Provide Consistent and Loving Care

Providing consistent, loving care is about helping families negotiate separations in healthy ways as well as evaluating care conditions. Child care is one of the most central topics because of current economic pressures on families.

Center-type care in particular has raised many questions, and new findings from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) indicate that long-term results can be a mixed bag. Surprising new evidence about the role of child temperament provides new perspectives about child care. Additionally, four care scenarios were identified and relate to child outcomes and help us understand care from a more encompassing, ecological perspective. We gain further information about the impact that longer-term parental separations and absences can have on children, and in cases where military parents are deployed, we clearly see the challenges as well as the potential for healthy repair with the right information and support.

Differential Susceptibility to Parenting and Quality Child Care

Pluess, M., & Belsky, J. (2010). Differential susceptibility to parenting and quality child care. Developmental Psychology, 46(2), 379-390.

High-quality parenting was predictive of greater academic and social skills for all children, but particularly children with a difficult temperament. In addition, high-quality non-parental child care predicted fewer behavioral problems in children with difficult temperaments.

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Sample

  • N: 1,364
  • Subject Ages: 1 month to sixth grade
  • Location: United States, 10 locations
  • SES: 21% had incomes no more than 200% of the poverty level
  • Eligibility: Families completed a home interview when the infant was 1 month old
  • Additional:
    • 26% of the mothers had no more than a high school education
    • 22% were minority
    • Substudy of the NICHD SECCYD

Hypotheses

  1. Infants with difficult temperaments are disproportionately affected by parenting and child care quality.
  2. This study investigates the prospect that virtually all earlier analysis of child care quality effects using NICHD SECCYD data may have misestimated quality of care effect.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

  • Difficult temperament - maternal report at six months with adapted version of the Infant Temperament Questionnaire
  • Parenting quality at six to 54 months -
    • mother-child interactions were videotaped at six, 15, 24, 36 and 54 months and coded for composite mother sensitivity
    • the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment at six, 15, 36 and 54 months
  • Child care characteristics -
    • child care quality: observational assessments utilizing the Observational Record of the Caregiving Environment (ORCE) at five, 15, 24, 36 and 54 months
    • child care quantity: parent reports
    • child care types
  • Covariates -
    • maternal, child, and family characteristics of early childhood
    • maternal, child, and family characteristics of early grades
  • Child outcomes -
    • academic achievement
    • the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised
    • the Social Skills Questionnaire
    • behavior problems: the Child Behavior Checklist Teacher Report Form
    • teacher-child conflict: the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale, Short Form
    • academic work habits: teachers completed a 19-item mock report card
    • socioemotional functioning: mock report card items came from the Teacher Checklist of Peer Relations

Design—Longitudinal

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Findings

  1. Temperament interacted with parenting quality on all three academic outcomes and on two of the five social adjustment outcomes: social skills and work habits.
  2. Temperament interacted with child care quality on two social adjustment outcomes: behavior problems and teacher-child conflict.
  3. Higher-quality parenting predicted greater reading, vocabulary, work habits, math and social skills for children who scored high as well as low on difficult temperament as infants. These parenting effects were strongest in children with histories of temperamental difficulty.
  4. For children with histories of difficult temperament, greater quality of child care predicted fewer problems and less conflict.

Limitations

  • Study was not experimental, so all findings cannot be presumed to be causal.

Do Effects of Early Child Care Extend to Age 15 Years? Results From the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development

Vandell, D. L., Belsky, J., Burchinal, M., Steinberg, L., & Vandergrift, N. (2010). Do effects of early child care extend to age 15 Years? Results from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Child Development, 81(3), 737-756.

While high-quality child care was predictive of greater pre-academic skills, children who spent more time in non-parental child care, especially in center-type care, tended to have more behavior problems that continued into adolescence.

