Day Care

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Day Care
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Trends in Maternal Employment if returning to
work.

• 1960s -- when child entered kindergarten
• 1970s -- when child was 2-3 yrs old
• 1980s, 90s, 00s -- before child was 1 yr

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Family System
Day Care
Plus neighborhood, cultural values/norms,
socioeconomic factors
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Family Medical Leave Policy

• USA up to 12 weeks unpaid (companies of 50
  employees or more)
• Other Countries
• Canada
• Sweden
• Peoples Republic of China
• Germany

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Care Arrangements Preschoolers (2005)

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(No Transcript)
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Care Arrangements Preschoolers (2005)
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Time in Care Hours/weekPreschoolers (2005)
Any arrangement 36 hours
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Day Care Facts

• Child care workers get paid very little
• at poverty line
• no benefits (vacation, sick leave, health ins.)
• High turnover -- 41 quit each year
• Before age 3, estimate 2-6 care providers

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Licensing Regulations

• Maine ratios for Centers
• 4 infants/toddlers per adult (6 weeks-2 years)
• 8 children per adult (2-5 years) plus 2 children
  over 5 years
• 12 children per adult (6-12 years)
• Mixed aged programs allowed

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Licensing Regulations

• Maine ratios for Home Day Care (one provider)
• 4 infants per adult (6 weeks-2 years) OR
• 3 infants/toddlers plus 3 preschoolers, plus 2
  school aged children OR
• 8 preschoolers plus 2 school aged children OR
• 12 school aged children

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Effects of Day Care

• Questions?
• What will we learn from asking these questions?

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Early Concerns about Nonmaternal Care for Children

• Higher rate of insecure attachment to mother
  (especially if gt35 hours per week)
• Criticisms of studies
• Small samples (N 100 was still small)
• Constrained samples (predominantly Caucasian,
  middle to lower class SES)
• Didnt assess day care centers or home envi.
• NICHD National Institute of Child Health and
  Human Development

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Ongoing NICHD STUDY (started 1997)

• Conducted by prominent researchers
• 14 universities
• 9 states
• Little Rock, AR Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, PA
• Orange County, CA Charlottesville, VA
  
• Lawrence and Topeka, KS Seattle, WA
• Boston, MA
  Madison, WI
• Morganton and Hickory, NC

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Features of the Study

• Rural, urban
• Variety of ethnicities
• Low, middle, and upper class households
• Variation in type of child-care (center, home,
  relative, etc)
• Variation in child-care quality
• Large sample (1,281 families)

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Some of the Measures

• Mothers wellbeing
• Childs health
• Parenting stress
• HOME
• Quality of child care setting
• General demographics

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Q1 Attachment Security

• Strange Situation at 6 mos and 15 mos
• Type of care
• History of care experience (number of changes)
• Quality of care
• Quality of home

NICHD (1997)
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Type of Care at 5 mos
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Type of Care at 14 mos
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Other Variables

• No differences in security classification as a
  function of
• age of entry into day care
• number of hours per week in day care
• number of day care changes over the course of the
  study

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Insecure Attachment more likely in

• poor families (economic stress undermines
  parenting?)
• families with unresponsive and insensitive moms
• families selecting low quality day care settings
• families where mom returned to work early

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Q2 Social and cognitive outcomes for older
children

• Behavior problems
• Prosocial behavior
• Language
• 24 and 36 months of age
• N 794

NICHD (2000)
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Child care and risk factor effects - Three
possibilities

• Compensatory day care makes up for other risks
• Lost resources day care introduces risk in
  low risk kids
• Dual-risk day care amplifies risk

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Measures

• Problem behavior- reported by mom and caregiver
• Prosocial behavior reported by mom and
  caregiver
• Language comprehension

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Three Risk Factors

• Psychosocial
• Maternal depression
• Lack of social support
• Parenting stress
• Low marital quality
• Socioeconomic
• Income-to-needs ratio
• Financial stress
• Mothers education

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Three Risk Factors

• Sociocultural
• Single parent status
• Minority status

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Results

• Higher family psychosocial risk more behavior
  problems and less prosocial behavior

• Higher socioeconomic risk and sociocultural risk
  lower language skills

Media Headline Study Shows Day Care Makes Kids
Aggressive
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Effects of Child Care?

• Compensatory day care makes up for other risks
• Lost resources day care introduces risk in
  low risk kids
• Dual-risk day care amplifies risk

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Effects of Child Care?

• Compensatory day care makes up for other risks
• Lost resources day care introduces risk in
  low risk kids
• Dual-risk day care amplifies risk

Prosocial behavior less seen when higher risk
sociocultural children were in low quality child
care.
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NICHD Take Home Message