The Child Care HOME Inventories: assessing the quality of family child care homes

Versions of the HOME Inventory for use in family child care homes are described. The Infant/Toddler version is designed for use when children are less than 3 years old; the Early Childhood version for children ages 3–6. Psychometric characteristics of the child care versions of HOME are similar to the psychometric characteristics found for the original HOME used to measure the family environment. Child Care HOME scores were strongly related to intensive observational measures of behavior among child care providers and to measures of physical and organizational aspects of the environment. Because the inventories take less time and training to administer than most current measures of family child care, they may provide a way for licensing workers and others responsible for maintaining quality in child care to obtain useful information about this widely used but minimally monitored form of non-parental care.     

Transition to child care: associations with infant-mother attachment, infant negative emotion, and cortisol elevations

Seventy 15-month-old infants were studied at home before starting child care, during adaptation (mothers present) and separation (first 9 days without mothers) phases, and 5 months later. Security of infant-mother attachment was assessed before and 3 months after child care began. In the separation phase, salivary cortisol rose over the first 60 min following the mothers' departures to levels that were 75% to 100% higher than at home. Compared with insecure infants, secure infants had markedly lower cortisol levels during the adaptation phase and higher fuss and cry levels during the separation phase, and their fuss and cry levels were significantly correlated with their cortisol levels. Attachments remained secure or became secure if mothers spent more days adapting their children to child care.     

The relationship between quality of infant-mother attachment and infant competence in initial encounters with peers.

18-month-old infants and their mothers were observed in the Ainsworth strange situation (SS) in order that security of attachment might be assessed. Infant dyads were created for observation in unstructured peer interaction according to their SS classification (security of attachment). Focus was on the subgroups within the securely attached (B) category. Results indicated a relationship between quality of infant-mother attachment and infant peer competence. The B1 and B2 infants engaged in more frequent and more sophisticated interaction with peers than did the B3 and B4 infants, who intensely sought proximity and contact with their mothers in the peer session just as in the SS. The B1 and B2 infants engaged in more distal interaction with their mothers and were more sociable with the peers' mothers and with the stranger in the SS. Implications of individual differences in quality of attachment for the development of social competence and social relationships are discussed.     

The Effects of Infant Child Care on Infant-Mother Attachment Security: Results of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care NICHD Early Child Care Research Network

The aims of this investigation were to determine whether Strange Situation attachment classifications were equally valid for infants with and without extensive child-care experience in the first year of life and whether early Child Care experience, alone or in combination with mother/child factors, was associated with attachment security, and specifically with insecure-avoidant attachment. Participants were 1,153 infants and their mothers at the 10 sites of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Mother were interviewed, given questionnairies, and observed in play and in the home when their infants were from 1 to 15 months of age; infants were observed in child care at 6 and 15 months and in the Strange Situation at 15 months. Infants with extensive Child Care experience did not differ from infants without child-care in the distress they exhibited during separations from mother in the Strange situation or in the confidence with which trained coders assigned them attachment classifications. There were no significant main effects of Child Care experience (quality, amount, age of entry, stability, or type of care) on attachment security or avoidance. There were, however, significant man effects of maternal sensitivity and responsiveness. Significant interaction effects revealed that infants were less likely to be secure when low maternal sensitivity/responsiveness was combined with poor quality child care, more than minimal amounts of child care, or more than one care arrangement. In addition, boys experiencing many hours in care and girls in minimal amounts of care were somewhat less likely to be securely attachment.     

Child care in poor communities: early learning effects of type, quality, and stability

Young children in poor communities are spending more hours in nonparental care because of policy reforms and expansion of early childhood programs. Studies show positive effects of high-quality center-based care on children's cognitive growth. Yet, little is known about the effects of center care typically available in poor communities or the effects of home-based care. Using a sample of children who were between 12 and 42 months when their mothers entered welfare-to-work programs, this paper finds positive cognitive effects for children in center care. Children also display stronger cognitive growth when caregivers are more sensitive and responsive, and stronger social development when providers have education beyond high school. Children in family child care homes show more behavioral problems but no cognitive differences.     

The ups and downs of child care: Variations in child care quality and exposure across the early years

There is considerable policy interest in understanding the role of child care in children’s development. Yet little research has examined whether individual children experience changes in child care quality across their early years, and less has included children’s varying levels of exposure to care in analyses of child care trajectories. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, this study seeks to fill these gaps by studying the non-maternal care experiences of children whose mothers work at some point during their early years. We find that few of these children experience continuously high-quality care or continuously low-quality care. Instead, many children experience changes in child care quality. Children from low socioeconomic status families are more likely to experience low-quality care than children who are never poor, but children who are never poor are more likely to have child care histories that include both low- and high-quality care arrangements. We discuss the implications of our findings for studies of selection into low-quality child care arrangements and the effects of child care quality on children’s development.     

