Child Care and Development: Results From the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. The NICHD Early Child Care Research Network

Abstract

Child Care and Development: Results From the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. The NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (Eds.). New York: Guilford Press. 2005. 474 pp. ISBN 1-5938-5138-3. $48.00 (hardcover). ISBN 1-5938-5287-8. $28.00 (paperback). Few academic subjects are as emotionally charged as the question of who should care for our children. Popular news media are littered with the dangers of day care, such as Time's (2001) Do preschoolers and nannies turn kids into bullies? and, more recently, the dangers of stay at home mothers' over-investment, (Warner's [2005] Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety). Despite intense interest in this topic, studies on the effects of nonmaternal care have produced mixed results. Unfortunately, the complexity of the child-care question is at least as large as its importance, due to considerable variety in home environments, nonmaternal child-care choices (and unequal access to these choices), as well as hours and regularity of working arrangements. In 1987, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) organized one large, comprehensive and longitudinal study of child care and the development of (p. x) in order to examine the effects of nonmaternal care on infants and children. The NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (an impressive group of 30 scholars, with an additional 29 contributors) was formed and, over 18 months, developed a study of 1,364 families selected cross-nationally. Extensive assessments of home, family, school, and child-care environments were obtained, as well as children's social, cognitive, and health outcomes beginning at 6 months. Results of this sweeping study from infancy through 4.5 years (which has produced over 116 scholarly publications) have been summarized in the book Child Care and Child Development. The book is sectioned around six major themes, as well as a concluding commentary, which summarize overall project contributions. Each major theme is examined through two or more empirical investigations of these overarching themes. The first two sections provide an overview of project methodology and summarize major findings on child care during the first 36 months. They describe the hours infants, toddlers, and preschoolers spend in child care, as well as the types and quality of care they experience. This portrait offers a sobering context for future sections, as infants typically spend long hours in child care, experience more than two child-care changes during the first year of life, as well as the fact that most children experience child care of mediocre quality at best. Section 3 explores family characteristics that may mask the effects of child care. Family income (especially for poor families), beliefs about childrearing and care, and other psychosocial risk factors are demonstrated as factors that, unless controlled for, may influence the interpretation of child-care effects. The effects of child care on health are explored in the fourth section, discussing the susceptibility of children to communicable diseases depending on the child's age and the size of the child-care group. The question of whether child care damages the relationship between mothers and children is thoroughly examined in section 5. Although hours spent in child care did not negatively affect the attachment formation at 15 months (unless maternal sensitivity was already low), cumulative hours spent in nonmaternal care did decrease maternal sensitivity over 3 years. …