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Quebec's preschoolers are more aggressive than those elsewhere in Canada and their mothers show greater signs of depression, according to a new study that blames the province's universal child-care program.
The C.D. Howe Institute report released yesterday shows that despite government officials and child-care experts lauding Quebec's $7-a-day child-care program, children and mothers in the region are actually worse off.
The findings were denounced by one of Canada's foremost early learning and child-care experts.
The study found that aggression scores of Quebec preschoolers increased by 24 per cent after the daycare program was introduced, while it only went up 1 per cent in the rest of Canada during that time.
Mothers with children in daycare, too, had higher depression scores relative to the average, probably because they were away from their youngsters so early on, according to one researcher.
The study found that subsidized childcare led to more mothers taking on paid work. The proportion of working mothers in two-parent families climbed by 21 per cent, more than double the increase in the rest of Canada, the study said.
"For other provinces who might be considering a model such as Quebec's, [we advise them] to keep their eyes open," said Kevin Milligan, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of economics at the University of British Columbia.
"They could expect some similar responses on the behavioural front from children in their provinces as well."
Unlike other provinces, all families in Quebec have access to a heavily subsidized daycare program. Parents pay only $7 a day and the government pays for the rest.
In the study, researchers used Statistics Canada's National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth. They had access to data for 33,000 preschool-aged children across the country, 14,000 of whom were involved in some kind of child-care program, between 1994 to 2002. Around a quarter of them were from Quebec.
But Martha Friendly, co-ordinator of the Childcare Resource and Research Unit of the University of Toronto and respected for her work in early childhood education, said the researchers have made a "real conceptual leap" by reporting a link between child-care programs and the behaviour of children.
"From my reading of this study, I don't think there's enough information available to be able to make the assertion that is being made in this study," she said.
"Do you think anybody would say being in kindergarten makes children more aggressive?"
- reprinted from the Globe and Mail