Child Care and Children's Peer Interaction at 24 and 36 Months: The NICHD Study of Early Child Care

Data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care were examined to determine how children's experiences in child care were related to peer competence at 24 and 36 months of age, after controlling for the effects of family and child characteristics. Peer competence was assessed using mother and caregiver ratings as well as observations of children with their peers in child care, and at 36 months from observations of dyadic play with a familiar peer. Consistent, albeit modest, relations were found between child-care experiences in the first 3 years of life and children's peer competencies. Positive, responsive caregiver behavior was the feature of child care most consistently associated with positive, skilled peer interaction in child care. Children with more experience in child-care settings with other children present were observed to be more positive and skilled in their peer play in child care, although their caregivers rated them as more negative with playmates. Children who spent more hours in child care were rated by their caregivers as more negative in peer play, but their observed peer play was not related to the quantity of care. Child-care experiences were not associated with peer competence as rated by mothers or as observed in dyadic play with a friend. Maternal sensitivity and children's cognitive and language competence predicted peer competence across all settings and informants, suggesting that family and child-care contexts may play different, but complementary roles in the development of early emerging individual differences in peer interaction.     

The relation of child care to cognitive and language development. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network

Children from 10 sites in the United States were followed from birth to age 3 to determine how experiences in child care relate to cognitive and language development (Ns varied between 595 and 856, depending on the assessment). Multiple assessments of family and child care environments and of cognitive and language competence were collected. Analyses that adjusted for maternal vocabulary score, family income, child gender, observed quality of the home environment, and observed maternal cognitive stimulation indicated that the overall quality of child care, and language stimulation in particular, was consistently but modestly related to cognitive and language outcomes at ages 15, 24, and 36 months. The effect sizes for high (top quartile) versus low (bottom quartile) quality ranged from .18 to .48. After adjusting for child care quality, cumulative experience in center-based care was associated with better outcomes than was participation in other types of care. The amount of time children spent in care was not related to outcomes. Children in exclusive maternal care did not differ systematically from children in child care. Tests for lagged relations of earlier child care experiences to later performance (adjusting for current child care) showed that language stimulation predicted subsequent cognitive and language performance 9 to 12 months later. Although children in center care at age 3 performed better than children in other types of care, earlier experience in child care homes was associated with better performance at age 3 than was experience in other types of care. The relations of child care variables to outcomes did not vary consistently as a function of family income, quality of home environment, child gender, or ethnic group.     

The relative effects of maternal and child problems on the quality of attachment: a meta-analysis of attachment in clinical samples.

In this meta-analysis of 34 clinical studies on attachment the hypothesis is tested that maternal problems such as mental illness lead to more deviating attachment classification distributions than child problems such as deafness. A correspondence analysis on 21 North American studies with normal subjects produced a baseline against which the clinical samples could be evaluated. Separate analyses were carried out on studies containing the traditional A, B, C classifications and on studies that also included the recently discovered D or A/C category. Results show that groups with a primary identification of maternal problems show attachment classification distributions highly divergent from the normal distributions, whereas groups with a primary identification of child problems show distributions that are similar to the distributions of normal samples. The introduction of the D or A/C classifications (about 15% in normal samples) reveals an overrepresentation of D or A/C in the child problem groups, but the resulting distribution still is much closer to the normal distributions compared to the samples with maternal problems. In clinical samples, the mother appears to play a more important role than the child in shaping the quality of the infant-mother attachment relationship.     

The Child Care Ecology Inventory: A domain-specific measure of home-based child care quality to promote social competence for school readiness

This study investigates the reliability and validity of the Child Care Ecology Inventory (CCEI), a measure of the quality of family child care in the social domain. The CCEI focuses on research-based environmental features and caregiving practices for promoting positive social development in preschool-age children. A total of 198 family child care homes in the Northwest USA participated. Good scale reliabilities were found for the measures of the environment (Enrichment and Organization) and for caregivers’ practices (Monitoring, Positive Attention, Promoting Social Skills, and Teaching Rules) and interrater reliability was adequate for research purposes. The CCEI was associated with other commonly used measures of child care quality that assessed similar environmental and caregiving constructs. Linear regression models were run to determine the features of family child care quality that were concurrently associated with observed child behavior. The child–caregiver ratio, Environment Organization, and caregivers’ Teaching Rules were negatively associated with children's problem behavior (noncompliance and aggression). Caregivers’ provision of Planned Activities/Routines and Positive Attention were associated with positive child behavior. Results indicate that different aspects of quality are related to different aspects of children's social interactions and behaviors.     

