Unstable and multiple child care arrangements and young children's behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2014.05.007Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Survey and calendar data were used to examine the effects of child care instability.

  • Long-term instability was associated with more externalizing behavior problems.

  • Back-up arrangements were associated with more internalizing behavior problems.

  • Current multiplicity, but not stable multiplicity, predicted more behavior problems.

Abstract

Growing evidence suggests that child care instability is associated with child behavior problems, but existing studies confound different types of instability; use small, convenience samples; and/or control insufficiently for selection into child care arrangements. This study uses survey and calendar data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study to estimate the associations between three different types of child care instability—long-term instability, multiplicity, and the use of back-up arrangements—and children's internalizing, externalizing, and prosocial behaviors at age 3, controlling for a large number of child and family background characteristics. Long-term instability between birth and age 3, as measured in both the survey and calendar data, is associated with higher levels of externalizing behavior problems. Current multiplicity at age 3 (as measured by survey data) is associated with higher levels of both externalizing and internalizing behavior problems, but stable multiplicity over time (as measured using calendar data) is not. Finally, the use of back-up arrangements at age 3 is associated with higher levels of internalizing behaviors. We find no consistent differences in these results by the timing of instability, child gender, family income, or type of care.

Introduction

Emerging evidence indicates that instability in non-parental child care arrangements threatens child developmental processes. Experiencing a greater number of child care arrangements or multiple, concurrent arrangements is consistently associated with more internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and fewer prosocial behaviors in children younger than age 5 (Claessens and Chen, 2013, De Schipper et al., 2004b, Morrissey, 2009, NICHD, 1998). Theoretical hypotheses suggest that experiencing multiple child care arrangements, either sequentially or concurrently, may make it difficult for young children to develop secure and sensitive relationships with non-parental caregivers and that negotiating new and multiple child care environments may be stressful for children (Ahnert et al., 2006, Gunnar, 2006, Lamb and Ahnert, 2006, Shonkoff and Phillips, 2000).

Many unanswered questions remain in this relatively new area of research. Most prior studies focus on one type of child care instability (e.g. experiencing multiple, concurrent arrangements) or confound different types of instability, making it difficult to know which types of instability may be driving the observed effects on children's development. Several existing studies use small, convenience samples, making it difficult to generalize their results (Cryer et al., 2005, Howes and Hamilton, 1993, Howes and Stewart, 1987). Others do not control sufficiently for child and family characteristics that are likely to confound estimates of the relationship between child care instability and child outcomes (Bacharach and Baumeister, 2003, De Schipper et al., 2004b).

In addition, in order for parents, child care providers, and policy advocates to prevent child care instability or buffer children against the effects of instability, we need to parse out the specific relationships between different types of child care instability and child behavior. For instance, if experiencing multiple changes in child care arrangements over time is more detrimental than having multiple, concurrent arrangements at any one time, this information would be useful to policy-makers designing child care regulations and child care subsidy and early education programs. As parents weigh a complex set of preferences and constraints when making child care decisions (Chaudry et al., 2010, Meyers and Jordan, 2006, Weber, 2011), to the extent that parents have choices, a better understanding of the effects of child care instability could also be informative for deciding whether or not to change arrangements or to use multiple arrangements.

This study uses longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFCWS), to examine the associations between three types of child care instability—long-term instability, multiplicity, and the use of back-up arrangements—and child behavior at 3 years of age. We address the shortcomings of the existing literature by using a large, national sample of low- to middle-income families and by constructing multiple measures of child care instability using both survey and child care calendar data. This approach allows us to estimate the effects of both concurrent and longitudinal instability, as well as whether those effects differ by the timing of instability in relation to child's age. In addition, we leverage the rich FFCWS data to control for a large set of child and family characteristics that may confound the relationships between child care instability and children's behavioral outcomes, including a measure of children's temperament at age 1.

