Does amount of time spent in child care predict socioemotional adjustment during the transition to kindergarten?

To examine relations between time in nonmaternal care through the first 4.5 years of life and children's socioemotional adjustment, data on social competence and problem behavior were examined when children participating in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care were 4.5 years of age and when in kindergarten. The more time children spent in any of a variety of nonmaternal care arrangements across the first 4.5 years of life, the more externalizing problems and conflict with adults they manifested at 54 months of age and in kindergarten, as reported by mothers, caregivers, and teachers. These effects remained, for the most part, even when quality, type, and instability of child care were controlled, and when maternal sensitivity and other family background factors were taken into account. The magnitude of quantity of care effects were modest and smaller than those of maternal sensitivity and indicators of family socioeconomic status, though typically greater than those of other features of child care, maternal depression, and infant temperament. There was no apparent threshold for quantity effects. More time in care not only predicted problem behavior measured on a continuous scale in a dose-response pattern but also predicted at-risk (though not clinical) levels of problem behavior, as well as assertiveness, disobedience, and aggression.     

The “Effects” of infant day care reconsidered

Evidence concerning the developmental correlates of nonmaternal care in the first year of life are examined with respect to infant-mother attachment and subsequent social development. Even though the evidence is somewhat inconsistent, a circumstantial case remarkably consistent with attachment theory can be made that extensive infant day care experience is associated with insecure attachment during infancy and heightened aggressiveness and noncompliance during the preschool and early school-age years. Several studies indicate that such later consequences may dissipate over time, but it is not evident that this is always the case. It is concluded that some nonmaternal care arrangement in the first year for more than 20 hours per week may be a risk factor in the emergence of developmental difficulties and that the ultimate consequences of such risk are best understood in the context of characteristics of the child, the family, and the caregiving milieu. It is emphasized that this reading of the literature carries with it no inevitable implications for public policy.     

Child care effects on the development of toddlers with special needs

Among children with significant developmental delays or with biomedical risk factors for developing delays, those who were in nonmaternal child care (n=80) did not differ from children staying at home with their mothers (n=73) on mental, motor, or adaptive functioning; behavior problems; or attachment security at 30 months of age. An ecological model then was used to predict outcomes for children who had been observed in child care. After accounting for selection effects, child characteristics at 12 months of age, and quality of home caregiving, none of the child-care variables (age of entry, hours, quality) predicted mental or motor development or attachment security among children in nonmaternal care. Older age of entry into child care predicted greater behavioral organization during testing. Higher observed quality of caregiving in child care predicted better adaptive behavior. Additionally, quality of home caregiving predicted mental development, behavioral organization, and secure attachment to mother.     

Trouble in the Second Year: Three Questions about Family Interaction

3 questions regarding family interaction in the second year of life are addressed in this report on 69 families rearing firstborn sons. Question 1 concerns the identification, via cluster analysis, of families having difficulty managing their child, using codings of narrative records of family interaction when children were 15 and 21 months of age. Parents in families identified as "troubled" at each age tried to control their toddlers most often, were least likely to rely upon control-plus-guidance management strategies, had children who defied them most frequently, and experienced the greatest escalation of negative affect in these control encounters. Families identified as "troubled" at both 15 and 21 months had children who received the highest "externalizing" problem scores at 18 months and mothers who experienced the most daily hassles during the second year. Question 2 concerns the antecedents of "trouble in the second year." Discriminant function analyses indicated that membership in the groups of families that appeared troubled at both ages of measurement ( n = 15 ), at only one age (n = 28), or never ( n = 26) could be reliably predicted (hit rate = 71%) using a set of 9 measurements of parent personality, child emotionality/temperament, marital quality, work-family relations, and social support, suggested by Belsky's model of the determinants of parenting, and social class. Question 3 concerns the proposition that extensive nonmaternal care in the first year is a risk factor for troubled family functioning in the second year. As hypothesized, prediction analysis showed that families at moderate and high contextual risk (based on 10 antecedent variables pertaining to Question 2) were significantly more likely to experience trouble in the second year when children experienced 20 or more hours per week of nonmaternal care in their first year, and these results could not be attributed to "selection effects."     

