Infant Day Care, Good or Bad? The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby maintains that separation from the parents during the sensitive “attachment” period from birth to three may influence a child’s personality and lead to emotional problems in later life. Some people have drawn the conclusion from Bowlby’s work (21) _________ children should not be sent to day care before the age of three because of the parental separation (22) _________ involves, and many people do believe this. But there are also arguments (23) _________ such a strong conclusion. Firstly, experts point out that the isolated love affair between children and parents (24) _________ (find) in modern societies does not usually exist in traditional societies. For example, in some tribal societies, such as the Ngoni, the father and mother of a child did not raise their infant alone – far from it. Secondly, common sense tells us that day care would not be so widespread today (25) _________ parents and care-takers found children had problems with it. Statistical studies of this kind have not yet been carried out, and they have regularly reported that day care had a slightly positive effect on children’s development. But tests (26) ________ have been used to measure this development are not widely enough accepted to settle the issue. But Bowlby’s 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 (27) _________ (deal) with. Children under three are likely to protest at (28) _________ (leave) their parents and show unhappiness. At the age of three or three and a half almost all children find the change to nursery easy, and this is undoubtedly (29) _________ 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 (30) _________ (indicate) early care is reasonable for infants.