In early childhood, child care experiences constitute an important influence on child development and well-being. According to developmental theory, development occurs through regular and repeated, reciprocal interactions between children and their environment (Bronfenbrenner, 1999, Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006, Sameroff, 2009). Stability and continuity in child care providers promotes positive interactions between children and caregivers and the development of secure attachment relationships (Ahnert et al., 2006, Barnas and Cummings, 1994, Howes and Hamilton, 1992, Raikes, 1993). To the extent that frequent changes in providers or multiple, concurrent providers prevent these secure relationships from forming, child care instability may result in adverse behavioral and socio-emotional outcomes in early and middle childhood (Howes and Hamilton, 1993, Howes et al., 1994, Howes et al., 1998, Howes et al., 1988, Oppenheim et al., 1988).

Additionally, child care instability may disrupt family routines and create stress for parents and children, which may in turn interfere with positive parenting and lead to child behavior problems (Conger et al., 1992, Fiese et al., 2002, McLoyd, 1998, Yeung et al., 2002). Research suggests that parents, particularly those with low income, often find it difficult and stressful to manage changing employment demands and child care arrangements (Chaudry, 2004, Henly and Lambert, 2005, Henly and Lyons, 2000, Lowe and Weisner, 2004, Scott et al., 2005). It may also be difficult and stressful for children to adapt to and navigate multiple social environments with different rules and expectations, teaching and discipline styles, and peer groups. This is evidenced by studies of children's transitions into new preschool or elementary school classrooms, which find that children's stress levels peak at the beginning of the school year and then drop-off over time (Bruce et al., 2002, Gunnar et al., 1997, Russ et al., 2012).

It is important to note that not all changes in child care providers or multiple, concurrent arrangements will be detrimental to children's development. Changes that are planned and purposeful and that lead to higher quality or more developmentally appropriate care, such as transitioning from in-home care to center-based care during the preschool years, may lead to more positive outcomes (Ansari and Winsler, 2013, Morrissey, 2010). In these cases, any negative effects of changing to a new setting or new caregiver may be short-lived or outweighed by benefits. Moreover, the effects of long-term instability may be non-linear, such that any adverse effects occur only after children have experienced multiple provider changes.

Prior studies identify two primary types of child care instability: Long-term instability refers to changes in non-parental caregivers over a period of time, such as between birth and kindergarten entry, that occur when a child leaves a child care arrangement (e.g. switches from one child care center to another) or when a child changes to a new caregiver within the same setting. Multiplicity refers to experiencing multiple, concurrent child care arrangements over the course of a single day or week on a regular basis (Adams and Rohacek, 2010, De Schipper et al., 2003, Morrissey, 2009, Tran and Weinraub, 2006). Both long-term instability and multiplicity have each been associated with adverse effects on a range of socio-emotional outcomes in early childhood, including internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and prosocial behaviors (Claessens and Chen, 2013, De Schipper et al., 2003, De Schipper et al., 2004a, De Schipper et al., 2004b, Howes and Hamilton, 1993, Howes and Stewart, 1987, Morrissey, 2009, NICHD, 1998, Tran and Winsler, 2011). Two of these studies also suggest that changes in arrangements are associated with a reduction in negative behaviors (e.g. noncompliance) in the child care setting (NICHD, 1998, Tran and Winsler, 2011), perhaps suggesting that children who experience a greater number of arrangements become better able to adapt to the demands of new settings over time.

Children may also experience disruptions in their regular child care routines due to foreseen or unforeseen changes in the child care provider's schedule or availability, resulting in the use of temporary back-up arrangements (Gordon et al., 2008, Usdansky and Wolf, 2008), which we conceive of as a less-studied third type of child care instability. For example, parents may use back-up arrangements when their regular provider is temporarily unavailable due to a holiday, vacation, or illness. Children may experience back-up arrangements as stressful to the extent that they disrupt families’ regular routines and/or result in the child being cared for by a less familiar caregiver. In general, we expect back-up arrangements to be less detrimental to children's behavior than either multiplicity or long-term instability because they represent short-term disruptions to children's regular care arrangements and daily routines, but not disruptions of their long-term relationships with their regular child care providers.