The Impact of Child Care Subsidy Use on Child Care Quality

In 2008, the federal government allotted $7 billion in child care subsidies to low-income families through the state-administered Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), now the government's largest child care program (US DHHS, 2008). Although subsidies reduce costs for families and facilitate parental employment, it is unclear how they impact the quality of care families purchase. This study investigates the impact of government subsidization on parents’ selection of child care quality using multivariate regression and propensity score matching approaches to account for differential selection into subsidy receipt and care arrangements. Data were drawn from the Child Care Supplement to the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (CCS-FFCWS), conducted in 2002 and 2003 in 14 of the 20 FFCWS cities when focal children were 3 years old (N = 456). Our results indicate that families who used subsidies chose higher quality care than comparable mothers who did not use subsidies, but only because subsidy recipients were more likely to use center-based care. Subgroup analyses revealed that families using subsidies purchased higher-quality home-based care but lower-quality center-based care than comparable non-recipients. Findings suggest that child care subsidies may serve as more than a work support for low-income families by enhancing the quality of nonmaternal care children experience but that this effect is largely attributable to recipients’ using formal child care arrangements (versus kith and kin care) more often than non-recipients.     

Less day care or different day care?

Commentary is provided on 2 papers published in this issue, which suggest some risks in nonmaternal or out-of-home care (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD] Early Child Care Research Network, this issue; Watamura, Donzella, Alwin, & Gunnar, this issue). In light of the findings, 2 child care policy options are examined: first, support for in-home care in the early years; and second, changes in the nature of out-of-home care. From ethnographic and experimental research, it is argued that out-of-home pre-elementary care can contribute positively to social development if it emphasizes (a) children's attachment to school and peer group, (b) constructivist rather than didactic learning, (c) intrinsic and internalized motivation, and (4) group structures that support social development.     

Welfare families' use of early childhood care and education programs, and implications for their children's development

With recent legislation placing a strong emphasis on the transition of welfare mothers into the workforce, it becomes increasingly important to understand whether and how participation in early childhood care and education programs has implications for the development of children from welfare families. This study focused on a sample of 182 African-American families, all of whom had applied for or were receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children, and each with a child of between 3 and 5 years of age. We first examined which of a wide range of background characteristics predicted participation in early childhood care and education programs. We then examined whether measures of the children's school readiness and social maturity were predicted by current participation in an early childhood program, above and beyond the background characteristics associated with the use of such a program. Our results indicate that participation in an early childhood program is associated with significantly higher scores on the measure of school readiness.     

Short-term follow-up of children at risk: comparison of the quality of life of children removed from home and children remaining at home

OBJECTIVE: To follow up the well-being of children at risk after a decision on their removal was made. METHOD: Social workers assessed the quality of life (QOL) of three groups of children (n = 92): children they had decided to keep at home, children whom they had removed to alternative care, and children who remained at home despite the decision to remove them. This is a prospective study, in which assessments were made at two points of time: first when the workers began to consider whether or not to remove the child, and again 6 months later. RESULTS: The findings show that even though the QOL of the children in the three groups was similarly low at the first measure, it differed in the second. The QOL of the children who were removed from home had improved, that of the children who remained at home in accord with the workers' decisions remained roughly the same, and that of the children for whom the decision to remove was not implemented declined. CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that children at risk may fare better in terms of QOL in alternative placement than at home, and highlight the high price paid by children for whom a decision to remove them from home is not implemented. Further research, however, is required, taking into consideration the interventions and services that the children and their families received in the different settings.     

Employed mothers and family day-care substitute caregivers: a comparative analysis of infant care

Despite dramatic increases in recent decades in the number of employed mothers with children under 3 years of age and the greater utilization of nonmaternal child-care services (particularly unregulated family day care), little is known about the nature and quality of care provided to these infants by their employed mothers and substitute caregivers. This study was conducted to provide a comparative assessment of maternal and nonmaternal infant caregiving practices in own-home and unregulated family day-care homes, respectively. 30 caregivers (10 employed mothers, 10 substitute caregivers, and 10 nonemployed mothers) were observed in interaction with 5-6-month-old infants using Yarrow, Rubenstein, and Pedersen's Home Environment and Mother-Infant Interaction scales. While no differences were observed in the caregiving of employed and nonemployed mothers, both of these groups exceeded the sitters in socially mediated stimulation, contingent responsiveness, positive affect, and overall level and variety of social stimulation. In addition, employed mothers provided more tactile-kinesthetic, visual, and auditory stimulation to their infants than did the substitute caregivers. However, no differences were found between the infants reared in the home and day-care settings in Bayley Mental and Psychomotor developmental abilities. Evidence implicated group size (total number of children) in the quality of caregiving in family day-care homes. The impact of daily separations and qualitatively different caregiving experiences on infants is discussed.     

Recouping and rethinking the effects of summer vacation on reading achievement

Vacations may have detrimental effects on maths and spelling performance, but the findings for reading are less conclusive. The purpose of this study was to analyse the effects of summer vacation on early literacy skills of young children. Participants included rising first and second‐graders, most of whom were at‐risk, struggling readers. No evidence of summer setback was evident for this sample of children; in fact, gains in reading (or, recoupment of any losses) were more common in children performing at lower levels than for those with higher scores at the end of the school year. Our outcomes are different from those reported by other researchers. We explain this with attention to the content of our comparisons, the grade levels investigated and measures used to assess performance, and discuss implications for future research based on our findings.     

