By Ohore Emmanuel Ufuoma
The Early Years classrooms have effectively become surrogate homes where educators now tie shoelaces, calm separation anxiety, supervise naps, enforce discipline, and provide comfort after minor injuries, which ought to be duties that should be performed by parents.
The extended work hours from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. for 6 days in a week, economic realities, and the proliferation of all-day, weekend-inclusive early learning programs have repositioned schools as the primary environment for early childhood development.
For a typical four-year-old, 9.5 hours in school accounts for about 75% of waking weekday time. With Saturday sessions added, the home is reduced to a space for meals, sleep, and brief routines.
The mandate of Early Years teachers has expanded far beyond academics. Current practice requires them to handle physical care, emotional regulation, and behavioral guidance concurrently.
Daily responsibilities include toileting assistance, feeding, conflict mediation, fatigue monitoring, and maintaining individual routines for 15–20 pupils.
The parent-child dynamic shifts when parents deliberately delegate care of the child, and even punishment, to educators. While parents set apart evenings and weekends for practical tasks, like food, homework, and bathing.
Psychologists term it "contact without connection." Although parents are physically present, time is divided and focused on tasks.
Children are more obedient and organized in class than they are at home, according to teachers. Parents describe the contrary. The pattern shows an expected result: the parent becomes the outlet for exhaustion, while the educator becomes the authority figure.
The labor market triggered the transfer of responsibilities between parents and educators.
Dual-income households are now the norm in major cities, and flexible work remains limited outside tech and finance.
Child caregiver costs compound the issue. Full-time caregiver care often costs almost half of a salary. Parents opt for schools with extended hours in order to kill two birds with one stone.
For educational centers, extended-day programs create parent-like responsibilities, and staffing, training, and compensation should reflect that. In leading centers, professional development in attachment theory and stress management is becoming standard.
For parents, the emphasis should be on quality rather than quantity.
Policymakers are beginning to prioritize employment rules that permit parental presence during early childhood and accessible, flexible daycare. Strong early attachment is associated with higher scholastic success and fewer behavioral problems in later life.
The Early Years teacher and the parents have not replaced each other. Both parties are only responding to a system that demands more hours in the workplace with fewer hours at home.
There has been a paradigm shift in the upbringing of children. The teachers now perform functions once meant for the family unit.
Intentional parenting inside the small windows has been left in the hands of caregivers.
Instead of the classroom remaining a place of learning, it has become the only home children know.
Ohore Emmanuel Ufuoma
Is an MBA student at Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa University, Turkey but profound transformation is taking place in families across Nigeria and many parts of the world, as Early Years schools increasingly become the primary home for young children while teachers assume responsibilities once reserved for parents.
Driven by rising living costs, demanding work schedules and the growing popularity of extended-day learning programmes, thousands of children now spend more of their waking hours with teachers than with their own parents.
Education analyst and MBA student at Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa University, Turkey, Ohore Emmanuel Ufuoma, says the changing economic landscape has redefined the role of Early Years educators, who now function as caregivers, disciplinarians, counsellors and emotional support systems in addition to teaching.
From as early as 8 a.m. until 6 p.m., six days a week, teachers are now responsible for tying shoelaces, supervising meals and naps, assisting with toileting, calming separation anxiety, settling disputes among pupils, treating minor injuries and maintaining discipline for classrooms of between 15 and 20 children.
For many four-year-olds, nearly 10 hours spent daily in school translates to almost three-quarters of their waking weekday life. With Saturday classes becoming increasingly common, home has been reduced largely to a place for eating, bathing and sleeping.
The development, experts warn, is gradually reshaping the traditional bond between parents and their children.
Psychologists describe the trend as "contact without connection," where parents remain physically present but have little meaningful interaction with their children because the few hours spent together are consumed by daily routines and household responsibilities.
Interestingly, teachers often report that children display better behaviour and discipline in school than at home. Parents, however, frequently experience the opposite, a situation experts attribute to the classroom becoming the child's primary structured environment while home serves as an outlet for emotional release after long school days.
The report also identifies economic realities as a major driver of the shift. With dual-income households becoming increasingly common and the high cost of hiring full-time caregivers, many parents now rely on schools offering extended-hour programmes as the most practical childcare option.
As the demands on educators continue to expand, experts say schools must invest more in teacher training, emotional support and child development programmes, while governments should implement family-friendly workplace policies that allow parents to spend more quality time with their young children.
According to Ufuoma, the issue is not about teachers replacing parents but about a changing society where work increasingly competes with family life.
"The classroom was designed to be a place of learning," he noted. "Today, for many children, it has become the second home they know best."
As modern life continues to reshape parenting, the question confronting society is no longer whether schools are teaching children, but whether they are now raising them.
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