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1.
We examine family and individual characteristics that predict low-income parents’ child care use, problems with child care, and receipt of public subsidies using data from three demonstration studies testing policies to promote employment for low-income parents (primarily single mothers). The characteristics that mattered most, particularly for use of center-based care were family structure (ages and number of children), parents’ education, and personal beliefs about family and work. The effects of race and ethnicity were inconsistent suggesting that generalizations about ethnic differences in child care preferences should be viewed with caution. There was little support for the proposition that many low-income parents do not need child care assistance because they use relative care. Child care subsidies and other policies designed to reduce the cost of care and to increase parents’ employment appeared to meet the needs associated with caring for very young children and for large families and were most effective in reaching parents with relatively less consistent prior employment experience. Parents whose education and personal beliefs were consistent with a preference for center-based care were most likely to take advantage of the opportunity to choose that option and to use subsidies.  相似文献   

2.
Child care quality plays a crucial role in children's social and cognitive development. While child care quality is a critical issue for all children, it matters more for low-income children. Policy makers have increased the emphasis on allowing parents, not government, to make decisions about the type of care they want for their children. Yet most research on child care quality has focused on how child care professionals, not parents define high quality care. This study investigates how low-income families evaluate child care quality by examining the child care preferences of a sample of low-income African American parents. We employ the factorial survey method, a method used in sociological research to assess people's perceptions and rankings of individual attributes associated with complex multidimensional phenomena. The factorial survey method permits a simultaneous assessment of how respondents evaluate and make tradeoffs among multiple child care characteristics. We assess the impact of child care characteristics on respondents’ perceptions of child care desirability, fair market value, and willingness to pay. Findings indicate that parents’ definition of quality focused squarely on the care giving environment, specifically the qualifications, experience, training and behavior associated with the child care provider. The type of care facility—family, center, relative or neighbor care was largely irrelevant to this sample of parents. Parents believed that the characteristics they defined as desirable child care situations were worth more, and parents were willing to pay more for these characteristics. These parents also defined quality in terms of race and class, and they wanted racial and economic diversity. This research suggests parents may choose lower quality care, not because they do not know what quality is or because they define quality care differently, but because such care may be neither available nor affordable in their communities.  相似文献   

3.
Diversity, child care quality, and developmental outcomes   总被引:3,自引:0,他引:3  
It is widely accepted that high quality child care enhances children’s cognitive and social development, but some question whether what constitutes quality care depends on the child’s ethnic and cultural background. To address this question, secondary analysis of data from the two largest studies of child care experiences in the United States, Cost, Quality, and Outcomes Study and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, tested whether standard measures of child care quality were less reliable or valid for African-American and English-speaking Latino children than for white children. Widely used measures of child care quality showed comparably high levels of reliability and similar levels of validity for white, African-American, and Latino children. Analyses tested whether cognitive and social skills were related to child care quality, the match between child’s and caregiver’s ethnicity, and the match between the mother’s and caregiver’s beliefs about child-rearing. Results indicated children from all three ethnic groups showed higher levels of cognitive and social skills on standardized assessments shown to predict school success when caregivers were sensitive and stimulating. Children’s skills were not consistently related to whether the child’s and caregiver’s ethnicity matched or whether the mother’s and caregiver’s beliefs about child-rearing were similar. These two large studies suggest that children from all three ethnic groups benefit from sensitive and stimulating care on child outcomes related to school success. The results are interpreted as indicating that the global dimension of quality may be reflected in very different types of practices that reflect cultural differences.  相似文献   

