Christian families trying to make it in a tough economy face a dilemma.  If you’re going to be a full time dual-income couple, somebody, besides you, has gotta mind the kids. Many parents understand that even the most expensive institutional day care is not ideal — but they end up there by default.

Years of research is in and it shows that the younger a child is and the more time he or she spends separated from mom and dad in formal daycare, the more likely that child is to experience negative outcomes in terms of physical and emotional health, behavior, and academic performance.

A new, extensive Australian study shows that children who spend more than 21 hours a week in daycare are at greater risk of performing below average in academic subjects, especially math and literacy,  and (in what seems like a counterintuitive outcome) to have trouble adjusting to school.

For five years, William and Wendy Dreskin co-directed their own non-profit nursery school and then day care center in the San Francisco area. They ran a high quality program: teachers had their B.A.‘s plus one year of graduate training, child to adult ratios were low, there was lots of educational equipment, and an intelligent curriculum. The Dreskins themselves were naturals with children. They began with a part time day care facility — three hours a day. But, because of demand, they expanded their mission to all-day care. When children they had been serving moved to eight hours a day to enable parents to work full time, the Dreskins noticed disturbing changes in children and their exhausted parents.

“The problem was not with our facility,” they wrote in their book, The Day Care Decision. “It was obvious that there was a problem inherent in day care itself, a problem that hung like a dark storm over ‘good’ and ‘bad’ day care centers alike. The children were too young to be spending so much time away from their parents. They were like young birds being forced out of the nest and abandoned by their parents before they could fly, their wings undeveloped, unready to carry them out into the world.” “We were so distressed by our observations,” the Dreskins conclude, “that we closed the center.”

Highly degreed and trained day care workers often say they would not choose such an option for their own children.

Proposals for national day care were debated during the 1970’s and 80’s    purporting to “solve” this problem for moms pouring into the workforce. Social analyst Peter Drucker wisely noted “We are busily unmaking one of the proudest social achievements in the nineteenth century, which was to take married women out of the workforce so they could devote themselves to family and children.”

There’s no substitute for the consistent training and nurture of a parent in a child’s life. Wise parents will employ technology, tighter budgeting, delayed gratification, whatever it takes to provide it.