What We Know About Childcare ‐ Edited by Alison Clarke‐Stewart & Virginia D. Allhusen

Abstract

We Know About Childcare. Alison Clarke-Stewart & Virginia D. Allhusen. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2005. 303 pp. ISBN 0-647-01749-8. $ 145 (hardback) Professor Alison Clarke-Stewart conducted her first child-care research study more than 25 years ago. She and her colleague Virginia Allhusen currently direct one of the 10 research sites for the groundbreaking longitudinal National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. The depth and breadth of the researchers' experience in the world of children, families, and child care are readily apparent in this updated and expanded version of Clarke-Stewart's original 1982 volume entitled Daycare. Clarke-Stewart and Allhusen provide an overview of child-care history and current trends in the United States, a review of past and recent child-care research, and carefully considered lists of recommendations, issues, and challenges for parents, childcare providers, and policymakers to consider. This book will serve as an excellent starting point for the child and family scholar entering the world of child care and child-care research, but it is also intended for use by parents who want in-depth, research-based information. The book begins with three chapters describing the development and use of child care, emphasizing challenges faced by the majority of U.S. families who now rely on nonparental care for their young children. These chapters provide a balanced overview of work-family issues, including the difficulty for mothers of having it all. Yet they also note the demonstrated success of many families, with the help of child care, in achieving some kind of reasonable balance between work and family. The authors document the rising demand for child care and the failure of the United States' inadequate and disorganized nonsystem of child care to adequately meet those needs. They summarize recent demographic data showing the increasing participation of women in the workforce and the rising number of single-parent families. Although they do not mention welfare reforms in the mid-1990s that also forced many low-income families into nonparental care, these factors all conspire to overtax currently available child-care services. The middle section of the book comprises a rich and comprehensive review of child-care research over the past 25 years. The research is meticulously reviewed, with the extensive references, and will serve as a starting point for scholars beginning a child-care literature review. Also of special interest to students of child care and early education research will be the authors' analysis of how child-care research has shifted in the past quarter century from a focus on the question Is child care beneficial or harmful? to What factors in child care provisions and quality are most important in children's development and family functioning, and for what kinds of children and families? The authors' review of this large and somewhat complex body of literature is accurate, fair, and balanced. …