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This report of action research into the care of young children in day nurseries will be of interest to child psychotherapists, since it is based on the application of psychoanalytic insights to this form of institutional care, and shares the concern of psychotherapists with the quality of relationship between infants and caretakers as its central issue. It makes use of a combination of psychoanalytic and systems theory, and also of Jaques’ and Menzies work on “Social Systems as a Defence against Anxiety” for its organising concepts, and the changes they observed in the day nursery during their work are well analysed using a systems approach.
The research is also an intervention in a wider debate about the desirability or otherwise of the care of young children being undertaken by mothers within the home setting, or through alternative forms of care. The authors are critical of the desirability of providing more day nurseries, the demand for which they attribute to an assorted list of factors, including “the breakdown of the family through divorce or separation … the under-valuation of motherhood, increasing numbers of parents who were themselves in day nurseries or with childminders … the influence of the women's liberation movement and the desire of many women to continue their professional development after childbirth”. They go on to comment that in both “public and some research opinion the stress is on the adult needs with inadequate attention to the child's need. Their own study and psychodynamic findings on child development are cited in support of what they regard as the child-oriented side of this argument. I am by no means sure that they correctly estimate the state of this debate. It is possible to see a number of recent studies of young children and their mothers in various settings as indicating increasing social and academic concern over the quality of life in infancy, both from mothers’ and children's points of view. It is most important in this debate