4.
Policies can be powerful tools for prevention given their potential to affect conditions that can improve population-level health. Given the dearth of empirical research on policies’ impacts on child maltreatment, this article (a) identifies 37 state policies that might have impacts on the social determinants of child maltreatment; (b) identifies available data sources documenting the implementation of 31 policies; and (c) utilizes the available data to explore effects of 11 policies (selected because they had little missing data) on child maltreatment rates. These include two policies aimed at reducing poverty, two temporary assistance to needy families policies, two policies aimed at increasing access to child care, three policies aimed at increasing access to high quality pre-K, and three policies aimed at increasing access to health care. Multi-level regression analyses between within-state trends of child maltreatment investigation rates and these 11 policies, controlling for states’ childhood poverty, adults without a high school diploma, unemployment, child burden, and race/ethnicity, identified two that were significantly associated with decreased child maltreatment rates: lack of waitlists to access subsidized child care and policies that facilitate continuity of child health care. These findings are correlational and are limited by the quality and availability of the data. Future research might focus on a reduced number of states that have good quality administrative data or population-based survey data on child maltreatment or reasonable proxies for child maltreatment and where data on the actual implementation of specific policies of interest can be documented.  相似文献   

5.
Research Findings: Outdoor play is important for children’s health and development, yet many preschool-age children in child care settings do not receive the recommended 60 min/day of outdoor play. Child care providers have previously described parent-related barriers to increasing outdoor playtime, including parents not providing appropriate clothing for their children and parents’ preference for academics over active play. This study explored parent perceptions and knowledge of outdoor playtime in child care environments. On average, parents reported wanting their child to spend significantly more time playing outside during a full day of child care than the recommended minimum. However, more than half of parents reported that they did not know how much time their child actually spent playing outside, and 43% reported that they did not know their child care center’s outdoor play policies. Practice or Policy: Child care providers may overperceive parent-related barriers to outdoor play. Parents generally support outdoor play for their preschooler during center-based child care but are not well informed about outdoor playtime and policies. Encouraging communication between parents and early childhood educators about these topics could lead to more universal support and strategies for promoting outdoor and active play opportunities for children, which are important for children’s health and development.  相似文献   

6.
Objective: This study evaluated the emotional and behavioral adjustment of parents and children within 3 months and 1 year after the discovery of child extrafamilial sexual abuse.Method: Ninety-two case parents (63 mothers, 29 fathers) and 56 children were compared to a nonclinical comparison group of 136 parents (74 mothers, 62 fathers) and 75 children. Parent adjustment was assessed using self-report measures while child functioning was assessed using a combination of child-, parent- and teacher-report measures.Results: Mothers, fathers and sexually abused children experienced clinically significant effects both initially and at 12 months post-disclosure. Children’s perceptions of self-blame and guilt for the abuse and the extent of traumatization predicted their self-reported symtomatology at 3 months and 1 year post-disclosure. Child age and gender also significantly contributed to the prediction of many of the child outcome measures. No abuse-related variable was related to any child self-report measure. Mothers’ satisfaction in the parenting role, perceived support and intrusive symptoms predicted their initial emotional functioning. Avoidant symptoms, child’s internalizing behavior and mothers’ initial emotional functioning were significant predictors of longer-term emotional functioning.Conclusions: Results emphasize the need to address children’s abuse-related attributions and underscore the need to expand our focus beyond the child victims to the traumatized families.  相似文献   

7.
This paper presents a qualitative investigation of the work–family support roles of a sample of 29 child care providers serving low-income families in the Chicago area (16 family, friend, and neighbor providers (FFN), 7 licensed family child care providers (FCC), and 6 center-based teachers). Providers report offering low-income parents substantial logistical (flexible hours, help with routines) and economic help (flexible fees, help with subsidies) managing work and family, in addition to their care of children. For FFN providers, support was often provided in the context of significant stress and burden. FCC providers and center-based teachers were often constrained in their help-giving by ambivalence regarding professional guidelines and institutional constraints. Findings from this study may inform future research on the effects of child care on children and parents, and models of child care quality.  相似文献   