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.     

Language maintenance and loss in a population study of young Australian children

Information about children's cultural and linguistic diversity and language acquisition patterns is important for the development of sustainable educational practices. While there is some knowledge about language maintenance and loss in adults and older children, there is limited information about young children. The first three waves of data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), involving 4252 young children, were considered longitudinally over the first five years of life to identify patterns of language maintenance and loss among those who speak languages other than English. The most common languages other than English spoken by the children were Arabic, Vietnamese, Italian, Spanish, and Greek and 9.1% of all children were reported to use a language other than English at wave 1, 15.7% at wave 2, and 15.2% at wave 3. Overall, 91.5% of children maintained speaking a language other than English between wave 1 and wave 2, and 86.6% did so between wave 1 and wave 3. Children's patterns of language acquisition and loss over the first five years of life varied within and between language groups. For example, Arabic-speaking children tended to maintain Arabic throughout early childhood, whereas Italian-speaking children's use of Italian decreased over the first five years of life while use of English steadily increased. Environmental and personal factors such as parental language use, presence of a grandparent in the home, type of early childhood care, first- and second-generation immigrant status, and parental perception of support from the educational environment were related to language maintenance among non-English speaking children.     

From care to education and work? Education and employment trajectories in early adulthood by children in out-of-home care

BackgroundTemporal dynamics during the early adulthood transition among children in out-of-home care is a neglected research area, leaving the possibility of coping with childhood adversity over time a poorly understood topic.ObjectiveTo explore early adulthood education and employment trajectories among young adults who experienced out-of-home care during childhood and to examine how various care history factors predict these trajectories.ParticipantsWe use longitudinal birth cohort data comprising individual-level information from national registers of all children born in Finland in 1987 (N = 59,476, of whom 1893 were in care).Setting and methodsWe use trajectory clustering from a previous study on the 1987 birth cohort to compare trajectories between children in care and a propensity score–matched group of peers never in care. We investigated the association between care history factors and trajectories with multinomial logistic regression modeling.ResultsCompared with the matched peer group, children in care were less likely to enter trajectories characterized by education and employment (38%) and more likely to enter trajectories involving early parenthood (14%) or long periods of fragmented social assistance benefit receipt and unemployment (21%). Those on early parenthood trajectories were almost exclusively women, whereas those receiving social assistance benefits and experiencing unemployment for lengthy periods were mostly men. Entering disadvantaged trajectories was associated with, inter alia, placement as an adolescent, residential care, and aging out of care.ConclusionThe study demonstrates the relevance of examining longitudinal trajectories in children in care’s early adulthood. Many young adults with care experience need support in education and employment beyond young adult age.     

Nonmaternal care in the first year of life and the security of infant-parent attachment

Evidence from 2 longitudinal studies of infant and family development was combined and examined in order to determine if experience of extensive nonmaternal care in the first year is associated with heightened risk of insecure infant-mother attachment and, in the case of sons, insecure infant-father attachment. Analysis of data obtained during Strange Situation assessments conducted when infants were 12 and 13 months of age revealed that infants exposed to 20 or more hours of care per week displayed more avoidance of mother on reunion and were more likely to be classified as insecurely attached to her than infants with less than 20 hours of care per week. Sons whose mothers were employed on a full-time basis (greater than 35 hours per week) were more likely to be classified as insecure in their attachments to their fathers than all other boys, and, as a result, sons with 20 or more hours of nonmaternal care per week were more likely to be insecurely attached to both parents and less likely to be securely attached to both parents than other boys. A secondary analysis of infants with extensive care experience who did and did not develop insecure attachment relationships with their mothers highlights several conditions under which the risk of insecurity is elevated or reduced. Both sets of findings are considered in terms of other research and the context in which infant day-care is currently experienced in the United States.     

Differential Third‐Grade Outcomes Associated With Attending Publicly Funded Preschool Programs for Low‐Income Latino Children

This study examined the third‐grade outcomes of 11,902 low‐income Latino children who experienced public school pre‐K or child care via subsidies (center‐based care) at age 4 in Miami‐Dade County, Florida. Regression and propensity score analyses revealed that children who experienced public school pre‐K earned higher scores on standardized assessments of math and reading in third grade and had higher grade point averages than those who attended center‐based care 4 years earlier. The sustained associations between public school pre‐K (vs. center‐based care) and third‐grade outcomes were mediated by children's kindergarten entry preacademic and social–behavioral skills, and among English‐language learners, English proficiency. Implications for investing in early childhood programs to assist with the school readiness of young Latino children in poverty are discussed.     