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Sample

  • N: 1,364
  • Subject Ages: Birth to 4.5 years and 15 years
  • Location: United States, 10 locations
  • SES: 21% had incomes no greater than 200% of the poverty level
  • Eligibility: Children at birth through age 4 1/2, to be followed up with as adolescents

Hypotheses

  1. Non-relative child care during the first 4 1/2 years of life predicts academic achievement and behaviors adjustment at age 15.
  2. Links between early child care and adolescent outcomes are moderated by child gender or familial risk.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

  • Child care characteristics - telephone and in-home interviews at three-month intervals until 36 months and four-month intervals until 4.5 years.
  • Quality of care - the ORCE at intervals of 6, 15, 24, 36 and 54 months.
  • Adolescent functioning -
    • cognitive academic achievement: the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised
    • risk-taking: audio computer-assisted self-interview
    • impulsivity: eight-item questionnaire taken from the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory
    • externalizing problems: youth self report
  • Maternal, child, family, and school controls -
    • maternal education, child gender, child race and ethnicity, the proportion of epochs throughout the 4 1/2 years that the mother reported a husband or partner was present, family income, maternal Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Revised, maternal psychological adjustment, NEO Personality Inventory, maternal depressive symptoms: Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale,   early-parenting quality
  • Child functioning in early and middle childhood -
    • cognitive academic achievement: WJ-R Letter-Word Identification & Broad Reading, applied problems and picture vocabulary
    • externalizing behaviors: the Teacher Report Form (TRF; Achenbach, 1991b) completed by teachers

Design—Longitudinal

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Findings

  1. At 4 1/2 years, higher quality care predicted higher levels of pre-academic skills and language, and more exposure to center-type care predicted better language and memory. Early child care quality continues to predict cognitive-academic achievement ten years after the child has left child care.
  2. The cognitive academic benefits of child care quality found at 4 1/2 years carried through middle childhood and were associated with adolescent functioning.
  3. At 4 1/2 years of age, children who were in child care for more hours a day and had more center-type care showed more externalizing behaviors. This remained true at age 15. Higher hours of care predicted reports by adolescents of greater risk-taking and impulsivity.

Limitations

  • Study design is correlational, not experimental; therefore, the analysis was a test of association, not causation.
  • It is possible that excluded variables may account for the obtained effects.
  • The study was not nationally representative.

Double Jeopardy: Poorer Social-Emotional Outcomes for Children in the NICHD SECCYD Experiencing Home and Child-Care Environments That Confer Risk

Watamura, S. E., Phillips, D. A., Morrissey, T. W., McCartney, K., & Bub, K. (2011). Double Jeopardy: Poorer Social-Emotional Outcomes for Children in the NICHD SECCYD Experiencing Home and Child-Care Environments That Confer Risk. Child Development, 82(1), 48-65.

Regardless of the quality of non-parental child care, children from low-quality home environments had more behavioral problems and children from high-quality homes had fewer behavioral problems.

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Sample

  • N: 771
  • Subject Ages: 24, 36 and 54 months
  • Location: United States
  • SES: Higher income families, income-to-needs ratio of 4:1
  • Eligibility: Children in non-maternal child care
  • Additional: Subsample of families in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development

Hypotheses

  1. Children with both low-quality home and non-maternal care would exhibit more internalizing and externalizing problems, more disruptive behaviors and fewer pro-social behaviors than would children in any other group.
  2. High-quality child care would bring children experiencing low-quality home environments into the range of children experiencing average-quality home environments.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

  • Predictors -
    • parenting quality predictor scores: calculated from scores on the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) administered at 15, 36 and 54 months
    • maternal sensitivity: rated through videotaped interactions at 24, 36 and 54 months
    • quality of the child’s primary non-maternal child care setting: using the ORCE from the original study by the NICHD ECCRN
  • Child outcomes - 
    • behavior problems and pro-social behavior: collected from mothers and primary caregivers
    • the Child Behavior Checklist
    • the Adaptive Social Behavior Inventory (ASBI)

Design—Longitudinal

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Findings

  1. Mothers who were characterized by low-quality HOME scores and low maternal sensitivity portrayed their children as having more internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and  showing less pro-social behaviors than children in homes or child care programs in the middle of the quality distribution when their children were also in low-quality child care.
  2. The mothers' ratings of behavior problems did not differ from the reference group when the children were experiencing low-quality home care and were in high-quality child care.
  3. Caregivers reported fewer externalizing behaviors for children who experienced a home environment categorized as high quality regardless of their child care settings.

Limitations

  • Non-experimental study design
  • The sample over-represents children and families experiencing lower risk.
  • The HOME assessment was not conducted at 24 months.

