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Many parents make the decision to enrol their toddler in daycare with the best intentions — picturing a lively space where their child will blossom socially, learn to share, make friends, and grow in confidence. It sounds like a win-win. But what if the kind of “socialising” happening in group care settings is not the kind we actually want for our young children?
This question was put directly to developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld by the Institute for Marriage and Family Canada. His answer? A clear and unequivocal: “Absolutely not.” Children may become more social in group care — but, as Neufeld explains, for entirely the wrong reasons. To understand why, we need to look at what healthy socialisation actually requires, and what the science tells us is happening to children’s stress and attachment systems in daycare settings.
Socialisation is far more complex than simply learning to get along with other children. True socialisation — the kind that equips children to function well across a lifetime — involves being able to connect with others while also remaining true to oneself. It is rooted in a child’s relationship with the adults in their life, particularly their parents.
According to attachment theory — the foundational framework developed by John Bowlby and built upon by researchers for decades — children develop an internal blueprint for how relationships work based on their earliest bonds with caregivers. When that bond is secure, children develop positive social expectations, a sense of self-worth, and the emotional foundation to form healthy relationships with others, including peers. Crucially, it is through secure attachment to adults that children eventually develop genuine social competence — not by bypassing that relationship in favour of early peer contact.
The Neufeld Institute’s approach emphasizes that development unfolds naturally when a child’s attachment needs are met by the adults responsible for them. Push a child toward social interaction before that foundation is built, and the results can look like growth on the surface while something far more concerning is taking root underneath.
Three Things Happening in Daycare That Look Like Progress (But Aren’t)
1. Losing Protective Shyness Around Adults
One of the most frequently celebrated signs that a child is “doing well” in daycare is when they stop clinging to their parent at drop-off, stop fussing around unfamiliar caregivers, and seem perfectly comfortable with strangers. Parents breathe a sigh of relief. Daycare staff celebrate the “adjustment.” But Dr. Neufeld would urge caution here.
Shyness, in a young child, is not a flaw to be fixed. It is a built-in protective instinct — what Neufeld describes as “an attachment force, designed to shut the child down socially, discouraging any interaction with those outside her nexus of safe connections.” When a toddler turns away from a stranger and burrows into their parent’s shoulder, they are doing exactly what nature intended: protecting the integrity of their existing attachment bonds and preserving themselves from premature exposure to unfamiliar adults.
When children spend long hours in group settings, this natural wariness around adults tends to erode. The child who once held back from strangers now approaches them freely — and while this might look like social confidence, it can actually signal that the child’s internal attachment compass has been disrupted. The Neufeld Institute notes that shyness should be understood as a healthy signal: if a child is still shy with a caregiver, the relationship has not yet developed to the point where that child is ready to be in their care.
2. Becoming Peer-Attached Instead of Adult-Attached
Perhaps the most significant concern raised by Dr. Neufeld about group care settings is the phenomenon of peer orientation — a shift in which children begin to look to same-age peers, rather than adults, for emotional security, guidance, and a sense of belonging. This is not a natural developmental progression. It is what happens when a child’s need for closeness and connection cannot be reliably met by the adults around them.
In a daycare environment with high child-to-caregiver ratios and rotating staff, young children are structurally unable to form the deep, consistent attachment bonds that their development requires. Staff changes, shift rotations, and the very nature of paid employment mean that the potent, irreplaceable connection of a parent simply cannot be replicated. Facing this attachment vacuum, children turn to the most available source of connection — each other.
The problem is that peers cannot meet what adults are meant to provide. Peers do not have the emotional maturity, wisdom, or stability to serve as attachment figures. When children orient toward peers for security, the consequences ripple outward: behavioural challenges, emotional instability, difficulty forming meaningful relationships with adults, and — over time — a loss of parental influence altogether. In Hold On to Your Kids, Neufeld and co-author Dr. Gabor Maté describe peer orientation as one of the most disturbing trends in contemporary child development, one that “undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development, and fosters a hostile and sexualized youth culture.”
