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Pages 298-328

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From page 298... ... While parents and relatives continue to provide vast amounts of early child care, rapid growth in reliance on center-based arrangements as the primary source of child care has occurred for children of all ages, accompanied by a decline in the use of home-based care by nonrelatives. The ramifications of welfare reform the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) Read the entire page →
From page 299... ... Beneficial outcomes for children in child care are associated with settings that provide both nurturance and support for early learning and language development. Accordingly, previous distinctions between "early education" or "preschool" and "day care" have unraveled. Read the entire page →
From page 300... ... Following a brief discussion about the timing of entry into child care and factors that impinge on this decision, we synthesize the literature on the effects of child care on both the mother-child relationship and child development. We then discuss research on the ingredients of quality care that promote beneficial development, the availability and distribution of higherquality arrangements, and child care for children with disabilities. Read the entire page →
From page 301... ... GRO WING UP IN CHILD CARE 30 year. In this study, 72 percent of the infants experienced some nonparental child care in the first year of life, with an average age at entry of 3.31 months (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1997b) Read the entire page →
From page 302... ... The extent to which the high use of child care at early ages reflects parents' desire to return to work quickly or financial constraints on their ability to remain at home with their infants remains an open question. Pertinent information is available, however, regarding access to and use of family leave benefits, as well as about families who adjust their work schedules to curtail their reliance on nonparental child care for their babies. Read the entire page →
From page 303... ... were heavily or entirely dependent on the mother's wages to escape poverty, and that many had previously been poor or dependent on public assistance, lend support to this possibility (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1997c) Read the entire page →
From page 304... ... 304 FR OM NE UR ONS TO NEIGHB ORHO ODS Infants and Toddlers Nanny/babysitter 7% Parent care 27% Parent care 18% Relative car:\ 17% \ Relative care 27% Preschoolers Nanny/babysitter 6% Family child care 14% Center-based care 22% Family child care 17% Center-based care 45% FIGURE 11-2 Current distribution of care for infants and toddlers, and preschoolers with employed mothers, 1997. SOURCE: Capizzano et al. Read the entire page →
From page 305... ... Fathers provided one in four of the first child care arrangements made for the infants in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1997b) Read the entire page →
From page 306... ... The share of children under age 3 in child care centers, preschools, Head Start programs, and other early childhood education programs tripled between 1977 and 1994, from 8 percent to 24 percent of children with employed mothers (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1982, 1997~. Read the entire page →
From page 307... ... " This concern is not unfounded. Child care, insofar as it reduces the amount of time available for the mother to learn the baby's signals and rhythms, might also adversely affect her ability to respond sensitively to the baby and establish a secure attachment relationship (see Brazelton, 1986~. Read the entire page →
From page 308... ... 'I his Is equally true tor children experiencing very little child care and children experiencing a lot of child care (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1998b) Read the entire page →
From page 309... ... When child care effects are examined net of parental effects on child outcomes, parent's behaviors and beliefs show substantially larger associations with their children's development than do any features of the child care arrangement. These efforts to control for family influences when examining how child care affects child development might appear to be an obvious and straightforward approach. Read the entire page →
From page 310... ... Effects of Child Care on Children's Development Ultimately, questions about child care turn on its consequences for child development. Under what conditions does child care contribute to or undermine children's social skills, emotional well-being, and readiness for school? Read the entire page →
From page 311... ... One of the few studies that provided effect sizes reported that they ranged from .09 to .14 for associations between child care quality and cognitive and language outcomes for 3-year-olds (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, l999c) Read the entire page →
From page 312... ... As with mother care, child care providers who are both supportive and provide more verbal stimulation have children in their care who show advanced cognitive and language development. In light of the experimental evidence on center-based early intervention programs, it is interesting that evidence is emerging from nonexperimental studies of more typical child care suggesting that cumulative experience in high-quality, center-based care starting in the second year of life may be particularly beneficial for cognitive development (Broberg et al., 1997; Hartmann, 1995; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2000~. Read the entire page →
From page 313... ... The child's relationship with his or her child care provider seems to play an especially important role with regard to social-emotional development. Children form secure attachments to their child care providers when they are stable and these attachments, in turn, are associated with adaptive social development, just as they are for children and parents (Howes et al., 1992; Oppenheim et al., 1988; Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2000; Pianta and Nimetz, 1991; Srouie et al., 1983~. Read the entire page →
