar to that used for a standard IQ test, the study’s authors determined that a child who endured three family living alterations would be likely to have a behavioral problem score approximately 6 points higher than a child who had experienced no such alterations.

Multiple family transitions were also directly linked with more frequent instances of juvenile delinquency such as vandalism, theft and truancy. The research indicated that white children are more negatively impacted in both behavioral issues and academic achievement by family instability than black children.

The authors suggested that black children possibly weather the emotional storm better due to the fact that they typically have more immediate family nearby for emotional support. The researchers cautioned that their sample data may have also affected the racial disparity found in the study since the women involved were between the ages of 21 and 39 years old at the time of the birth of their child. Black women frequently have children at younger ages than white women and thus would not have fallen within the established age guidelines established.

In both black and white children, the study indicated a consistent correlation between living in a ‘mother only’ household during the first years of life and mother-reported behavior problems. White children living under the same circumstances also experienced lower reading skills than white children raised in a two-parent home.

Fomby concluded, “Family instability does appear to have a causal role in determining whether white children exhibit more behavior problems. But for both white and black children, other dimensions of family structure, like being born to a single parent or living with a step-parent, also have persistent effects. Instability isn't the whole story, but looking at change tells us more about what explains children's behavioral development than what we would see by looking at a cross-section.” [2April07, Meg Jalsevac, BALTIMORE, LifeSiteNews.com]

 

 

MARITAL BREAKDOWN AND DIVORCE INCREASES RATES OF DEPRESSION, StatCan Study Finds.

Experiencing the breakdown of a marriage leads to an increased risk of depression compared to staying with a spouse, a new study published by Statistics Canada has found.

Based on data from the National Population Health Survey (NPHS), the study examined the connection between ending a marriage and subsequently experiencing depression.

Men and women were both found to have a greater risk of developing depression during the two years following the end of a marriage or committed common-law relationship, compared with couples who remained together.

Twelve percent of people whose marriage ended suffered from depression in the following two years, compared to just 3 percent who stayed in the relationship. Men, however, were more at risk of experiencing depression following separation than were women.

Men aged 20 to 64 who experienced divorce or separation were six times more likely to report experiencing depression than were men who remained married, while women who had gone through a divorce or separation were 3.5 times more likely to experience depression than those who stayed with their partners.

While other factors accompanying the end of a relationship may contribute to the experience of depression, such as economic difficulties or changes in the number of children living in the home, researchers found such changes were not enough to account for depression levels, which remained higher even after the other possible factors were taken into consideration.

While a majority of people recovered from depression four years after the break-up, the study showed a significant minority continued to experience depression. Statcan study:
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/82-003-XIE/2006005/articles/marital/part10(Marital)_e.pdf
[24May07, Gudrun Schultz, Ottawa, LifeSiteNews.com]
 

 

US PRISON BUREAU SUPPRESSES STUDY STRONGLY LINKING CHILD PORNOGRAPHY TO CHILD MOLESTERS: Study makes a shocking (though not unexpected!) discovery - more than 85 % arrested for possession or distribution admitted molesting at least one child.

The Federal Prison Bureau has a new study indicating that 85% of convicted consumers of child pornography may have sexually molested a child. However the New York Times reports that the federal agency has suppressed the publication of the report out of concern that the public will misinterpret its conclusions.
 
The Times reports that the unpublished research was conducted by psychologists at the Federal Bureau of Prisons and that it constitutes the first in-depth survey done by prison therapists of online sexual offenders' history - everything from indecent touching to rape. The therapists were actively performing treatment.
 
The report was to be published in the Journal of Family Violence until Judy Garrett, an official with the Prison Bureau, requested in April that it be withdrawn saying the report did not meet "agency approval."
 
"We believe it unwise to generalize from limited observations gained in treatment or in records review to the broader population of persons who engage in such behavior," states a letter from a bureau official obtained by the Times.
 
A draft of the paper obtained by the Times show the study was conducted by two psychologists, Andres E. Hernandez and Michael L. Bourke, and surveyed 155 male inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina. All these prisoners were serving sentences for either possession or distribution of child pornography.
 
The psychologists then made a shocking discovery. More than 85 percent of these men admitted to sexually molesting at least one child, far exceeding the 26 percent known to have committed these offenses at the time of sentencing. In the end, the 75 known sexual crimes perpetrated against children became 1,777: a more than 20-fold increase from the time of sentencing.
 
One anonymous Canadian prisoner serving a 14 year sentence explained to the Times how viewing child pornography would lead him to sexually molest children: "I knew that in my mind. I knew that in my heart. I didn't want it to happen, but it was going to happen."
 
Dr. Peter Collins, leader of the Forensic Psychiatry Unit of the Ontario Provincial Police, underscored the importance of the Hernandez-Bourke study, calling it "cutting-edge stuff."
 
Collins criticized the suppression of the study, saying, "We're really on the cusp of learning more about these individuals and studies should be encouraged, not quashed."
 
Previous studies based on criminal records had estimated that 30 percent to 40 percent of those arrested for possessing child pornography also had sexually molested children. [20July07, Peter J. Smith,  D.C., LifeSiteNews.com]
 

 
 

STUDY FINDS 49% OF US COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE ABUSING DRUGS OR ALCOHOL. A new report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University found that forty-nine per cent (3.8 million) of full time college students binge drink and/or abuse prescription and illegal drugs.
 
The study, titled Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities, also found that 1.8 million, 22.9 per cent, met the medical criteria for substance abuse and dependence, two and a half times the rate of the general population.
 
The 231-page report was completed after over four years of research and is the largest study ever undertaken of substance abuse on US college campuses. Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA’s chairman and president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare said, “In this world of fierce global competition, we are losing thousands of our nation’s best and brightest to alcohol and drugs, and in the process robbing them and our nation of their promising futures.”
 
The CASA study found that while there was no decline in the proportion of students who drink (70 to 68 percent) and binge drink (40 to 40 percent) from 1993 to 2005, the intensity of excessive drinking and rates of drug abuse have jumped sharply.
 
From 1993 and 2001 the proportion of students who binge drink frequently is up 16 per cent; who drink on 10 or more occasions in a month, up 25 per cent; who get drunk at least three times a month, up 26 per cent; and who drink to get drunk, up 21 per cent.
 
Such astonishingly high rates of substance abuse among the young can come as little surprise to the authors of a previous study linking poor school performance and substance abuse with high rates of divorce and the breakdown of the traditional family structure.
 
The U.S Center for Marriage and Family released a study in November 2005 that showed a correlation between abuse of alcohol or drugs, poor educational standings and divorce or other irregular family situations.
 
The earlier study compared education outcomes from children growing up with their own married parents to children in non-intact family structures such as divorced, single, remarried or cohabiting parents. Adolescents living in a situation other than with their own married father and mother, the report found, were at higher risk for smoking, using drugs and consuming alcohol.
 
Related:
College Women at Risk for Psychiatric Illness at Politically Correct Campuses
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/dec/06121409.html    [30March07, By Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com]