Host: What kind of childcare arrangements are the best?

Dr. Diana Zuckerman: One of the very important things that parents should think about is getting licensed daycare. There is a lot of unlicensed childcare in this country and there is a reason why we have licenses for this. It's a very important job and you shouldn't have just anybody taking care of your children. So if a daycare center is licensed then you know that they have passed some inspection and usually, it means that the people providing the care have a certain amount of knowledge. They are not going to mess up on some basic issues like whether the baby should be going to sleep on their back or on their tummy, for example. So you do want a licensed daycare center. You want a place that looks and feels safe and you want to visit it enough to know what's really going on there and let me just say because I have seen so many daycare centers like this. Children should not be strapped in seats watching television probably for even half an hour and sometimes that's what they are doing most of the day. That is not what a daycare center or a childcare facility should be providing.