The relation of flexible child care to quality of center day care and children’s socio-emotional functioning: A survey and observational study

In research in the areas of day care for young children and preschool education at the end of the second millennium, common themes can be recognised. Early research was primarily concerned with whether children attending institutions (day care or preschool centre), developed differently from those not attending such centres. Later work recognised that day care or preschool experience is not unitary and that the quality or characteristic of experience matters. Yet further research drew attention to the importance of the interaction between home and out of home experience. These have been referred to as the three waves of research. In the 1980s, the proposition emerged that infant day care may be a risk factor for insecure attachment to the mother. In an ideologically and politically sensitive ” eld, the concern raised by this proposition that day care might be bad for infants, led to the funding of one of the largest studies of day care, the NICHD study. The results of this study so far indicate that quality of care is an important aspect of child care experience. This study is likely to be a watershed in that the sample size and detail of data are far greater than preceding studies. The conclusion that quality of experience for young children matters however, sets the agenda for research in the new millennium. Currently, approaches to this issue generally adopt the strategy of using a measure of child care quality and investigating associations with child development outcomes. An alternative approach derives from school effectiveness research. Children from specific centres are followed longitudinally. Their developmental progress is then considered in terms of family factors, type amount and quality of centre experience, and the specific centre attended. In this approach the presence of specific centre effects can be detected so that a specific centre can be identi” ed as associated with a quantifiable positive or negative effect on development. The resulting incongruence between traditional measures of quality and measures derived from developmental effects will require a reformulation of the links between child care characteristics, child experience, and developmental outcomes. As measures of quality become more ”rmly related to developmental outcomes child care research can become more integrated within developmental psychology.

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Aggression and Noncompliance among Swedish Children in Centre-based Care, Family Day Care, and Home Care

International Journal of Behavioral Development ◽

10.1177/016502549501800103 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 43-62 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Margarita Prodromidis ◽

Michael E. Lamb ◽

Kathleen J. Sternberg ◽

C. Phillip Hwang ◽

Anders G. Broberg

Keyword(s):

Child Care ◽

Home Care ◽

Day Care ◽

Multiple Sources ◽

Family Day Care ◽

Composite Measures ◽

Individual Family ◽

Care Family ◽

Using Data

The relations between individual, family, and child care characteristics and children's aggressive and noncompliant behaviours were examined in this study of 140 first-born Swedish children assessed at 16,28,40, and 80 months of age. All of the parents involved in the study had attempted to enrol their children in centre-based day care, but some were accepted instead into family day care settings, while others remained in the exclusive care of their parents. Composite measures of aggression and noncompliance were constructed using data obtained from multiple sources (i.e. mothers, teachers, observers). Child care arrangements and histories were not associated with levels of aggression or noncompliance. Multiple regression analyses suggested that the quality of home care was the best predictor of both aggressive and noncompliant behaviour. Boys were more aggressive than girls, and children with more controlling parents were more noncompliant. Individual differences in aggression (but not noncompliance) were moderately stable over time. Aggression and noncompliance were modestly but reliably related to one another. These results suggest that alternative care of high quality does not lead to noncompliance and aggression.

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INTRODUCTION

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.91.1.iv ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 91 (1) ◽

pp. iv-iv

Author(s):

AUDREY K. BROWN

Keyword(s):

Quality Of Care ◽

Child Care ◽

Day Care ◽

Well Being ◽

Developmental Needs ◽

Developmental Potential ◽

Pediatric Service ◽

The Subject ◽

Future Direction

The Trustees of the Johnson and Johnson Institute for Pediatric Service (now The Johnson & Johnson Pediatric Institute) have, over the past 25 years, sponsored symposia on topics of major importance to the health and well-being of children. The subject of group day care for children was chosen for the symposium held October 4 and 5, 1991 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. This choice was made, not only because the subject has been propelled into prominence by the dramatic recent changes in the pattern of family life and the role of women in our society, particularly the remarkable increase in the number of mothers working outside of the home, but because group day care was growing with little sense of direction. The Trustees felt that the quality of care would, to a large extent, shape the early development of the involved children, and that it is evolving with insufficient coordination among the disciplines essential to the development of child care settings of high quality. They felt that too little attention had been paid to the fact that the quality of care which was being substituted for maternal care demanded not only safe supervision, but also specific attention to the developmental needs of children at a time in life now recognized as perhaps the most developmentally critical. They felt it was time to bring together authorities in diverse disciplines, whose work impacted on this burgeoning field, to exchange information which could determine the future direction of child care by emphasizing those features in early care that enhance the child's full developmental potential.

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International Perspectives on Child Care Policies and Programs

PEDIATRICS ◽

10.1542/peds.91.1.248 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 91 (1) ◽

pp. 248-252

Author(s):

Sheila B. Kamerman

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Child Care ◽

Child Development ◽

Day Care ◽

The United States ◽

Care Services ◽

National Differences ◽

Different Ages ◽

Child Care Services

Child development research is more extensive and more sophisticated in the United States than in any other country in the world. US policy makers have access to more and better information about the factors known to enhance or impede good child development than those in almost any other country. Nonetheless, the United States lags far behind almost all the major advanced industrialized countries with regard to supply, quality, and affordability of out-of-home child care services for children under the age at which compulsory school begins (5, 6, or 7 years). This paper provides a brief overview of child care internationally, primarily in northern and western Europe, the leaders in this field. The objective is to document the availability and quality of child care services and related policies in these countries. The paper begins by defining the terms that will be used in discussing child care internationally. The major focus is on identifying and describing the policy choices that the advanced, industrialized, western countries have made regarding child care for young children of different ages (preschoolers and infants). DEFINING THE TERMS The child care programs I will describe include preschools (kindergartens, prekindergartens, compensatory early-education programs, nursery schools); day-care centers (nurseries, creches); and family-day-care-homes (both regulated and unregulated). Relative care, occasional baby-sitting, and care provided within a child's own home are not included in this discussion, nor are programs for children with special needs (handicapped children). Nor, because of space limitations, are before- and after-school programs covered. The major cross-national differences have to do with the financing of services and the extent of the role of the public sector; the predominance of the education, health, or social welfare system in delivering the services; the proportion of children of different ages served by these programs; whether services are limited to the children of working mothers; and the quality of the care provided.

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