New Findings on Children, Families, and Economic Self-Sufficiency: Summary of a Research Briefing

How Does Child Care Affect Children's Well-Being?

The results of a four-site study of 400 child care centers (Cost, Quality and Child Outcomes Study Team, 1995), presented at the briefing, found that child care at most centers in the United States, especially for infants and toddlers, does not meet children's needs for health, safety, warm relationships, and learning. The findings, presented by Ellen Peisner-Feinberg, show that only 14 percent of centers received a rating of developmentally appropriate, while 12 percent were found to be of such poor quality that basic sanitary conditions were not met, children's safety was endangered, or caregivers offered little or no response to children's efforts to communicate; 40 percent of infant or toddler rooms were observed to offer poor-quality care. The study was based on data from 400 child care centers in California, Colorado, Connecticut, and North Carolina, obtained through interviews, questionnaires, and observations of children and caregivers in child care settings.

The study also found that children's cognitive and social development are positively related to the quality of their child care experience. Children in higher quality preschool classrooms displayed greater receptive language ability and premathematics skills and had more advanced social skills than those in lower quality classrooms, according to the study. Furthermore, children in higher quality centers had more positive self-perceptions and attitudes toward their child care, and their teachers were more likely to have warm, open relationships with them, factors considered important to a child's capacity to enter school ready to learn.

The study cited by Peisner-Feinberg, a principal investigator, also found that in some instances, variation in quality had a larger impact on children typically at risk-specifically, on receptive language ability of minority children and on the self-perceptions of children of less-educated mothers-than on other children.

A new study presented by Carollee Howes (Howes and Smith, 1994) involved obser-vations of 226 family and relative care providers in California, Texas, and North Carolina. For low-income families, the quality of these arrangements was found to be quite deficient: 74 percent of children living in families with annual incomes below $20,000 were observed to be in unsafe, unsanitary, and unresponsive child care (see Figure 7 [text or graphic]).

The results of another study presented at the briefing show the positive effects on children of developmentally beneficial child care. The study of low-birthweight children (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1994; Smith and Brooks-Gunn, 1994), presented by Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, found that children who took part in a high-quality center-based program had significantly higher IQ and verbal ability scores than children who did not, regardless of the welfare status of their parents. Children who participated in the program also exhibited lower scores on an index of behavior problems, as reported by their mothers, than those who did not. The Infant Health and Development Program was an eight-site randomized clinical control trial testing the efficacy of providing early education and parenting services to families who had a low-birthweight, premature infant; the sample size was 600.

Taken together, data presented at the briefing indicate that high-quality child care that is specifically designed to offer resources that may not otherwise be available to poor families can reap developmental benefits. Yet many children living in poverty receive child care that, at best, does not support their optimal development and, at worst, may compromise their health and safety.

Additional research is needed to determine how much difference variations in the stability and quality of child care make for low-income children, apart from the effect of their home environments. It would also be useful to learn more about the long-term effects on children of inadequate and dangerous care. Furthermore, additional studies are needed on child care that occurs in home settings by relatives and nonrelatives-the arrangements that are used by the majority of welfare families and that have been the subject of much less research than has center-based child care.

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