Working

The decision to return to work and leave infants and toddlers in the care of childcare providers can be excruciating for families. Reliable answers regarding the developmental impacts of different caregiving arrangements have been hard to come by—even after the federal government decided that it was going to conduct what was supposed to be a definitive study: The National Institute of Child Health and Development’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Over 200 publications have come from this study alone, and, as might be expected, the results of this massive study are hard to boil down into a sound bite. The results of this study and others are summarized, and the “It Depends” section explains how the best childcare choice for an individual child might change according to that child’s temperament and other factors.