[Healthy Aging in the 100-Year Era] Childcare Policies Need to Consider Young Children's 'Mental Health'

Controversy Over Lowering Elementary School Entry Age to 5
Policy Should Reflect Developmental Characteristics

Shin Euijin, Professor of Child Psychiatry at Yonsei University Severance Hospital.

The budget for children is a precise indicator of a country's welfare level. This is something I learned while writing a thesis investigating how overseas adoptees were doing. During the period when many children were being adopted abroad, our society's budget for children was really insufficient. It did not increase significantly afterward until the Park Geun-hye administration fully implemented the free childcare system, which raised the budget to about 10 trillion won, or 0.6% of the GDP, in 2014. The free childcare policy that was established focused more on supporting public childcare to promote women's participation in society rather than on the children's perspective, resulting in a rapid quantitative expansion rather than qualitative improvement in childcare. Consequently, there have been numerous child abuse cases, frequent turnover among teachers, and developmental gaps among children, making it very difficult for children and working mothers to endure the childcare environment.

In this situation, the new government's Minister of Education suddenly announced lowering the elementary school entrance age to 5 years old to resolve educational disparities early, which has sparked concerns among parents and related experts. While the intention to supply high-quality talent to society early and to close educational gaps amid rapidly declining population is not bad, it is questionable whether this decision was made with a clear understanding of the problems in our childcare and education fields.

No one would oppose the simple truth that childhood experiences shape a lifetime. Humans undergo active functional and structural brain changes in response to environmental stimuli until the age of 4, and the results last a lifetime. Especially, infants from birth to two years form attachment relationships with familiar adults, which provide emotional stability. If these attachment figures change frequently, severe anxiety and excessive secretion of stress hormones occur, negatively affecting brain development. No matter how good the physical environment is, if caregivers change frequently, infants cannot grow up healthy and happy?this is a developmental characteristic of infancy.

However, our current childcare system goes against these scientific facts. Many infants under two years old stay in small-scale childcare facilities, but the employment of childcare teachers in these facilities is unstable, with an average turnover rate of 34% among infant caregivers. Related organizations have raised their voices to improve the payment methods for teachers' salaries to ensure high-quality childcare for infants, but the government and political circles have yet to present clear measures.

Children are a representative "speechless" group in society who cannot express their own positions and must always rely on decisions made by adults such as parents, teachers, and policymakers. Therefore, advanced countries strive to implement the most rational policies considering children's developmental characteristics. For example, infants under two years old are ideally cared for at home by parents taking alternating one-year parental leaves rather than group childcare, supported by social policies. This contrasts sharply with our society, which is preoccupied with policies catering to parents' convenience, such as infant-dedicated daycare centers, nighttime childcare, and temporary childcare. It is no coincidence that infants with sensitive temperaments who repeatedly experience sudden separations from attachment figures develop amplified anxiety and become mute, visiting my clinic with language disorders.

Now, we must thoroughly analyze and decide whether existing policies are appropriate from the perspective of our children's mental health and brain development, and if there are shortcomings, how to specifically improve them and prioritize the budget. Improving our childcare system, which was hastily converted to a public childcare system without meticulous preparation, into a high-quality childcare system that meets children's needs is the first step to changing the future of South Korea, which is suffering from low birth rates.

Shin Euijin, Professor of Child Psychiatry, Yonsei University Severance Hospital