Importantly, prior studies tend to examine the effects of either long-term instability or multiplicity and may therefore confound the effects of these different constructs because children who have multiple, concurrent arrangements may also be more likely to experience more child care providers over the long-term (Claessens and Chen, 2013, Howes and Hamilton, 1993, Howes and Stewart, 1987, NICHD, 1998, Tran and Winsler, 2011). The few studies that examine long-term instability and multiplicity together, but as separate variables, find inconclusive results (De Schipper et al., 2003, Loeb et al., 2004). In addition, many studies of this topic rely on the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) data (Morrissey, 2009, NICHD, 1998, Tran and Weinraub, 2006), which underrepresents minority and socio-economically disadvantaged families. Other studies use small convenience samples (Howes and Hamilton, 1993, Howes and Stewart, 1987) or international samples (Claessens and Chen, 2013, De Schipper et al., 2004b), making it difficult to assess the generalizability of the results to U.S. children.

There are several reasons to believe that young children, particularly infants, are most vulnerable to the potentially adverse effects of child care instability. Limited evidence suggests that changes in child care arrangements prior to age 24 months are associated with less secure relationships with child care providers at age 24 and 30 months (Howes & Hamilton, 1992), and that infants and young toddlers experience changes in caregivers as more stressful compared to older toddlers (Cryer et al., 2005). Morrissey (2009) found that children who experienced multiple arrangements at younger ages (age 24 months) demonstrated a greater increase in behavior problems than those who experienced these at older ages (36 months).

Boys and children in low-income families may also be more likely to suffer adverse effects of child care instability. Prior research suggests that boys are more vulnerable to stress (Crockenberg, 2003), and low-income children are more likely to experience instability in other aspects of their lives (Ackerman et al., 1999, Adam and Chase-Lansdale, 2002, Moore et al., 2000). Finally, instability might interact with the type of care children experience. On one hand, if center-based care is, on average, of higher quality than home-based care (Li-Grining and Coley, 2006, Rigby et al., 2007), we might expect center-based care to buffer the effects of instability (Tran & Weinraub, 2006). On the other hand, center-based care has been associated with higher levels of behavior problems in young children (Coley et al., 2013, NICHD, 2004) and may instead aggravate the effects of instability on child behavior. Overall, studies examining gender, income, or type of care as a moderator find no consistent results (Claessens and Chen, 2013, Morrissey, 2009, Tran and Winsler, 2011, Youngblade, 2003).

Section snippets

The current study

The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between long-term instability, multiplicity, and the use of back-up arrangements and young children's behavior in a sample of low- to middle-income families with young children, ages 0–3 years. We address three questions: (1) Do long-term instability, multiplicity, and the use of back-up arrangements predict children's behavior at age 3 years? (2) Does the timing of instability matter? (3) Are the effects of child care instability

Sample

This study uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (FFCWS), a longitudinal birth cohort study of approximately 4900 children born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 large, U.S. cities. FFCWS oversampled non-marital births, such that of the total sample approximately 3600 children were born to unmarried parents (compared to about 1300 born to married parents). FFCWS recruited families from hospitals and attempted to interview both mothers and fathers shortly after their child's

Analysis of survey measures

Table 4 presents results from multivariate OLS regression models predicting mother-reported child behavior outcomes at age 3 years from the survey measures of instability and multiplicity. Model 1 includes all children in the survey or calendar sample; Model 2 is restricted to children in non-parental care at the 1-year survey wave. Because our outcome variables are standardized to a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1, the coefficients can be interpreted in terms of standard deviation units

Discussion

This study examined the associations between three distinct types of child care instability—long-term instability, multiplicity, and the use of back-up arrangements—and children's behavioral outcomes at age 3 years among a sample of predominantly low-income, minority children born to unwed parents. Using both survey and child care calendar data to construct different measures of long-term instability and multiplicity, we found that the number of changes in arrangements experienced between birth

References (70)

  • C.P. Li-Grining et al.