Effects of maternal absence due to employment on the quality of infant-mother attachment in a low-risk sample

Recent reports have suggested that day-care experience initiated prior to 12 months of age is associated with increased proportions of infants whose attachment to mother is classified as "insecure-avoidant." However, reviewers have questioned the generality of these findings, noting that samples in which associations between early day-care experience and avoidant attachment patterns have been reported come from high-risk populations, and/or that the infants' day-care settings may not have been of high quality. In the present study, effects of maternal absences on infant-mother attachment quality were assessed in a low-risk, middle-class sample (N = 110). In all instances, substitute care had been initiated at least 4 months prior to the infant's first birthday and was provided in the infant's home by a person unrelated to the baby. Infants were assessed using the Ainsworth Strange Situation when they were 12-13 months of age. Analyses indicated that a significantly greater proportion of infants whose mothers worked outside the home (N = 54) were assigned to the category "insecure-avoidant" as compared to infants whose mothers remained in the home (N = 56) throughout the first year of life. Analyses of demographic and psychological data available for the sample indicated that this relation is dependent upon maternal parity (primi- vs. multiparous mother). The association between attachment quality and work status was significant only for firstborn children of full-time working mothers. The results are interpreted as evidence that the repeated daily separations experienced by infants whose mothers are working full-time constitute a "risk" factor for the development of "insecure-avoidant" infant-mother attachments.     

Maternal employment and child cognitive outcomes in the first three years of life: the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

With increased numbers of women employed in their children's first year of life and with increased attention being paid by parents and policy makers to the importance of early experiences for children, establishing the links that might exist between early maternal employment and child cognitive outcomes is more important than ever. Negative associations between maternal employment during the first year of life and children's cognitive outcomes at age 3 (and later ages) have been reported using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement. However, it was not known whether these findings would be replicated in another study, nor whether these results were due to features of child care (e.g., quality, type), home environment (e.g., provision of learning), and/or parenting (e.g., sensitivity). This study explored these issues using data on 900 European American children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care, which provides information on child cognitive scores at 15, 24, and 36 months, as well as data about the home environment (as assessed by the Home Observation of the Measurement of the Environment Scale), parental sensitivity, and child-care quality and type over the first 3 years of life. Maternal employment by the ninth month was found to be linked to lower Bracken School Readiness scores at 36 months, with the effects more pronounced when mothers were working 30 hr or more per week and with effects more pronounced for certain subgroups (i.e., children whose mothers were not sensitive, boys, and children with married parents). Although quality of child care, home environment, and maternal sensitivity also mattered, the negative effects of working 30 hr or more per week in the first 9 months were still found, even when controlling for child-care quality, the quality of the home environment, and maternal sensitivity. Implications for policy are also discussed.     

Child care and family processes: Bi-directional relations between child care quality,home environments,and maternal depression

The current study examined whether within-family changes in child care quality and quantity predicted subsequent changes in home environment quality and maternal depression across early childhood (6 to 54 months of age). Data were drawn from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1239; 77% White; 48% female; data collection from 1991 to 1996), and were analyzed using Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models. Within-family increases in child care quality predicted modest increases in home environment quality (β = .13–.17). These effects were most robust from child age 6 to 15 months. Increases in child care quality produced small, statistically non-significant, reductions in depression. Time-specific increases in child care quantity were not consistently predictive of either outcome.     

Social-emotional adaptation and infant-mother attachment in siblings: role of the mother in cross-sibling consistency

We investigated concordance in social-emotional behavior and attachment of first- and secondborn siblings from 65 families. Both children were seen at 24 months in a problem-solving procedure and at 12 months in the Strange Situation. Maternal behavior at 24 months also was examined. Child behaviors at 24 months showed trends toward concordance across siblings. Maternal behavior was significantly stable across siblings and correlated significantly with child competence. In post-hoc analyses, the sample was split into 2 groups: maternal behavior stable (N = 36) and maternal behavior unstable. In the first group, cross-sibling correlations were significant and larger than for the whole sample; in the second group, cross-sibling correlations were low and nonsignificant. There also was significant concordance across siblings in attachment classification. These data suggest that it is essential to consider the care received by different children in investigating similarities in siblings' behavior.     

