NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children placed in daycare do not seem to suffer significant detrimental effects, so long as the care is of high quality and their home life is supportive, researchers reported Wednesday at a congressional briefing in Washington, DC.

"Quality matters in childcare. Kids who get high-quality childcare are doing better," co-investigator Dr. Martha Cox, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Reuters Health.

However, Cox and her colleagues report, high-quality childcare is relatively rare, with about half of US kids receiving care that the researchers rated moderately or highly positive.

The researchers summarized previously reported findings from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care, which has tracked more than 1,200 children from birth 12 years ago to the present. The children were chosen to be a representative sample of American families' different daycare choices.

The researchers told Congress that three quarters of American children experience some type of non-parental care during the first year of life.

As long as the quality of care was good, the investigators found, children in daycare were able to form secure attachments to their parents and perform well in school. The most important factor in a child's outcome was the quality of his or her home life, rather than whether or not the child was in daycare.

The researchers defined quality care as being nurturing, dependable and supportive of language and learning. Only about half of childcare providers offer such high-quality care during the toddler and preschool years, the research team found.

The most important factor determining childcare quality was the number of children a caregiver was providing for; the fewer the number, the better the care. In addition, caregivers who had some college education and those who had positive beliefs about children provided more supportive care.

The researchers found that parents whose children are in high-quality daycare may themselves benefit by learning skills from the childcare providers. "There may be a modeling effect," Cox said. "High-quality daycare may provide mothers some examples of more sensitive responses towards children."

On the downside, when the children were followed into the schoolroom, researchers found that the more time a child had spent in daycare, the more likely he or she was to have slight behavioral problems, regardless of factors such as home life and socioeconomic status.

"These are all within a normal range--not at a level that warrants a referral to help, or constitutes a mental health problem," said co-investigator Dr. Robert Pianta, a professor of education at the University of Virginia.

Pianta said the disruptive behavior may be due to an increased reliance on other children as a guide for social skills. "As children accumulate more hours in non-maternal care with a lot of socialization occurring in a peer group, they're somewhat less well-regulated," Pianta noted. "If this affect of being disruptive is a consequence (of daycare), we need to look at ways and policies to support childcare providers to help children develop appropriate ways of controlling their behavior."

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