8.
Research Findings: This study examined how characteristics of parents, providers, and children contribute to the quality of parent–provider relationships in infant and toddler classrooms. Parents (n = 192) and providers (n = 95) from 14 child care centers in a large metropolitan area participated by completing questionnaires about the nature of their relationships and communication, as well as other aspects of the child care experience. Although the study did not examine causal relations between variables, characteristics of parent–provider relationships were correlated with parents’ anxiety about placing their children in care, with providers’ knowledge of child development, and with whether parents and providers had worked together in the past. Parents’ views of their relationships with providers were more positive when they had worked with them before and when they were less anxious about placing their children in care. Providers who had worked with parents before had less favorable views of their relationships when parents were more anxious about placing their children in care; however, this was not the case when providers and parents were in more recent relationships. Providers who had never worked with parents before viewed relationships more positively when they had more knowledge of child development. The opposite was true for providers who had worked with parents before. Providers with more knowledge of child development reported communicating more frequently with parents. Providers reported communicating more frequently with parents of children with easier temperaments. Practice or Policy: Implications for transition practices in early care and education settings, in-service training, and teacher education programs are discussed.  相似文献   

9.
Despite the well-documented benefits of high-quality child care, many preschool-age children in the U.S. attend low-quality programs. Accordingly, improving the quality of child care is increasingly an explicit goal of government policy. However, accomplishing this goal requires a thorough understanding of the factors that influence parents’ child care decisions. This paper provides the first evidence on the demand for child care characteristics in the market for home-based care. Using a randomized audit design, we study three dimensions of caregiving: affordability (i.e., the hourly price of child care), quality (i.e., caregiver education and experience), and convenience (i.e., caregiver car ownership and availability). We find that while parents are extremely sensitive to the cost of child care, they also have strong preferences for quality, particularly caregivers’ educational attainment. Furthermore, we obtain mixed results on the convenience dimensions of child care, with parents valuing those owning a car but not those with more availability. Finally, we find significant heterogeneity in child care preferences according to families’ age of youngest child, race and ethnicity, and willingness-to-pay. Our findings are consistent with the notion that the problem of low-quality in the U.S. child care market may be explained by lack of affordability or the informational resources to identify high-quality care, rather than an undervaluation of such care by parents.  相似文献   

10.
Young children rely on their parents for making decisions about their child care experiences. Parents' child care arrangements are affected by the information they gather, their values and childrearing beliefs, their knowledge of child care quality, and the extent to which they are satisfied with their child care choices. Parents' decisions about child care are also influenced by ecological correlates, such as child age, maternal education and hours of employment, family ethnicity and income, and state and federal child care policies. This review addresses each of these elements and their role in parents' child care arrangements and concludes with recommendations for honoring parents' child care ideals through better child care quality information and higher professional standards for child care providers.  相似文献   

11.
Using data from the National Household Education Survey of 1995, this paper links family income, ethnicity, and child’s age to child care characteristics such as type of setting, hours spent in nonparental care, and number of care arrangements. Findings indicate that children from families with incomes that are at least twice the poverty threshold are more likely than other children to be in nonparental care and generally spend more hours in nonparental care. Ethnicity, not poverty, is related to use of relative-care; Black infants and toddlers are more likely to be in relative-care than White or Hispanic infants and toddlers, regardless of poverty status. Few income, ethnicity, or age differences emerged in analyses of characteristics parents prefer in the selection of type of care. The type of care a family uses is related to the extent to which the family values a setting that will care for sick children and values having a care provider with training.  相似文献   

12.
This three-phase study, part of a larger study conducted by the Midwest Child Care Research Consortium (MCCRC), investigated the characteristics of child care providers in inclusive and non-inclusive center-based classrooms and family child care homes, the observed quality of care in a subset of these programs, and families’ perceptions of quality and satisfaction with child care services. A telephone survey of 2022 randomly selected Midwestern providers, 36% of whom provided inclusive services, revealed that inclusive providers rated themselves higher on most quality-related indicators. Inclusion status was related to observed quality in family childcare homes (n = 132), with non-inclusive homes higher, while trends in the opposite direction were observed in preschool center-based classrooms (n = 112) but not in infant/toddler center-based classrooms (n = 105). Six percent of the 1325 parents surveyed reported parenting a child with a disability. These parents indicated less income, and more frequent changes in child care settings than other families, and reported the quality of their children's child care as good, particularly if center-based. Improved access to inclusive child care services and enhanced training opportunities related to serving children with disabilities and inclusion, especially for family child care providers, is recommended.  相似文献   

