Primary Child Care arrangements of U.s. infants: Patterns of Utilization by Poverty statUs, family strUCtUre, maternal Work statUs, maternal Work sChedUle, and Child Care assistanCe (original) (raw)
Related papers
Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 2005
This study describes prewelfare reform child care use by 64 primarily low-income single mothers (65.6% African American) with preschoolers (half born preterm). Forty percent used child care for more than 75% of their children's lives, 20% did when not employed. Preschool children born preterm were more likely to receive child care from nonrelatives throughout their lives than children born full term. Children with health problems used a greater number of child care arrangements. Findings suggest addressing child care issues with both employed and nonemployed mothers and adequacy of child care for children with special needs.
Child care arrangements for toddlers and preschoolers: Are they different for youngest children
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2006
Many extant studies on the use of non-parental child care are based on data from the youngest child in the household. To date, it has not been addressed whether this approach introduces bias. We present reasons why child care arrangements for youngest children may differ from those of same-age older children and examine whether the use of child care, type of arrangement, and use of care in combination with mother's employment differ for youngest versus middle/oldest toddlers and preschoolers with data from the 1999 National Household Education Survey. We find that youngest preschoolers are more likely to attend child care on a regular basis than middle/oldest preschoolers. Further, youngest toddlers and preschoolers are more likely than middle/oldest toddlers and preschoolers to have an employed mother. How families combine the use of child care and maternal employment differs by birth order. Controlling for other child and household characteristics does not explain these differences. Differences in the types of care arrangements used for youngest versus middle/oldest toddlers and preschoolers in non-parental care do not reach statistical significance.
Child Care in America: Research and Policy Directions
Social Service Review, 2015
The essay concludes that it is unlikely that early care and education will become a national priority in the United States without a major change in American attitudes toward the role of government. In the meanwhile, we can look to local efforts to create a comprehensive system of early education and child care as steps along a very long road to a national childcare system. introduction Consider the following scenario. In 2015, in a prominent US city, 39 percent of children under 6 years of age live in families below the federal poverty line, while another 24 percent live in families just above the poverty level. Yet this city has only half the spaces mandated by the federal Head Start program for 3-and 4-year olds in poverty and fewer than 2 percent of the slots mandated for infants and toddlers in Early Head Start. Evidence-based home-visiting programs reach only a few of the thousands of families who are potentially eligible for them. Only about one-fifth of the early learning programs available to all city residents are rated as good to high quality, and only about half of the low-income families eligible for childcare subsidies are receiving them. Parents who are interested in using high-quality private center care for their toddlers or preschoolers must pay annual full-time tuition of about 15,500perchild;forinfants,ifqualitycentercarecanbefound,itisnotunusualforfull−timecaretocostmorethan15,500 per child; for infants, if quality center care can be found, it is not unusual for full-time care to cost more than 15,500perchild;forinfants,ifqualitycentercarecanbefound,itisnotunusualforfull−timecaretocostmorethan21,000 a year.
Early care and education: Work support for families and developmental opportunity for young children
2001
This paper uses the 1997 National Survey of America's Families to examine child care patterns for young children in the United States. The paper examines three general features of children's early care and education participation: (1) primary care arrangements, classified as center-based care, family child care, relative care, nanny or babysitter, and parent-only; (2) number of hours in nonparental care; and (3) number of nonparental arrangements children participate in on a regular basis each week, and the percentage of children using two or more such arrangements. Major findings indicate that more than two-thirds of children who are under age 5 and not in school experience nonparental care. Primary care providers shift from parents and relatives to center-based care as children get older. The time spent in nonparental care increases with child's age. Children are more likely to be in two or more nonparental arrangements as they near school entry. Income and parental employment are interrelated factors associated with patterns of early care and education. Tables with basic demographic information about the children and responding parents in the national survey sample are appended. (Contains 12 references.) (KB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the ori inal document.
