Caring for Children

Challenge To America

Jeffrey Lande, Sandra Scarr, Nina Guzenhauser, Jeffrey Lande, Sandra Scarr, Nina Guzenhauser

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317785262
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Childcare is one of the most debated issues today. This volume provides a comprehensive and current review of childcare research and public policy issues. Chapters are contributed by leaders from such fields as developmental research and early childhood education as well as by public policy officials. All major discussions and debates are summarized to promote a complete overview and speak to key issues of the day including affordability, availability, and staffing.

1

Child Care and the Family:
Complements and Interactions

Sandra Scarr

Jeffrey Lande

University of Virginia

Kathleen McCartney

University of New Hampshire

Since the end of World War II, the percentage of women in the work force has increased dramatically in all Western nations. Although such increases are manifested in all age groups, they are most pronounced among women with children under 5 years of age (Hofferth & Phillips, in press; Kamerman, 1983). In the United States, the percentage of working mothers of infants and preschoolers has increased from 32% in 1970 to more than 50% in 1985 and is expected to approach 60% by 1990 (Hoffman, 1984). The most dramatic increases in maternal employment have occurred for married women with infants under 12 months; their rate of employment has increased more than 10% from 1975 to 1985 and now exceeds 50% (Kamerman, this volume).

In Bermuda in the last 20 years, the percentage of mothers in the labor force has been much higher than that of mothers in the United States. By 1980, 83% of mothers in Bermuda were employed, and 82% of Bermudian children were in child care by age 4 (Bermuda Bureau of Census, 1983). By age 2, 75% of Bermudian children are in nonmaternal care, most of them for more than 20 hours per week (Scarr & McCartney, 1988).

As the rate of maternal employment increases, so does concern over the possible effects of nonmaternal care. The traditional belief in many Western societies is that women must stay home with their children in order to be good mothers and to promote their children’s emotional and intellectual development. Among psychologists, this belief has been supported, in part, by human (Barglow, Vaughn, & Molitar, in preparation; Bowlby, 1969; Schwarz, Krolick, & Strickland, 1973) and nonhuman primate (Harlow, Harlow, Dodsworth, & Arling, 1966) research findings, where repeated mother-child separations have been reported to have detrimental effects on an offspring’s intellectual and socioemotional development. The belief in maternal care has also been supported by non-scientific cultural beliefs about women’s place in society (see Scarr, 1984).

Even in scientific studies, however, cognitive deficits are not an inevitable consequence of nonmaternal child care. Several studies have reported that high-quality nonmaternal child care has beneficial effects for the intellectual development of children (Caldwell & Freyer, 1982; Caldwell, Wright, Honig, & Tannenbaum, 1970; Keister, 1970; McCartney, Scarr, Phillips, & Grajek, 1985; Ramey, Bryant, & Suarez, in press; Ramey & Farran, 1983). Many of these effects held for both lower and middle-class children. In general, however, nonmaternal care has been found to have neither beneficial nor detrimental effects on early intellectual development (Belsky & Steinberg, 1978; Fowler, 1974; Kagan, Kearsley, & Zelazo, 1978; Scarr, 1984).

By contrast, several differences have consistently been observed in the social behaviors of children receiving nonmaternal care and those reared primarily by their mothers. Children, particularly boys, receiving nonmaternal child care in child care centers have been negatively labeled as more peer oriented (Cochran, 1977; Finkelstein, Dent, Gallagher, & Ramey, 1978) and aggressive (Finkelstein & Wilson, 1977; Haskins, 1985; Schwarz, Strickland, & Krolick, 1974) or more positively labeled as assertive and independent (Clarke-Stewart & Fein, 1983). It should be noted, however, that by training child care providers to use behavioral management techniques Finkelstein and Wilson (1977) were able to reduce the frequency of aggressive behaviors in children receiving nonmaternal care to the same level as that of children who did not regularly receive nonmaternal care. Thus, “aggressive” behavior among preschool children in center-based care clearly depends on socialization practices that can be changed.

The question of whether deficits in the parent-child attachment develop, however, is a subject of continuing debate. Some investigators have reported a higher proportion of insecure attachment as assessed by the Strange Situation (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970) among infants enrolled in nonmaternal child care than in the general population (Belsky, this volume, 1986, 1988; Blehar, 1974; Schwartz, 1983). Other investigators have reported that nonnmatemal child care does not affect the nature or strength of children’s attachments to their parents (Broberg, Hwang, Lamb, & Ketterlinus, this volume; Cochran, 1977; Kagan, Kearsley, & Zelazo, 1978; McCartney, in press; Moskowitz, Schwarz, & Corsini, 1977; Phillips, McCartney, Scarr, & Howes, 1987; Rubenstein & Howes, 1979; Thompson, in press).

Conflicting reports may be due in part to lack of generality of many of the child care studies conducted in the 1970s. Much of this child care research was conducted in high-quality, university-based child care centers with low child/caregiver ratios, which were atypical of group care available in most communities. Moreover, most young children were and are in family day care, which has seldom been studied. Family day care refers to nonmaternal care provided either in the child’s home or in a home other than that of the child, whereas group care refers to center-based child care.