    Child care experiences in low-income communities: Developmental quality and maternal views

    Early Childhood Research Quarterly

    (2006)
  • E.D. Lowe et al.

    ‘You have to push it—who's gonna raise your kids?’: Situating child care and child care subsidy use in the daily routines of lower income families

    Children and Youth Services Review

    (2004)
  • T.W. Morrissey

    Sequence of child care type and child development: What role does peer exposure play?

    Early Childhood Research Quarterly

    (2010)
  • J.M. Najman et al.

    Mothers’ mental illness and child behavior problems: Cause–effect association or observation bias?

    Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

    (2000)
  • H. Raikes

    Relationship duration in infant care: Time with a high-ability teacher and infant–teacher attachment

    Early Childhood Research Quarterly

    (1993)
  • N.E. Reichman et al.

    Fragile families: Sample and design

    Children and Youth Services Review

    (2001)
  • S.J. Russ et al.

    Cortisol levels in response to starting school in children at increased risk for social phobia

    Psychoneuroendocrinology

    (2012)
  • R.M. Ryan et al.

    The impact of child care subsidy use on child care quality

    Early Childhood Research Quarterly

    (2011)
  • H. Tran et al.

    Teacher and center stability and school readiness among low-income, ethnically diverse children in subsidized, center-based child care

    Children and Youth Services Review

    (2011)
  • T.M. Achenbach

    Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist/2-3 and 1992 profile

    (1992)
  • B.P. Ackerman et al.

    Family instability and the problem behaviors of children from economically disadvantaged families

    Developmental Psychology

    (1999)
  • E.K. Adam et al.

    Home sweet home(s): Parental separations, residential moves, and adjustment problems in low-income adolescent girls

    Developmental Psychology

    (2002)
  • G. Adams et al.

    Child care instability: Definitions, context, and policy implications

    (2010)
  • L. Ahnert et al.

    Security of children's relationships with nonparental care providers: A meta-analysis

    Child Development

    (2006)
  • P.D. Allison

    Missing data

    (2002)
  • L.M. Berger et al.

    Parenting practices of resident fathers: The role of marital and biological ties

    Journal of Marriage and Family

    (2008)
  • U. Bronfenbrenner

    Environments in developmental perspective: Theoretical and operational models

  • U. Bronfenbrenner et al.

    The bioecological model of human development

  • X. Cai et al.

    Parent and teacher agreement on Child Behavior Checklist items in a sample of preschoolers from low-income and predominantly African American families

    Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

    (2004)
  • M.J. Carlson et al.

    Couples as partners and parents over children's early years

    Journal of Marriage and Family

    (2011)
  • A. Chaudry

    Putting children first: How low-wage working mothers manage child care

    (2004)
  • A. Chaudry et al.

    Conceptual frameworks for child care decision-making

    (2010)
  • R.L. Coley et al.

    Timing, extent, and type of child care and children's behavioral functioning in kindergarten

    Developmental Psychology

    (2013)
  • R.D. Conger et al.

    A family process model of economic hardship and adjustment of early adolescent boys

    Child Development

    (1992)
  • S.C. Crockenberg

    Rescuing the baby from the bathwater: How gender and temperament (may) influence how child care affects child development

    Child Development

    (2003)
  • Cited by (0)

    Author note: The authors thank Scott Allard, Amy Claessens, and Julia Henly for helpful guidance during this project, and Adam Winsler and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts. The Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study was supported in part by the Columbia Population Research Center through Award Numbers R25HD074544, R24HD058486, and R01HD036916 awarded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Heather Hill also receives office space and computing resources from the Population Research Center at NORC and the University of Chicago (National Institute for Child Health and Human Development grant 5R24HD051152-07). The content of this manuscript is solely the responsibility of the authors.

    1

    Tel.: +1 773 702 1142; fax: +1 773 702 0874.

    View full text