13.
Young children rely on their parents for making decisions about their child care experiences. Parents' child care arrangements are affected by the information they gather, their values and childrearing beliefs, their knowledge of child care quality, and the extent to which they are satisfied with their child care choices. Parents' decisions about child care are also influenced by ecological correlates, such as child age, maternal education and hours of employment, family ethnicity and income, and state and federal child care policies. This review addresses each of these elements and their role in parents' child care arrangements and concludes with recommendations for honoring parents' child care ideals through better child care quality information and higher professional standards for child care providers.  相似文献   

14.
Some criteria of good child care are presented which were found by researchers. The number of children in class, the teacher–child ratio, the size and equipment of the classroom, the teachers' behavior, cooperation with parents, and the teachers' qualifications are stressed. It is also discussed whether the criteria of high quality child care are shared by teachers and parents. According to studies from Great Britain, Germany, and New Zealand, parents and kindergarten teachers have a sound understanding of good child care. However, there are differences in emphasis.  相似文献   

15.
The present study describes the early life histories of a large sample of three-year-old children from different ethnic backgrounds living in three levels of family income—poverty, near-poverty, and above-poverty. The study examined the developmental characteristics of children in the three groups and related them to family characteristics and experiences in child care. To no one's surprise, significant differences associated with income were found for most of the family measures. Poverty and near-poverty families were more likely to have mothers with lower education, less sensitivity, more depression, and lower HOME scores. Correlatively, for the child development measures, there was an upward progression associated with income. Poverty children consistently showed the greatest deviation from established norms for cognitive and social behavior. A striking finding, however, was the considerable variability found on all the measures—a pattern not sufficiently stressed in related research. This finding has major implications for curriculum planning in Head Start programs. The analysis also showed that child care experience cannot be disregarded as a significant aspect of the history of a prospective enrollee in Head Start or other intervention programs geared to low-income children. Fewer of these children are likely to have a child care history, as families that used at least 10 hours of child care per week were less likely to be either poor or near-poor and thus eligible for enrollment. While this may reflect selection factors associated with child care usage, it also indicates that availability of child care is essential for borderline families that try to stay out of poverty. Number of hours of care per week and age of enrollment did not predict developmental level when the full income sample was considered. However, when only poor and near-poor children in care for at least 20 hours a week were used in the analysis, higher quality of care was associated with more favorable developmental outcomes in the children.  相似文献   

16.
Over half of the toddlers in the US experience routine nonparental care, but much less is known about early care than about preschool care. This study analyzed 2-year-old child care and child outcome data from the nationally representative ECLS-B sample of children born in 2001. At two-years of age, 51% of children experienced exclusive parental care, 18% relative care, 15% family child care, and 16% center care. More children in nonparental care were in medium quality care (61%) than in high quality (26%) or low quality (13%) care. Low-income children were more likely than non-low income children to be cared for by their parents and, when in care, were more often in lower quality care. The impact of toddler care quality on cognitive skills was estimated using propensity score adjustments to account for potential selection confounds due to family and child characteristics. Children's cognitive scores were higher in high or medium quality care than in low quality care, but no evidence emerged suggesting that poverty moderated the quality effects. Nevertheless, this suggests that increasing the proportion of low-income children in high quality care could reduce the achievement gap because low-income children are very unlikely to experience high quality care.  相似文献   

