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Child care advocates are refuting the study, claiming that because only half of all Quebec children had access to a daycare space, there could be other factors contributing to the negative outcomes. But considering that an even lower percentage of children in other provinces had access, there appears to be at least some correlation between the poorer non-cognitive abilities of the Quebec children and their greater level of non-parental care.

And this is hardly the first study to link higher exposure to daycare to psychological problems in children. A major longitudinal study of American children published in 2005 showed that 26 per cent of children who spent more than 45 hours per week in daycare go on to have serious behaviour problems when they reach kindergarten, compared to only 10 per cent of kids who spend less than 10 hours per week in daycare. It appears as though time, not quality, was the issue: the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care, a $100 million survey of 1,100 children, found that the more time spent in child care of any kind or quality, the more aggressive the child.

As for educational attainment, a study published by the Quebec think tank CIRANO in 2007 found that exposure to daycare produced “no evidence, up to now, that it has enhanced school readiness or child early literacy skills in general.” The study actually found that the educational attainment of four- and five-year-olds decreased over the first decade of Quebec’s daycare program.