3. The Disappearance of Separation Anxiety — A Warning Sign, Not a Victory
When a toddler who once wept at drop-off suddenly breezes into daycare without a backward glance, many parents feel an enormous sense of relief — even pride. But Dr. Neufeld asks us to reconsider what this change actually means.
Separation anxiety, at its core, is an expression of attachment. When a young child protests being separated from their parent, they are demonstrating that the parent is their primary safe haven — the person they turn to for comfort and security. Separation anxiety, in appropriate measure, is a sign of a healthy bond. The child who has stopped protesting may not have grown more independent. Instead, they may have simply transferred their emotional centre of gravity away from their parent and toward their peer group. The loss of that protest, Neufeld explains, often indicates that the child is now more attached to peers than to parents — a developmental shift with lasting consequences.
What the Science Says About Stress in Daycare
Beyond attachment theory, there is a growing body of biological research that raises serious questions about the impact of group care on very young children’s stress systems.
Multiple studies have found that children in daycare exhibit significantly elevated levels of cortisol — the body’s primary stress hormone — compared to children at home. A landmark meta-analysis confirmed that children in daycare settings display higher cortisol levels than children at home, with a diurnal pattern showing significant increases from morning to afternoon — a pattern not observed in children who spent the day at home.
One study measuring salivary cortisol in 151 children aged three to four-and-a-half years found that 63% showed elevated cortisol levels at daycare compared to their baseline at home, and 40% of those responses were classified as a stress response. The same research found that intrusive or over-controlling caregiver behaviour was associated with the cortisol rise, and that the physiological stress response manifested differently by gender: anxious and vigilant behaviour in girls, and angry and aggressive behaviour in boys.
This matters because cortisol is not merely a temporary chemical blip. Chronic exposure to elevated cortisol in early childhood — precisely the years when the brain’s architecture is being constructed — carries real developmental risk. Research suggests that daycare attendance in lower-quality care conditions and for children with more sensitive temperaments may result in atypical cortisol elevation, which in turn has been linked to both internalizing and externalizing mental health problems. A longitudinal study tracking children from infancy even found associations between early centre-based care and altered cortisol patterns in adolescence, suggesting the effects may extend well beyond the toddler years.
💡 Situational Example: Mia at Drop-Off
Consider Mia, age two-and-a-half. In her first weeks at daycare, she cried every morning at drop-off, reaching for her mother, visibly distressed until she was settled. Her parents were exhausted by the tears but were told by staff: “She’ll adjust — it just takes time.”
By week six, the cries had stopped entirely. Mia ran into the room, headed straight for her little friend Lola, and barely looked back when her mother left. The parents were delighted. The daycare praised her “adjustment.”
But here is what was happening beneath the surface: Mia’s nervous system had learned that protest did not bring her mother back. Rather than resolving her distress, she had learned to suppress it — a coping response that required her to emotionally detach from her primary attachment figure in order to function in the setting. Her cortisol levels during the daycare day, had anyone measured them, would likely have been elevated. And her growing enthusiasm for Lola — while sweet — was filling an emotional gap that peers are not developmentally equipped to fill.
Mia looks socially thriving. But what she is actually doing is adapting to an environment that her attachment system registers as unsafe — and that adaptation comes at a cost.
What This Means for Parents: Practical Strategies
Understanding this research is not about inducing guilt in working parents — it is about making informed decisions and taking targeted steps to protect the parent-child bond. Here is what the evidence supports:
Prioritise the Attachment Relationship Above All Else
The most consistent finding across decades of research is that parent and family characteristics are more strongly linked to child development than child care features. Whatever childcare arrangement you use, the quality and depth of your relationship with your child remains the single most important factor in their long-term outcomes. Make connection the first priority — at drop-off, at pick-up, in the evenings and on weekends.
Honour and Protect Shyness
If your toddler is still shy around their daycare educators after several weeks, do not push or minimise it. That shyness is information — the relationship has not yet developed to a level of trust and safety. Work collaboratively with the educator to build that bridge slowly, keeping attachment at the centre: introductions through you first, time for the child to observe from the safety of your arms before you leave, gradual transitions rather than abrupt separations.
