A report in New Zealand has been released stating that mothers are harming their children by sending them in day care centers at a very early stage in their lives. This report titled Who Cares? Mothers, Daycare and Child Wellbeing in New Zealand was from the group Family First New Zealand. The controversial report was also prepared by a British psychologist named Aric Sigman.

Sigman states in the report that separating children from their parents and sending them in daycare centers could potentially render a great impact on the first few years of children’s lives. In addition to that, sending children to school an early age could be a significant source of stress that would potentially affect their immune systems. This is based from evidences collected showing that 70 to 80 percent of those sent in daycare centers are having increased cortisol levels which is a major stress hormone. Increased cortisol levels may harm the immune system as well.

This controversial report has earned a lot of questions and its author, Aric Sigman, has been criticized in the past for relying on deliberately incompetent sources, ignoring inconvenient evidences and unreliable research.

Parents on the other hand were divided as to whether this report is indeed true or simply throwing irrelevant accusations on sending children on day care centers.

National director of Family first Bob McCoskrie said that the report was a compilation aiming to provide a new set of facts on the table. “[In the past] it’s all been about getting mothers back to work and the benefits of daycare in terms of outcomes, but there’s been no corresponding weight given to some of the research that’s coming through on the effects of long periods of childcare,” McCoskrie said. He also added that this was drawn from 100 researchers and not merely an opinion from Dr. Sigman.