Does Amount of Time Spent in Child Care Predict Socioemotional Adjustment During the Transition to Kindergarten?

• Published in: Child development 2003-07, Vol.74 (4), p.976-1005
• Main Author: Early Child Care Research Network, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adjustment; Affect; Assertiveness; Behavior Problems; Behavioural disorders; Behavioural problems; Behavioural sciences; Biological and medical sciences; Caregivers; Child care; Child Care - organization & administration; Child Day Care Centers; Child development; Child Health; Child psychology; Child Rearing; Child, Preschool; Day care; Developmental psychology; Family Characteristics; Family environment. Family history; Family studies; Humans; Infant; Infants; Interpersonal Competence; Kindergarten; Kindergarten education; Kindergartens; Lead Articles; Medical sciences; Modeling; Mothers; Nursery schools; Parenting; Predictors; Preschool children; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; School adjustment; Social Adjustment; Social Environment; Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry; Socioeconomic factors; Socioemotional aspects; Time Factors; Transition; United States; USA
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-8624.00582

To examine relations between time in nonmaternal care through the first 4.5 years of life and children's socioemotional adjustment, data on social competence and problem behavior were examined when children participating in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care were 4.5 years of age and when in kindergarten. The more time children spent in any of a variety of nonmaternal care arrangements across the first 4.5 years of life, the more externalizing problems and conflict with adults they manifested at 54 months of age and in kindergarten, as reported by mothers, caregivers, and teachers. These effects remained, for the most part, even when quality, type, and instability of child care were controlled, and when maternal sensitivity and other family background factors were taken into account. The magnitude of quantity of care effects were modest and smaller than those of maternal sensitivity and indicators of family socioeconomic status, though typically greater than those of other features of child care, maternal depression, and infant temperament. There was no apparent threshold for quantity effects. More time in care not only predicted problem behavior measured on a continuous scale in a dose-response pattern but also predicted at-risk (though not clinical) levels of problem behavior, as well as assertiveness, disobedience, and aggression.