Childcare Context

Childcare Settings

In family care, children are cared for by an extended family member in either the child’s home or the caregiver’s home. Infants and toddlers may spend the day with other children such as cousins, or they may receive one-on-one attention. In nanny services, an adult provides care in the child’s home, either one-on-one or with their siblings. In both family care and nanny services, children are likely to have the stability of a familiar caregiver who provides for them in a familiar environment.

Childcare may also take place in another family’s home. One example is home day care. Here, another family welcomes children into their home and provides care for them during daytime working hours. Home day-care centers are often regulated: providers have training and certification in early childhood education and are registered with the state or province. But providers can also be unregulated and may or may not have certification or training (Dowsett et al., 2008). In home day care, infants and toddlers interact with a few other children in a homelike environment.

Finally, childcare may also include center care, or day care centers, in which commercial properties such as childcare centers, early learning centers, and preschools offer care during daytime working hours (Figure 13.5). Infants and toddlers are often divided into classroom groups with similar-aged peers and receive care from a variety of staff members. Center care may be more highly regulated, though that can vary across center type, regions, and country guidelines. The center often must register with the state or province and be regularly inspected by government officials (Dowsett et al., 2008). While staff at these centers may be more likely to have a certification in early childhood education, many childcare centers struggle with having appropriate training for staff, retention of staff, and quality of programming (Eadie et al., 2022; Hur et al., 2023).

Childcare Quality

All forms of childcare can vary in quality. Although center care is the most highly regulated, factors such as high turnover of staff members, crowded classrooms, and unkept play spaces and materials can lower the quality of care. Higher childcare quality is associated with better outcomes for children and improved parent-child relationships (Fischer et al., 2021). Regardless of childcare type, high-quality care typically has several common features:

• clean, spacious play areas with engaging toys and books
• good nutrition in the form of meals or snacks
• attentive caregivers with knowledge and experience with children
• small staff-to-infant ratios (one worker to three infants under eighteen months of age)
• low turnover among workers
• minimal screen time on TVs, tablets, and phones
• time for active play outdoors in a safe environment
• quiet spaces or times for infants and toddlers to rest

As more U.S. families began to send infants and toddlers to childcare in the increase of dual-earner homes, some people worried that such care would harm infants’ social and emotional well-being, including their attachment, emotion regulation, and family relationships. In 1991, researchers associated with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) began collecting data about newborns in ten locations around the United States. The infants were followed for fifteen years as part of the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) database. Results indicated overwhelmingly that children who attended childcare from an early age and those who did not had similar overall developmental outcomes, if the childcare provided was of high quality and children attended for less than nine hours per day (Vandell et al., 2010; Vandell & Gülseven, 2023).

In many cases, high-quality childcare can improve developmental outcomes for infants and toddlers from low-income households. The Head Start program, begun in 1965, is designed to help children from such households prepare for the start of formal education. Early Head Start targets infants and toddlers and provides enrichment through stimulating childcare environments that foster cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development, as well as a nutritional program. Enrollment in Early Head Start is associated with positive developmental outcomes in areas including school attendance, reading ability, development of emotion regulation skills, and physical health (Choi et al., 2019; Heberle & Chazan-Cohen, 2023). Early Head Start also decreases caregiver stress and is associated with lower rates of infant maltreatment (Green et al., 2020).

Early Childhood Education Programs

Early childhood development and education are key determinants of future health and well–being. Addressing the disparities in access to early childhood development and education opportunities can greatly bolster young children’s future outcomes. Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) programs are early childhood education programs that focus on school readiness. Although the effectiveness of these programs varies, the evidence seems to suggest that each program can lead to positive outcomes for its participants (Mashburg et al., 2008).

High Scope Perry Preschool Project

High scope is a program model that is child-centered and provides children with hands-on experiences. Its roots are unique – it originated from a research-based preschool program in Michigan in the 1960s called the Perry Preschool Project (1962-1967). The goal of the Perry Preschool Project was to enroll low-income children in high quality preschool experiences to see if it would counter the effects of poverty early in life. This was one of the first and most published pieces of scientific research to investigate how economic investments in early childhood education could have long-term benefits to the child, the family, and to society. The idea was that if you give a child a strong start early on, it will pay off when they become adolescents and adults. What the researchers hoped for came true. The program followed 123 children who were randomly assigned to the program or to the no-program control group from age 3 to adulthood. Children who participated in the Perry Preschool Project had greater academic achievement, greater high school graduation rates, lower rates of crime, and higher adult earnings than their low-income peers who were not in the Preschool project (Schweinhart, 2003). This study showed that access to high-quality preschool programs in the first few years of life can have long-term benefits for the child. This research highlighted the importance of investing in the early years of a child’s life to influencing the course of their future (Barnett, 1985).

Project Head Start

For children who live in poverty, Head Start has been providing preschool education since 1965 when it was begun by President Lyndon Johnson as part of his war on poverty. Head Start programs were developed to promote school readiness for children whose families needed extra support. They focus on the whole child: with healthy meals, family involvement, and developmental check ins. Head Start aims to improve health outcomes, increase learning and social skills, and close the gap in readiness to learn for children from low–income families and at-risk children. In 2013, research revealed that Head Start served nearly one million children and annually costs approximately 7.5 billion dollars (USDHHS, 2015).

According to some research, children who participate in Head Start have positive long-term outcomes: they are more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to live in poverty as adults, and have lifelong better physical health (Garces et al., 2002; McKey et al., 1985). However, some research suggests that Head Start programs are not effective in fostering long-term positive outcomes (Barnett, 2011).

Head Start benefits different groups of children and their families in different ways. For example, Head Start appears to be most beneficial for children who are at the bottom of the achievement spectrum (Bitler et al., 2017) and White and Hispanic children (Currie & Thomas, 1993). African American children who participated in the program are less likely to be charged with a crime later in life (Garces et al., 2002). Head Start programs are also associated with positive parenting, particularly for parents with low education levels and when the program caregivers were highly educated (Elicker et al., 2013).

Carolina Abecedarian Program

A thoughtful curriculum planning does not just impact children for that present moment. A high-quality program that incorporates meaningful curriculum can provide long-lasting benefits. As demonstrated with the Carolina Abecedarian Project (1972-1985), a vastly recognized longitudinal research study that followed a group of 111 children from disadvantaged backgrounds into adulthood. Children in the treatment group received full-time, year-round high quality childcare from infancy to kindergarten, with nutrition and health care services.

Not only did the children who received high-quality child care outperform their peers in math and reading (Sparling & Meunier, 2019), 30 years later project participants continued to exhibit significant merits as compared to their counterparts in the control group. More specifically, children that participated in the Abecedarian Project were four times more likely to earn a college degree than children in the control group, were more likely to have been consistently employed, and less likely to have used public assistance (Campbell et al., 2008). Additionally, participants in the Project had improved cognitive and educational attainment, and improved health (Muenning et al., 2011).