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Early or Later Day Care The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby maintains that separation from the parents during the sensitive attachment period from birth to three may scar a childs personality and predispose to emotional problems in later life. Some people have drawn the conclusion from Bowlbys work that children should not be subjected to day care before the age of three because of the parental separation it entails, and many people do believe this. But there are also arguments against such a strong conclusion. But Bowlbys analysis raises the possibility that early day care has delayed effects. The possibility that such care might lead to, say, more mental illness or crime 15 or 20 years later can only be explored by the use of statistics. Whatever the long-term effects, parents sometimes find the immediate effects difficult to deal with. Children under three are likely to protest at leaving their parents and show unhappiness. At the age of three or three and a half almost all children find the transition to nursery easy, and this is undoubtedly why more and more parents make use of child care at this time. The matter, then, is far from clear-cut, though experience and available evidence indicate that early care is reasonable for infants. 1. Which of the following statements would Bowlby support? B) Early day care can delay the occurrence of mental illness in children. | 
