”Barnepass fram til 18 måneder: Sammenhenger mellom barnepass fram til 18 måneder og språklige ferdigheter og psykisk fungering ved 5 år”.

The purpose of this study is divided in two, and the study has a descriptive as well as an exploratory aim. The authors want to describe the use of daycare schemes in Norway as well as examine the connection between these schemes and the language skills and mental abilities of five-year-olds.

This study presents ten main findings. First, the study shows that most children who are cared for outside the home before they turn 18 months are cared for at daycare facilities. The number of hours 18-month-old children are cared for outside the home has increased from 27 hours on average in the period 2001 to 2003, to 31 hours on average in the period 2007 to 2009. The study shows that 52% of five-year-olds in daycare attend municipal facilities. Choice of type of daycare depends on the mother’s level of education, and the age of the children when they start daycare varies according to the parents’ linguistic background. A greater percentage of mothers with short-cycle education takes care of their children at home until they are 18 months compared with mothers with long-cycle higher education. Children of mothers with short-cycle education who are cared for outside their home are more often in daycare in a private home than children of mothers with long-cycle higher education. A somewhat greater percentage of children with two Norwegian speaking parents are cared for outside the home when they are 18 months than children in families in which none of the parents have Norwegian as their native language. The authors find a small correlation between boys who are in daycare before the age of 18 months and linguistic difficulties and behavioural difficulties at the age of five. Moreover, there is a small correlation between behavioural difficulties at the age of five and care at daycare facilities for more than 40 hours a week. The authors find no correlation between daycare and emotional difficulties at the age of five. Finally, the study shows that many of the children have documented development difficulties or increased risk of developing such difficulties in first year of their life. The study reports that about 5% of five-year-olds had birth injuries, syndromes or severe medical problems at birth.
The authors conclude that there is only a slight significance for all of the correlations demonstrated. It is possible that the differences in the effects are due to the fact that some children are more vulnerable to the time of the start in daycare or the number of hours spent outside the home than others, and the quality of daycare can also explain some of these differences.

Data in this study is based on the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), which is managed and administered by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. The study is a comprehensive questionnaire survey which collects data about more than 100,000 children and their mothers six times during the mother’s pregnancy and the first three years of the child’s life. The selection in the current study consists of replies regarding daycare schemes from 60,028 mothers, until their children turned 18 months, as well as replies from 12,875 mothers of five-year-olds.

Schjølberg, S., Lekhal, R., Vartun, M., Helland, S.S. & Mathiesen, K.S. (2011). ”Barnepass fram til 18 måneder: Sammenhenger mellom barnepass fram til 18 måneder og språklige ferdigheter og psykisk fungering ved 5 år”. Oslo: Nasjonalt folkehelseinstitutt.