Relating quality of center-based child care to early cognitive and language development longitudinally

How quality of center-based child care relates to early cognitive and language development was examined longitudinally from 6 to 36 months of age in a sample of 89 African American children. Both structural and process measures of quality of child care were collected through observation of the infant classroom. Results indicated that higher quality child care was related to higher measures of cognitive development (Bayley Scales of Infant Development), language development (Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development), and communication skills (Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales) across time, even after adjusting for selected child and family characteristics. In addition, classrooms that met professional recommendations regarding child:adult ratios tended to have children with better language skills. Classrooms that met recommendations regarding teacher education tended to have girls with better cognitive and receptive language skills. These findings, in conjunction with the growing child-care literature, provide further evidence that researchers and policymakers should strive to improve the quality of child care to enhance early development of such vulnerable children.     

Developmental trajectories and longitudinal mediation effects of self-esteem,peer attachment,child maltreatment and depression on early adolescents

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study is to identify the developmental trajectories of peer attachment, self-esteem, depression, and child maltreatment, and to understand the longitudinal mediation effects that peer attachment and self-esteem have on the influence of perceived abuse on early adolescent depression.MethodsThis study uses Year 1 to Year 5 data of the 4th grader panel of the Korea Youth Panel Survey (KYPS) and utilizes a multivariate latent growth model to analyze the main variables in the applicable data between 5th (i.e., Year 2) and 8th (i.e., Year 5) grades.ResultsThe results indicate that from the 5th to the 8th grade, the degree of abuse and depression increases while self-esteem gradually decreases with slowly lowering peer attachment. A significant distribution of the initial values and the rate of change were present for all main variables of the study, confirming individual differences in time wise changes. Further, more exposure to abuse correlated with a decrease in self-esteem, while an increase in self-esteem greatly reduced depression. The initial value of self-esteem showed a partial mediation effect, whereas the rate of change indicated a full mediation effect with a significant longitudinal mediation effect. More experience of abuse during early adolescence indicated a lower degree of peer attachment, and a higher peer attachment was related to decreased depression. A significant partial mediation effect was present for both the initial value and the rate of change of peer attachment, and a longitudinal mediation effect was present.Practice implicationsThis study confirmed that self-esteem in early adolescents is an important protective factor that can greatly reduce the degree of depression, and suggests continuous interventions conducted to increase self-esteem in adolescence. Furthermore, by determining that peer attachment decreases the degree of depression in children at risk, the study emphasizes the healing aspect of adolescent peer attachment.     

Rights of the Child and Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe

‘Securing the rights articulated in the Convention is an effective approach to improving the quality of early experiences.’ 1 1 Early Childhood Rights Indicators, A guide for Monitoring the Convention on the Rights of the Child, http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/media/uploads/documents/internationalresearchbriefjan2012.pdf , p2
This article analyses early childhood education and care and child rights in early childhood and their relationship in the European Union. Both are primarily national competencies. The EU has limited access and tools to influence policies and practices, while there are many ways in which indirect interventions are not only possible, but greatly used, often in areas that do not seem to be closely related to the issues discussed here. Yet there is a strong desire and interest of the different EU institutions to encourage and support Member States to implement both ECEC targets and child rights. In this article, we show that, while ECEC has become an essential part of different policies at EU level, there have been efforts to implement and mainstream child rights, with special attention paid to specific dimensions in relation to early childhood policies and practices, but a child rights based approach is missing.     

Teacher–child relationship quality: The roles of child temperament and teacher–child interactions

Young children's relationships with teachers predict social and academic success. This study examines contributions of child temperament (shyness, effortful control) and gender to teacher–child relationship quality both directly and indirectly through the frequency of teacher–child interactions in the classroom. Using an NICHD SECCYD sample of 819 first grade children, four findings emerged: (a) children's shyness, effortful control, and gender contributed directly to teacher–child conflict and closeness; (b) children's shyness contributed to the frequency of child-initiated teacher–child interactions, and children's effortful control contributed to the frequency of teacher-initiated teacher–child interactions; (c) shyness related to teacher–child closeness indirectly through the frequency of child-initiated teacher–child interactions; (d) the frequency of child- and teacher-initiated interactions contributed to each other. Results inform practitioners and researchers of characteristics that put children at risk for failure to form positive relationships with teachers.