Research has shown that caregiver/child ratios are an important component in assessing the quality of nonmaternal child care arrangements (Brunner, 1980; Field, 1980; Francis & Self, 1982; Howes, 1983; Howes & Rubenstein, 1985; Reuter & Yunik, 1973; Ruopp, Travers, Glantz, & Coelen, 1979; Smith & Connolly, 1981). Lower caregiver/child ratios are predictive of emotional distress (Howes, 1983; Howes & Rubinstein, 1985; Ruopp et al., 1979), less verbal communication and imitation (Francis & Self, 1982; Howes & Rubenstein, 1985; Smith & Connolly, 1981), and less prosocial behavior (Ruopp et al., 1979) in infants. For infants, these deleterious effects were found in nonmaternal child care arrangements where the caregiver/child ratio was 1:6 or more. Brunner (1980), Field (1980), and Reuter and Yunik (1973) noted, however, that the appropriate ratio for toddlers includes more children per caregiver than for infants. Toddlers displayed the best outcomes in arrangements where the caregiver/child ratio was between 1:8 and 1:12. The researchers speculated that this finding was due to the fact that toddlers interact and learn from peers much more than infants do.

Andersson’s (1987) Swedish child care study examined another dimension of the consequences that child care may have on development. His research indicates that children from nuclear families, with both parents present, are developmentally more advantaged than children from single-parent families, and that high-quality child care in Sweden is not an advantage or disadvantage to children from two-parent families. However, interactions between child care and family structure may be the underlying cause for many of the reported differences between single-parent and nuclear families. At age 8, children from mother-headed families who had spent a great deal of time in early group care scored as well as, if not higher than, children from nuclear families on measures of cognitive and social competence. Children from mother-headed families without early group care experience, however, received the lowest scores of any group on cognitive and social measures.

The present investigation focused on the magnitude and continuity of effects of different types of child care on intellectual and socioemotional development. Specifically, the intent was to examine whether group and/or family day care had detrimental or beneficial effects on children’s development and if any such effects were mediated by family types (e.g., nuclear families, mother-headed families, extended nuclear families, or extended mother-headed families).

In such a study of existing community child care, one must take into account the qualities that are represented by each kind of care. From previous studies, we knew that infant care in Bermuda is extremely varied and that existing regulations permit as many as eight babies per (untrained) caregiver. We also knew that most family day care providers do not accept such a large number of infants in their homes; rather, they tend to have small numbers of mixed-age children. Mothers at home, of course, rarely have more than two preschool children, because Bermudian families are small. Group care of children over the age of 2 is the most frequent type of care and is based on typical nursery school educational models. On the basis of this knowledge, we drew up the following hypotheses:

1. Infant group care, as it exists in Bermuda, would be less supportive of all aspects of infant development than either home care or family day care; at age 2, children who had extensive group care would score lower on developmental tests and ratings.

2. Neither group care nor family day care would have detrimental consequences on child development at age 4.

3. Higher adult/child ratios would be predictive of higher socioemotional and cognitive scores at age 2, but not at age 4.

4. Children reared in nuclear families would have higher socioemotional and cognitive scores than children in either mother-headed or extended families.

5. Time in nonmaternal child care would offset some of the negative consequences of being reared in single-parent families.

METHODS

Subjects

Participants were selected from Scarr and McCartney’s (1988) sample of 127 families with 2-year-olds who were living in Bermuda from 1979 to 1983. To minimize variance due to cultural differences, only Black Bermudians were included in this report. Subjects were 100 Black Bermudian families with 2-year-olds (51 boys and 49 girls). Fifty-seven were nuclear families (mother, father, and child); 13 were extended nuclear families (mother, father, child, and at least one other adult in the household); 10 were motherheaded households (mother and child); and the remaining 20 were extended single-mother families (mother, child, and relatives of the mother, usually the mother’s own parents or siblings).

As shown in Table 1.1, Bermudian families are small; the mean family size, including both children and adults, was 3.7, and the adu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Child Care and the Family: Complements and Interactions
• 2 Infant-Parent Attachment and Day Care: In Defense of the Strange Situation
• 3 Child Care Effects on Socioemotional and Intellectual Competence in Swedish Preschoolers
• 4 Day Care and the Promotion of Emotional Development: Lessons From a Monkey Laboratory
• 5 Child Care, Women, Work, and the Family: An International Overview of Child Care Services and Related Policies
• 6 Child Care and Federal Policy
• 7 The Federal Role in Child Care
• 8 Crafting the Future of Child Care
• 9 Child Care: Issues at the State Level
• 10 Licensing and Accreditation of Child Care Facilities
• 11 Enforcement of Child Care Regulations
• 12 Insuring Child Care’s Future: The Continuing Crisis
• 13 No Room at the Inn: The Crisis in Child Care Supply
• 14 Cultural Context for Child Care in the Black Community
• 15 Aims, Policies, and Standards of For-Profit Child Care
• 16 Issues and Obstacles in the Training of Caregivers
• 17 Future Directions and Need for Child Care in the United States
• 18 General Discussion
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index