Day Care around the World
The issue
The rise in single-parent families, increased job opportunities for women, and the need for additional family income have all propelled an increasing number of mothers of young children into the paid labor force of the United States. In 1996, 63 percent of all mothers with fact, go children under the age of six were part of the labor force. who, then, takes care of the children of these women during work hours?
For 30 percent of all preschoolers with employed mothers, the solution has become group child care programs. Day care centers have become the functional equivalent of the nuclear family performing some of the nurturing and socialization functions previously handled only by family members(Abelson 1997). But how does group day care compare to care in the home? And what is the state's responsibility to assure quality care?
The Setting
In 1997, the United States was transfixed by the murder trial in Massachusetts of British au pair Louise Woodward for the death of an eight month old boy in her care. Eventually convicted but given a suspended sentence Studies Woodward brought attention to the complex problem of home child care. Many were critical of the behavior of the 19 that int year-old au pair; others questioned the mother's(but rarely the father's) desire to work outside the home. Yet the few people in the United States, Great Britain, or elsewhere can afford the luxury having a parent stay at home or paying for high-quality live-in child care. For millions of mothers and fathers, finding the right kind of child care is a challenge to parenting and to the pocketbook.
Researchers have found that high-quality child care centers do not adversely affect the socialization of children; in fact, good day care benefits children. The value of preschool programs was documented in a series of studies conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the United States and the University of North London in England. They found no significant differences in infants who had received extensive nonmaternal care as compared with those who had been cared for solely by their mothers. The researchers also reported that more infants in the United States are being placed in child care outside the home and that, overall, the quality of these arrangements is better than had been found in previous studies. It is difficult, however, to generalize about child care since there is so much variability among day care providers and even among policies from one state to another; see Figure 4-3(NICHD 1999a, 1999b; North Carolina Abecedarian Project 2000).