Early Childhood Research …, 2008
We use observations from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) to compare structural and process characteristics of child care centers, family child care homes (nonrelative care in a home setting) and care by relatives for 2, 3-and 4 ½-year-old children. Type of care differences in structural and caregiver characteristics were consistent across ages: centers had higher child-to-adult ratios and bigger groups; centers had caregivers with better education, more training in early childhood, and less traditional beliefs about child rearing. Children in centers experienced more cognitive stimulation, less frequent language interactions with adults, less frequent negative interactions with adults, and less television viewing than did those in other types of care. In centers and family child care homes compared to relative settings, children engaged in more positive and negative interactions with peers and spent more time in transition and unoccupied. Curvilinear associations were found between structural features of care and family income, particularly for caregiver education and training. In contrast, process measures of caregiving rose monotonically with family income. Children from high-income families experienced more sensitive care, more cognitive stimulation, and fewer negative interactions with adults than did those from low-income families. We interpret the findings by linking the structural features and caregiver training to the cognitive and social processes observed in different types of care. Future research designed to understand the influences of child care on children's behavior might benefit from using this more nuanced description of child care experiences.
Type of child care and children’s development at 54 months
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2004
The types of non-maternal child care received by more than 1000 U.S. children were examined from birth to 54 months and related to family selection factors and to child outcomes. Individual children tended to experience a variety of different types of care and not to fit into clear patterns of either stable care types or progressive patterns of movement from less structured to more highly structured care settings. Across the entire sample, however, hours in center care were higher in the preschool period than earlier, whereas hours in relative care remained stable and hours in child care homes decreased. Mothers who were single, those with more education and less traditional beliefs about child rearing, and families with higher incomes and fewer children in the household were more likely to use more hours of center care than other families; single mothers and those with fewer children also used more hours of care in child care homes. Minority families, those with low incomes, and mothers with less education and fewer children used more hours of relative care. With family selection factors and quality of child care controlled, only hours in center care across the time period from 3 to 54 months were related to child outcomes. Children who experienced more center care were reported by caregivers at 54 months to have somewhat higher externalizing behavior problem scores than other children, although these scores were not in the clinical or at-risk range. Center care hours were also related to cognitive and language outcomes, with more hours in infancy associated with lower preacademic test scores and more hours in the toddler period with higher language scores.
Nonparental care and infant health: Do number of hours and number of concurrent arrangements matter?
Early Human Development, 2011
Objectives: Previous research found that centre-based childcare is related to more illnesses early in life. The goal of this longitudinal study is to determine whether infant health in the first year of life is also related to the amount of time spent in non-parental care and the number of concurrent non-parental care arrangements. Methods: Information on infant health and non-parental care was obtained through monthly maternal interviews across the first year of life. The occurences of respiratory, digestive, general, and skin illnesses and complaints were used as dependent variables, while the number of hours and the number of arrangements per week were used as predictors. Analyses were done separately in infants for whom centre-based childcare is included in their arrangements (n = 107), and for those which it is not (n = 61). Results: Infants spending more hours in non-parental care had more respiratory and general illnesses. Infants who were cared for in more concurrent arrangements had fewer respiratory and general, but more skin illnesses. These results only applied to infants that included centre-based childcare in their arrangements. In the group of infants that did not attend centre-based childcare, health was not related to either the number of hours or the number of arrangements. Conclusions: Number of hours and number of arrangements do matter in relation to infant health early in life, but only for infants who attend centre-based childcare. While more hours were related to more illnesses, more arrangements were related to both fewer and more illnesses, depending on the type of illnesses.
Child Care in the United States Today
The Future of Children, 1996
This article describes the consumers and providers of child care in the United States. It uses data from nationally representative surveys and research studies conducted from the late 1960s through 1995 to examine the child care arrangements parents select for their young children, comparing today's arrangements with those made by parents decades ago. It then discusses the availability of child care, examining both the number of child care spaces available and whether quality programs are available to suit the needs and resources of parents. The article concludes with speculation about how proposed new policies and continuing trends may lead to future changes in child care.