17.
This study focuses on mothers’ and young children’s everyday social experience by analyzing their social relationships, social support in child care, mother-child interaction, and mothers’ evaluations of all these aspects. Three hundred and eighty-four mothers with a child aged between I and 3 years, living in a city in Central Italy, were interviewed. A Principal Components Analysis was performed on items concerning mothers’ and children’s social experience and mothers’ evaluations. Four PCA generated factors were regressed on the mother’s and Four PCA generated factors were regressed on the mother’s and child’s characteristics. Results show that, even in a context characterized by social conditions supportive to mothering, there is a comparatively widespread desire for social interaction with other mothers and children. A stress related to intensive mothering was found in a minority of the mothers and was predicted by the mothers’ continuous commitment in child care during the whole day. Results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that social contacts with other mothers may have a mitigating effect on mothers’ stress. One implication is that early educational services that provide the opportunity for social intercourse among parents can be an important resource for them.  相似文献   

18.
This study uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study [Reichman, N., Teitler, J., Garfinkel, I., & McLanahan, S. (2001). The fragile families and child wellbeing study: Sample and design. Children and Youth Services Review, 23, 303–326] to describe primary child care arrangements of employed, predominantly low-income mothers of 1-year olds, and to quantify their child care calculus in the post-welfare reform era. The sorting of children across arrangement types differs by mother's race/ethnicity: Hispanic children are most likely to be cared for maternal kin, Black children in organized centers, and White children by their fathers. Multinomial regression reveals that the association between race/ethnicity and arrangement type is largely – but not entirely – accounted for by mothers’ socioeconomic, household, job, and cultural characteristics; interaction tests show that the associations between arrangement type and both poverty status and marital status are contingent on race/ethnicity. These findings indicate that disadvantage does not translate into child care arrangements similarly across racial/ethnic groups and child care policy must take into account structural and cultural differences associated with parents’ race/ethnicity.  相似文献   

19.
The present study describes the early life histories of a large sample of three-year-old children from different ethnic backgrounds living in three levels of family income—poverty, near-poverty, and above-poverty. The study examined the developmental characteristics of children in the three groups and related them to family characteristics and experiences in child care. To no one's surprise, significant differences associated with income were found for most of the family measures. Poverty and near-poverty families were more likely to have mothers with lower education, less sensitivity, more depression, and lower HOME scores. Correlatively, for the child development measures, there was an upward progression associated with income. Poverty children consistently showed the greatest deviation from established norms for cognitive and social behavior. A striking finding, however, was the considerable variability found on all the measures—a pattern not sufficiently stressed in related research. This finding has major implications for curriculum planning in Head Start programs. The analysis also showed that child care experience cannot be disregarded as a significant aspect of the history of a prospective enrollee in Head Start or other intervention programs geared to low-income children. Fewer of these children are likely to have a child care history, as families that used at least 10 hours of child care per week were less likely to be either poor or near-poor and thus eligible for enrollment. While this may reflect selection factors associated with child care usage, it also indicates that availability of child care is essential for borderline families that try to stay out of poverty. Number of hours of care per week and age of enrollment did not predict developmental level when the full income sample was considered. However, when only poor and near-poor children in care for at least 20 hours a week were used in the analysis, higher quality of care was associated with more favorable developmental outcomes in the children.  相似文献   

20.
Research Findings: This study assessed public perceptions of child care and its providers in a Canadian province where government funding for child care includes subsidies and a voluntary accreditation process. In 2007–2008, 1,443 randomly selected adults in Alberta, Canada, completed a telephone survey. Individuals were eligible to participate if they had had interactions with a child younger than 14 years of age in the past 6 months. A total of 52% indicated that the government should cover about half of child care costs, and 72% indicated that child care providers at day care centers should have at least a college diploma. Between 80% and 90% indicated that child care providers were as central to children's development as elementary school teachers. One third of parents sought information on child development from child care providers. These parents were more likely to have children in care for more than 6 hr per week, have children younger than 6 years old, and be unmarried. Practice or Policy: The majority of Alberta adults were in favor of substantial public funding of child care. Adults who interacted with children valued the role of child care providers in supporting children's development, which may be encouraging news for providers. Because parents sought information about child development from child care providers, it is important to ensure that providers have both the training and the content expertise to provide parents with current information that will optimize development and support parents in their role. Policymakers, educators, and program planners may consider this information useful in allocating resources to promote child development.  相似文献   

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