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The Kids Are AlrightWhat the latest day-care study really found.

By Emily BazelonPosted Wednesday, March 28, 2007, at 5:21 PM ET

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There is an enormous difference between excellent day care and mediocre day care—when Simon had one year of the latter, believe me, I could tell. But that distinction, crucial as it is to the kids who experience it and to their parents, often is lost on the rest of the world. One day when my older son Eli was about 2, he charmed the woman ahead of us in line at the supermarket. They grinned and goo-goo-ed at each other, and then Eli's new friend turned to me with a big smile and said, "He must be at home with you." I stammered no and started babbling: Eli was in day care, but it was really wonderful day care, with only 12 kids and five teachers, and really if you visited him there you would see … But the woman's smile had vanished. We stood in embarrassed silence until her groceries were bagged. It probably doesn't matter what the data really show. Day care is supposed to be bad for kids, so it is. The headlines don't change.

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor and an editor of DoubleX.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
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