Early Mother-Child Separation, Parenting, and Child Well-Being in Early Head Start Families

Howard, K., Martin, A., Berlin, L. J., & Brooks-Gunn, J. (2011). Early mother-child separation, parenting, and child well-being in Early Head Start families.Attachment & Human Development,13(1), 5-26.

While it is well known that traumatic or extended separations negatively impact child development, even week-long separations that occur within the first two years of life have lasting consequences on child behavior.

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Sample

  • N: 3,001
  • Subject Ages: 1/4 unborn; 1/4 ages 6 months or older; 1/2 birth to age 6 months
  • Location: United States, 17 different Early Head Start program locations
  • SES: Low income
  • Eligibility: Children ages birth to 2, when children rely on physical proximity as the primary indicator of their mothers’ availability

Hypotheses

  1. Early mother-child separation would be related to maternal behaviors such that children who experienced separation would have mothers who were generally less sensitive and positive toward their children at age 3 than children who did not experience separation.
  2. Mother-child separation during the first two years of life would be negatively related to children’s subsequent socioemotional and language development.
  3. The effects of separation on children’s development would persist such that effects observed at age 3 would still be evident at age 5.
  4. Early mother-child separation would covary with measures of family and household instability during the child’s first two years of life.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

  • Early mother-child separation of one week or more in the previous year - author questionnaire
  • Maternal parenting behaviors at child age 3 - three measures drawn from the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)
  • Child outcomes at ages 3 and 5 -
    • Aggressive behavior: the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL)
    • Negativity toward mother: author observational scale
    • Receptive vocabulary: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test
  • Early household instability - author questionnaire
  • Baseline demographic characteristics - author questionnaire

Design—RCT, longitudinal

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Findings

Controlling for baseline family and maternal characteristics and indicators of family instability:

  1. The occurrence of a mother-child separation of a week or longer within the first two years of life was related to higher levels of child negativity at age 3 and aggression at ages 3 and 5.
  2. The effect of separation on child aggression at age 5 was mediated by aggression at age 3, suggesting that the effects of separation on children’s aggressive behavior are early and persistent.
  3. While it is known that traumatic or extended separations can negatively impact children’s development, the present study suggests that even relatively minor separations of a week or more that occur within the first two years of life are not entirely without adverse consequences for children’s development. Although more information is certainly required about the physical and emotional contexts that might buffer the effects of separations on children’s development, it is clear that a mother’s physical accessibility during the first years of life has important implications for supporting positive child development.

Limitations

  • Lack of information on caregiving arrangements during the separation
  • Lack of information on the quality of care that the child received during the separation
  • Future research should consider the examination of these additional characteristics in order to strengthen the causal interpretation about the role of separation in predicting children’s behavior:
    • Infant characteristics, such as temperament
    • Maternal personality characteristics or emotional well-being during the prenatal period

When a Parent Goes to War: Effects of Parental Deployment on Very Young Children and Implications for Intervention

Paris, R., DeVoe, E. R., Ross, A. M., & Acker, M. L. (2010). When a parent goes to war: Effects of parental deployment on very young children and implications for intervention. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 80(4), 610-618.

Post-deployment programs that address parenting would be helpful, especially for families with children from birth through age 5, as this age group is particularly vulnerable to changes in attachment patterns.

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Objective

  1. To review of what is known about the effects of the military deployment cycle on young children, including attachment patterns, intense emotions and behavioral changes and suggest an ecological approach for supporting military families with infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

Design—Descriptive Literature Review

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Findings

  1. Deployment may have negative effects on children between the ages of 0 to 5 years in military families.
  2. Deployment could potentially create a developmental crisis and could impact attachment patterns, resulting in intense emotions or behavior changes.
  3. An enormous number of young children in military families are dealing with the effects of deployment and post-deployment adjustment. In response, major resources should be directed at services that bolster the well-being of children and parents in military families.
  4. Program elements that address service-member parents’ ability to reintegrate upon returning from deployment may be especially helpful to children of all ages and young children in particular. These needs are even more urgent when a parent returns from war with mental health concerns that may complicate his or her efforts to cope with the simultaneous demands of recovery, reintegration, and parenting.
  5. There is a need for development and adaptation of programs that are ecologically valid, relevant to the military culture and community-informed. Such approaches may reduce long-standing issues regarding stigma, fragmentation of services, and impediments to outreach that target military families.

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