ABSTRACT
In writing this rejoinder to the commentaries by Barbara Bowman, Jay Belsky, and Ron Haskins I am glad to have the opportunity to clarify, expand on my lead chapter and to acknowledge the contributions of my colleagues. I think that Bowman is absolutely correct to suggest that we reconceptualize the results of much of our research on child care as demonstrating the effects of day care on children's learning rather than on children's development. I wish I had thought of this way of putting it myself. I was trying to make a similar point when I noted that the observed effects of day care on preschool children are not permanent. It would have strengthened the point to have suggested at the same time that because the effects are not permanent, they might be better thought of as effects on children's performance rather than on their competence, as effects on learning rather than on development. I make a similar point in suggesting that day care speeds up children's development rather than changing it in a basic way. All children learn their letters; it's just that children in day-care programs do it earlier. All children are eventually able to leave their mother's side to explore a new environment, but children in day care do it at younger ages. All children get over their inhibition with strangers; day-care children just do it faster. All children learn to cooperate with their peers; day-care children learn it sooner. Day-care children enter the world outside the home when they are very young, and their experiences in that outside world lead to their learning these skills. To reinforce Bowman's argument, more than simply learning new skills, they learn a different culture: a culture of interacting with groups of people, dealing with newcomers who have appeared and without friends who have disappeared, figuring out institutional rules, achieving academic success, and making decisions about what to do without Mother's advice. It is a culture into which children who stay home during the preschool years are not integrated until they get to school. It is a culture that is as different from the culture of being at home with mother as the American culture is different from the Mexican, the French from the English. I appreciate Bowman's bringing to our discussion these concepts of culture and learning; they offer a useful prism through which to view day-care effects.