Adverse Consequences of School Mobility for Children in Foster Care: A Prospective Longitudinal Study

Few prospective studies have examined school mobility in children in foster care. This study described the school moves of 86 such children and 55 community comparison children (primarily Caucasian), living in a medium‐sized metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest who were approximately 3 to 6 years old at the study start. Additionally, the effects of moves from kindergarten through Grade 2 on academic and socioemotional competence in Grades 3 through 5 were examined. A greater number of early school moves was associated with poorer later socoemotional competence and partially mediated the effects of maltreatment and out‐of‐home placement on socioemotional competence. This was the case only for children with poorer early learning skills in kindergarten. Implications for preventive intervention are discussed.     

Do early care and education services improve language development for maltreated children? Evidence from a national child welfare sample

Young children under 6 years old are over-represented in the U.S. child welfare system (CWS). Due to their exposure to early deprivation and trauma, they are also highly vulnerable to developmental problems, including language delays. High quality early care and education (ECE) programs (e.g. preschool, Head Start) can improve children's development and so policymakers have begun calling for increased enrollment of CWS-supervised children in these programs. However, it is not a given that ECE will benefit all children who experience maltreatment. Some types of maltreatment may result in trauma-related learning and behavior challenges or developmental deficits that cause children to respond to ECE settings differently. The current study uses data from a nationally representative survey of children in the U.S. child welfare system, the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II, to assess whether young CWS-supervised children (N = 1,652) who were enrolled in ECE had better language development outcomes 18 months later than those not enrolled in ECE. We also explore whether the type of maltreatment that brought children to the CWS’ attention moderates the relationship between ECE and children's language development. After controlling for children's initial scores on the Preschool Language Scale (PLS-3), type(s) of maltreatment experienced, and child and caregiver demographics, we found that ECE participation predicted better PLS-3 scores at follow-up, with a positive interaction between ECE participation and supervisory neglect. ECE seems to be beneficial for CWS-involved children's early language development, especially for children referred to the CWS because they lack appropriate parent supervision at home.     

Readiness for school of children having attended language immersion kindergarten in their teachers' and parents' opinions

In multicultural societies, much attention is given to children's language learning possibilities. In Estonia, the early language immersion programme for kindergarten children was started in the year 2000. The programme, while considered to be successful, has raised the question of whether the children participating in it are adequately prepared for school. The objective of the present study is to observe the readiness for school of those children who have participated in the early language immersion programme, taking into consideration the objectives of the curriculum and their teachers' and parents' assessments. The method of this study was a questionnaire employed over a three-year period (2009–2011) involving the teachers and parents of those children who were beginning their primary school education. The results of the study revealed that, according to the assessments of their teachers and parents, the readiness for school of the children having completed the early language immersion programme was very good. Data prove that language immersion programmes provide children with enough preparation to make a smooth transition from kindergarten to school life.     

The Invisibility of the ‘Average’ Child in the Early Years

A sample of 52 children across two schools was tracked for the first four years of their school life. Adopting a naturalistic research strategy, relying on classroom observation of children and depth interviews with teachers, the emergence of each child's identity was monitored as it became revealed to their teacher. This investigation into early school careers suggests that children quickly acquire one of two distinct identities: either normal or deviant. The vast majority of children fall into the ‘normal’ category. Within the ‘normal’ category there seems to be a particular type of pupil who is to be found at the core of this socially constructed world of normality: the ‘average’ child. Acquiring an identity as an ‘average’ child seems to have important consequences for the child's experience of schooling. Whereas deviant pupils are conspicuous and continually noticeable, ‘average ‘pupils represent a conformity in classroom life which makes them apparently less visible to teachers. ‘Average’ pupils appear to conform to such an extreme degree that for much of their time in school they become ‘invisible’. This is an apparent anomaly for teachers in the early years when, in spite of a commitment to individualism, and often a tradition of child‐centredness, it seems teachers may be ‘blind’ to certain individuals in their class, especially those for whom teachers have recognised an identity as an ‘average’ child.

Research in early years education has understandably given prominence to issues of pedagogical practice, policy formation and curriculum development (Richards, 1982; Blenkin and Kelly, 1988). As in all sectors of education the concerns of educationists as practitioners or policy‐makers have often driven the quest for understanding and provided the dominant ethos of inquiry. In the field of early years education, the issues for debate, and consequently the questions generated for research, have rarely been prompted by the concerns of social scientists in their pursuit of more esoteric domains of theory construction.