From page 314... ... Researchers in search of the central features of quality care have identified the relationship between the child and the care provider and the amount of cognitive and language stimulation provided over the course of the day as especially critical. In general, three tiers of variables have been examined in studies of child care quality: the child-provider relationship, the structural features of care, and the surrounding community and policy context. Read the entire page →
From page 315... ... This conclusion applies to infants, toddlers, and preschoolers and also applies to all forms of child care, ranging from relatives to center-based programs (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1998c,2000~. Stability and skill appear to go together. Read the entire page →
From page 316... ... . Both formal education levels and recent, specialized training in child development have been found quite consistently to be associated with highquality interactions and children's development in center-based, family day care and even in in-home sitter arrangements (Dunn, L., 1993; Fischer and Eheart, 1991; Kontos et al., 1994, 1995; Lamb, 1998; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1996, in press b; Smith, 1998; Whitebook et al., 1990~. Read the entire page →
From page 317... ... . care quality In both center-based and family day care arrangements (Cost Quality and Outcomes Study Team, 1995; Helburn, 1995; Kontos et al., 1995; Phillips et al., 1991, in press; Scarr et al., 1994; Whitebook et al., 1997~. Read the entire page →
From page 318... ... Most states permit infants and toddlers to be cared for by staff who, on average, have not completed high school, have only had some general training in child development, and receive fewer than 5 hours of in-service training annually (Young et al., 1997~. In sum, quality is inherent in the child care provider, whether it is the grandmother, an unrelated sitter, or a center-based teacher. Read the entire page →
From page 320... ... In some cases, infants appear to get the poorest-quality care, but in other cases they have been found to get better care than older children, particularly when they are in a one-to-one arrangement with a competent caregiver. Even the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, which provides a more favorable portrait of child care quality than do other studies, reported that one in four infant caregivers were moderately insensitive, only 26 percent were moderately or highly stimulating of cognitive development, and 19 percent were moderately or highly detached (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1996~. Read the entire page →
From page 321... ... There is, however, one exception to this pattern. Among families using child care centers, the working poor and those whose incomes hover just above the poverty line receive poorer-quality care than either families living in poverty or families with solidly middle and upper incomes (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1997c; Phillips et al., 1994~. Read the entire page →
From page 322... ... The average share of income devoted to child care was even higher at 25 percent for families with incomes of less than $14,400. Thus, families with meager incomes not only spend substantially more of their income on child care, but also are priced out of higher-cost forms of care, namely centers and many licensed family day care homes, in many areas of the country (U.S. Read the entire page →
From page 323... ... , in which 27 percent of parents with children under age 5 and incomes less than $15,000 expressed a desire to change their child care arrangements. Two-thirds reported a preference for care in centers, and 70 percent cited quality as the principal reason for wanting to switch. Read the entire page →
From page 324... ... Unfortunately, there is very limited information about the child care arrangements for these children. Like all families with young children, those whose children have a disability or special health care need are faced with the challenges of finding good-quality, affordable child care. Read the entire page →
From page 325... ... significantly poorer-quality care in child care centers than in chilc! care homes or relative care, regardless of whether the centers proviclect early intervention services. Read the entire page →
From page 326... ... If young children were only sporadically or briefly exposed to child care, we might not need to be concerned about the portrait of child care quality and its associations with developmental outcomes that emerges from this review of research. But child care is an enduring fixture on the early childhood landscape, starting within the first few months of life, for substantial hours each day, and continuing up to school entry and beyond. Read the entire page →
From page 327... ... But the larger need is for communities to create more viable systems of child care that do not tolerate unsafe and unstimulating settings, actively promote and reward high-quality care, stem the tide of staff turnover, and enable parents at all income levels to avail themselves of quality care for their children (Kagan and Cohen, 1996; National Association of State Boards of Education, 1991; National Research Council, 1990~. Read the entire page →
From page 328... ... This chapter focuses on why and to what extent neighborhood contexts influence young children's development and the efficacy of intervention programs directed at them. Read the entire page →

From page 298...

... While parents and relatives continue to provide vast amounts of early child care, rapid growth in reliance on center-based arrangements as the primary source of child care has occurred for children of all ages, accompanied by a decline in the use of home-based care by nonrelatives. The ramifications of welfare reform the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)