Stay home or 'baby suffers' | NEWS.com.au
MOTHERS should be paid to stay at home with their child for the first two years or their baby's brain won't develop properly, the New South Wales Commissioner for Children and Young People said.
The state's most senior adviser on children's policy, Gillian Calvert, said the one-on-one interactions between a mother and child during these years were vital to healthy brain development and the learning of social and communication skills.
"We have evidence that maternal employment during an infant's first year of life can have a detrimental effect on their cognitive development," she said.
Children's author Mem Fox caused a tirade earlier this week when she chastised mothers who put their babies in childcare.
Ms Calvert said yesterday there was plenty of scientific evidence that the one-on-one full time care of a parent was necessary in early years.
"The science is compelling," she told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
Ms Calvert said that at birth a baby's brain was less than one quarter of its adult size and the vital connections between brain cells were made in a child's first three years.
"When a baby smiles at its mother she leans over and kisses the baby, who then grabs her cheek, each interaction building upon the next," Ms Calvert said.
Because a baby finds the stimulus of its mothers voice pleasurable it turns towards the sound, if the experience is aversive the baby will avoid the experience, she said.
The core capacities that develop from these one-on-one interactions in a child's first two years underpin the child's entry into language and logical thinking, she said.
The Productivity Commission, which is designing a paid maternity leave scheme for the Rudd Government, interviewed Ms Calvert and two experts on child psychology for two hours recently.
More than 19,400 children aged under one year are currently placed in childcare and over 60,000 children aged one use childcare.
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