Belsky argues that these claims come out of a wish on the part of other researchers to mollify parents about their use of child care. He believes that the links between child care and negative behavior or affect are questioned and downplayed by other researchers, while findings about the positive effects of child care (increased cognitive and language skills, as well as enhanced school readiness) are framed as definitive conclusions and widely publicized.

"The fact that we rarely are cautious in telling the American people that the [positive] effects of quality [child care] are rather limited, may not be long lasting and cannot be assumed to be causal given the research design of our study is no less misleading and perhaps falsely encouraging," says Belsky. "But why is that OK?"

Says Cochran at Cornell, "His presentation of the data is not scientific in the sense that he isn't including any of the caveats, but that is the reason you have a large group of scientists. It is the responsibility of the other lead investigators to balance the perspective and I don't see that happening.

"Conclusions are drawn from a study like this on a number of different levels," continues Cochran. "I don't see why they would hesitate to acknowledge that this is a finding pretty deep down in these data, and that as scientists it is dangerous for them to go very far with something very deep in the study design."

In fact, Friedman and other researchers have tried to emphasize the inability of the study to attribute causes to their findings -- whether the findings are positive or negative. "We don't know what the implications are," said Friedman in a press conference. "We don't understand why we got these findings." And so, she concluded, "NICHD is not willing to get into policy recommendations."

In the same way that these provisos have not stopped Belsky from crowing about the validity of his early findings about child care, they have not stopped those who believe mothers should be home with their children from claiming a victory for their cause. Conservative Phyllis Schlafly wrote that the study's findings confirm her own conclusions about the scourge of feminism: "True science always verifies reality; it's only junk science that manufactures illusions based on ideologies." Belsky, she says, "didn't kowtow to the Politically Correct gestapo, as so many academics have done."

Lowell Ponte, in the right-wing FrontPage magazine, champions Belsky, whose 1986 article critical of child care, he says, "blew a gaping hole in Marxist and feminist dogmas about letting Hillary's collectivist 'village' raise our children so their mothers could pursue careers." If this study is right, if Belsky is right, says Ponte, mothers pursuing a career "may be failing as mothers by selfishly pursuing their careers while leaving their children in the hands of low-paid day-caring strangers." The guilt they feel is palpable, says Ponte: "You can smell the desperate self-delusion in the frenzied prose of feminist attacks against [the study]."

The fact is that the Early Child Care Study is the focus of a huge amount of anxiety and opinion and it has been suggested at least once in the press (a 1997 article by Arianna Huffington comes to mind) that the vast expense of the survey (an estimated $80 million at last count) is frivolous given the lack of conclusive results and the common-sense quality of the findings so far. Essentially, those findings are: first, that the better quality the child care, the better outcome for the child; and second, that the amount of day care is not as important as whether the child is neglected at home. It is possible that in grabbing the spotlight, Jay Belsky is not just enraging his colleagues' scientific sensibilities but bringing unwanted scrutiny to the study.

If nothing else, Belsky's premature pronouncement about the hazards of long-term day care does require the NICHD to emphasize the inconclusive nature of its findings, a fact that cannot be satisfying for parents nervously awaiting judgment and taxpayers paying the bill.

The other researchers, Cochran says, "have no reason to be afraid of Belsky. But I can imagine them not wanting to articulate the limitations in the design for fear of jeopardizing the whole thing. They might not want to shine the light on that."

By and large, however, all the researchers, including Belsky, believe that the study is important for its incremental findings and essential for what it ultimately may show about the effects of child care. And they all agree that the same standard must be applied to all the findings, good or bad: It must be conceded that child care cannot yet be identified as a concrete and exclusive cause for any of their findings, including those that Jay Belsky so passionately believes might vindicate him.

"The reality is that we don't need this study to tell us what to do, we know what to do," says Cochran. "Millions of Americans who work in this field can tell you what's needed. This is not rocket science: We're spending half as much money on early care and education than we should in the United States and we are trying to support that system on the backs of parents that can't afford the cost of quality care.

"What they can afford is the cost of mediocre care. I don't think we would ever dream of asking parents whose children are in public school to pay for that. There would be a huge revolt. But we do it with child care at the moment and it is not constructive."

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