“The research team found that child care situations with safer, cleaner, more stimulating physical environments and smaller group sizes, lower child-adult ratios, and care givers who allowed children to express their feelings and took their views into account, also had care givers who were observed to provide more sensitive, responsive, and cognitively stimulating care -- quality of care that was expected to be associated with better developmental outcomes for children.

“Family characteristics, including the family income and the mother's education, were strong predictors of children's outcomes -- for both those children in nearly exclusive maternal care, and those children in extensive child care. These findings suggest that the influence of families on children's development is not significantly reduced or changed by extensive, non-parental care.

“The research team found that child care in and of itself neither adversely affects nor promotes the security of infants’ attachment to their mothers at the 15-month-age point.

“Certain child care conditions, in combination with certain home environments, did increase the probability that infants would be insecurely attached to their mothers. Infants who received either poor quality of care, more than 10 hours per week of care, or were in more than one child care setting in the first 15 months of life, were more likely to be insecurely attached, only if their mothers were lower in sensitivity. For example, when both the mothers and the child care providers fell in the bottom 25% of the sample in terms of providing sensitive care to the child, the likelihood that the children would be securely attached was only 45%, in contrast to those with more sensitive mothers and care givers, among whom 62% were securely attached.

“Researchers found that the quality and amount of child care had a small but statistically significant relationship to the quality of the mother-child interaction. An increased amount of child care was modestly associated with less sensitive and less engaged mother-child interactions.

“More hours of care in the first 6 months of life were associated with lower maternal sensitivity and lower child positive engagement at 36 months. However, a combination of family and home characteristics, including income, maternal education, two parent family status, maternal separation anxiety, and maternal depression, predicted the quality of mother-child interaction more than the children’s experiences in child care.

“Higher quality child care (positive provider-child interaction) modestly predicted greater involvement and sensitivity by the mother (at 15 and 36 months) and greater positive engagement of the child with the mother (at 36 months).

“Although more hours in care during the first two years predicted greater caregiver-reported problems at age two, these effects disappeared by age three. Children who spent more time in group arrangements with more than three other children had fewer behavior problems (as reported by the caregiver) and were observed to be more cooperative in child care.

“The quality of child care over the first three years of life is consistently but modestly associated with children's cognitive and language development. The higher the quality of child care (more positive language stimulation and interaction between the child and provider), the greater the child's language abilities at 15, 24, and 36 months, the better the child's cognitive development at age two, and the more school readiness the child showed at age three.

“However, again, the combination of family income, maternal vocabulary, home environment, and maternal cognitive stimulation were stronger predictors of children's cognitive development at 15, 24, and 36 months of age and of language development at 36 months.

“In terms of cognitive and language development, researchers found no benefit for children in exclusive care by their mother. Among children in care for more than 10 hours per week, those in center care, and to a lesser extent, those in child care homes, performed better on cognitive and language measures than children in other types of care, when the quality of the care giver-child interaction was taken into account.

“The research team found that most child care center classes did not meet all four recommended guidelines for child-staff ratios, group sizes, teacher training, and teacher education. Children in centers that met more guidelines had better language comprehension and school readiness. They also had fewer behavior problems at 24 and 36 months. Children in classes that met none of the guidelines fell below average in their performance on these tests.”

Relations between nonmaternal child care and ratings of maternal sensitivity and child positive engagement during mother—child interaction at 6, 15, 24, and 36 months were examined for 1,274 mothers and their children participating in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care. In longitudinal analyses that controlled for selection, child, and family predictors, child care was a small but significant predictor of maternal sensitivity and child engagement. For the whole sample, including families who did and did not use child care, more hours of child care predicted less maternal sensitivity and less positive child engagement. For children who were observed in child care, higher quality child care predicted greater maternal sensitivity, and more child-care hours predicted less child engagement. The effects of child care on mother—child interaction were much smaller in the analytical models than the effects of maternal education but were similar in size to the effects of maternal depression and child difficult temperament. Patterns of association with child care did not differ significantly across ages of assessment.

• Findings indicate that for a family of four below the poverty level whose needs remained constant, an increase in family income of approximately $13,400 over three years resulted in the children scoring as well as children in families with twice the income.
• Even modest increases in family economic resources led to improved performance by children as young as 3 on tasks such as identifying colors, letters and shapes. These children also were more likely to understand and produce a larger number of words and phrases.

• The more time children spent in any of a variety of nonmaternal care arrangements across the first 4.5 years of life, the more externalizing problems and conflict with adults they manifested at 54 months of age and in kindergarten, as reported by mothers, caregivers, and teachers.
• Effects remained, for the most part, even when quality, type, and instability of child care were controlled, and when maternal sensitivity and other family background factors were taken into account.
• The magnitude of quantity of care effects were modest and smaller than those of maternal sensitivity and indicators of family socioeconomic status, though typically greater than those of other features of child care, maternal depression, and infant temperament. There was no apparent threshold for quantity effects.
• More time in care not only predicted problem behavior measured on a continuous scale in a dose-response pattern but also predicted at-risk (though not clinical) levels of problem behavior, as well as assertiveness, disobedience, and aggression.

• Reasons for selecting care were categorized as focused on quality, practicality, or preference for a specific type of child care arrangement.
• Mothers in high income families and those who worked fewer hours were more likely to choose a care arrangement based on quality than on practical concerns such as cost, hours of operation, and location.
• Mothers who reported higher stress related to parenting were more likely to choose care based on practical concerns.
• Mothers who chose care based on quality were less likely to choose care provided by a relative. In addition, these mothers were more likely to place their children in higher quality care, judged by outside observers, than those who chose care based on practical concerns.
• However, mothers who chose care based on a preference for a particular type of arrangement (center-based, home-based, or relative) received higher quality than the other two groups.
• Mothers who chose care based on practical concerns were least satisfied with their child's care.