Choose Care Settings That Prioritise Stable, Warm Relationships
Research consistently shows that positive, responsive caregiver behaviour is the feature of childcare most strongly associated with better outcomes for children. When selecting care, prioritise low child-to-caregiver ratios, low staff turnover, and educators who are warm, attuned, and committed to getting to know your child as an individual. The goal is for your child to form a genuine secondary attachment bond with one consistent carer.
Be Intentional About Re-Connection
Children who spend long hours away from their parents need deliberate, unhurried reconnection time when they return home. This is not screen time together or running errands side-by-side — it is face-to-face, child-led, playful connection that signals to your child’s nervous system: you are safe, I am here, our bond is intact. Research on Neufeld’s developmental model affirms that this kind of deliberate reconnection is what keeps the parent-child relationship the dominant attachment force in a child’s life, even when hours are spent apart.
Reconsider the Age and Hours of Enrolment
Babies younger than approximately six months have not fully developed the capacity for attachment and may not register the same separation distress. However, from around nine months of age, a child’s primary attachment bond is actively forming — making this a particularly sensitive period for separation. Research on disorganized attachment found that as care hours increased from 40 to 60 hours per week after six months of age, the risk of disorganized attachment increased. Where possible, delaying and limiting hours of group care during the first two to three years of life may meaningfully reduce stress and protect developmental outcomes.
Watch for Peer Orientation — and Gently Pull Back Toward You
If your child seems more interested in their peer friendships than in your company, resists sharing things with you, or seems to look to friends for comfort in ways that used to be reserved for you — these are signals worth attending to. The research-informed response is not to criticise friendships, but to invest in deepening your own connection: more one-on-one time, shared rituals, playful engagement, and genuine curiosity about your child’s inner life. The parental relationship, when tended, will naturally re-emerge as the primary attachment.
A Final Word
The question of whether daycare socialises children better is not a simple one — and the answer depends entirely on what we mean by socialisation. If we mean becoming comfortable with strangers, spending more time around age-mates, and ceasing to cry at drop-off, then yes, group care achieves those things. But if we mean developing the emotional security, self-knowledge, relational capacity, and resilience to thrive across a lifetime, the evidence points in a very different direction.
True social competence does not grow from peer contact alone. It is built on the secure, consistent, loving relationship between a child and their parent — and everything that flows from it. Group care settings can be part of a child’s life without harm, but only when parents understand the risks, stay alert to the warning signs, and remain the irreplaceable anchor in their child’s emotional world.
References drawn from the works of Dr. Gordon Neufeld (Neufeld Institute); peer-reviewed research published in Child Development, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Frontiers in Psychology, and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.
Neufeld, G. (2013). Are children better socialized in daycare? Institute of Marriage and Family Canada video interview. [Neufeld Institute / IMFC]
Neufeld Institute. (n.d.). The Neufeld Approach: Attachment-based developmental model.
Neufeld Institute. (2024). Roots of Attachment: The six stages of relationship (webinar description and resources).
Child Care Providers Resource Network. (n.d.). Attachment: Nurturing the connection (summary of Neufeld’s six phases of attachment).
Vermeer, H. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2006). Children’s elevated cortisol levels at daycare: A review and meta-analysis. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 21(3), 390–401.
Geoffroy, M. C., Côté, S. M., et al. (2010). The rise in cortisol in family daycare: Associations with aspects of care quality, child behavior, and child sex. Child Development, 81(3), 851–869.
Phillips, D., Fox, N. A., & Gunnar, M. R. (2011). Young children’s full-day patterns of cortisol production on child care days. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 36(2), 205–214.
Melhuish, E. (2020). Childcare outside the family for the under-threes: cause for concern? Archives of Disease in Childhood, 105(2), 103–107.
ChildCareED. (n.d.). The role of attachment in early childhood development (overview of attachment and outcomes in early education settings).
Brightwheel. (2025). Attachment theory in early childhood: A guide for educators.
Social inequalities in childcare quality and their effects on children’s development at school entry. (2015). Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 69(9), 841–848.
Early childhood teacher–child attachment: A brief review of the literature. He Kupu (New Zealand early childhood journal).
