INFANT CARE FROM INFANTS VIEWPOINT - THE VIEWS OF SOME PROFESSIONALS

Debate about infant care tends to focus on still unresolved questions about whether or not day care is harmful, while research. studies ofte n confine care options go an unrealistic axis of choice between group care and mother care. Research that delineates constituents of day car e quality in relation to measurable outcomes for different groups of c hildren is urgently needed and should be based on a broader view of in fant care options. A postal opinion survey sought the confidential vie ws of members of an international organization of infant mental health professionals as to the kinds of care they considered likely to be be st for infants from birth to 36 months, assuming that all types of car e were of equally high quality and availability. Surprisingly lengthy periods of care by mothers were consistently endorsed; fathers were al most entirely disregarded as principal or joint caregivers; all forms of family care were endorsed over all forms of purchased care, but all forms of individual care were preferred to full-day group care for al l age groups and to half-day group care up to the age of 2. The patter ns of care judged by these respondents as likely to be best for infant s are very different from those which most infants experience now, and from those which policy-and opinion-makers, practitioners and parents aspire, publicly at least, to provide for infants in the future. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.