A Profile Approach to Child Care Quality, Quantity, and Type of Setting: Parent Selection of Infant Child Care Arrangements

Abstract

Building on prior variable-oriented research which demonstrates the independence of the associations of child care quality, quantity, and type of setting with family factors and child outcomes, the current study identifies four profiles of child care dimensions from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Profiles accounted for 73% of total variance in 10 child care variables measured for 489 6-month-olds in nonparental child care including type of setting, quantity of care, and structural/process quality indicators. Dominant marker variables were used to label the four profiles which revealed complex patterns. Lower family risk, especially higher maternal education, was associated with profiles marked by features associated with better child outcomes, but only maternal belief in the harm of maternal employment protected against child care profiles with features associated with poorer child outcomes. By allowing child care characteristics to correlate freely with dimension profiles using a person-oriented approach, results facilitate examination of the contributions of each individual characteristic to each profile, suggesting ways to improve child care provision and to examine child care selection.

Notes

Note. Percentages do not sum to 100 due to rounding.

^a Maternal education indicates the number of years of education completed (less than 12; 12 for high school diploma or equivalent; 14 for associate's degree, vocational school, or some college; 16 for bachelor's degree; 18 for master's degree or some graduate work; 19 for a law degree; and 21 for a doctoral degree or more than a master's degree).

^b Belief in harm of maternal employment reflects scores on the Costs of Maternal Employment subscale of the Attitudes toward Maternal Employment scale. High scores indicate mothers' endorsement of beliefs that children are likely to have problems if their mothers work outside the home.

Note. Percentages do not sum to 100 due to rounding. ECE/CD = Early Care and Education/Child Development.

^a Process quality observations of the caregiver's behaviors in relation to the child's behaviors range from 1 = not at all characteristic to 4 = highly characteristic on the Observational Record of the Caregiving Environment.

Note. CG = Caregiver.

^a Type of care is ordinal from least formal to most formal.

^† p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Significant statistics also noted in boldface.

Note. Dominant marker variables with coordinates above |.32| are noted in boldface. CG = caregiver; OPC = original PCA coordinates; MPC = mean PCA coordinates from 2000 bootstrap samples; PldSE = pooled standard errors.

^a Type of care is ordinal from least to most formal.

¹Profiles were identified a second time including an additional 74 participants for which the primary, observed child care arrangement was father-care. The results were largely the same as those presented here. Fathers as caregivers were included as one of the types of child care in the NICHD SECCYD, but as father-care is very different than other types of care including participants in father-care in the current profile analyses introduces too much heterogeneity to the profiles and the analyses of family child care selection factors and thus are excluded from the final analyses presented in the current study. Results are available from the lead author upon request.

Note. Four child care profiles were entered as dependent variables, data collection site was entered as a fixed factor (site variations are not examined), and seven family variables were entered as covariates: 6-month family income-to-needs ratio, 1-month minority status, single-parent status, and maternal education, 6-month maternal work hours and work schedule (0 = daytime, 1 = variable/non-daytime), and 1-month belief in harm of maternal employment.

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Significant statistics also noted in boldface.

Note. Three linearly combined profile pairs were entered as dependent variables, data collection site was entered as a fixed factor (site variations are not examined), and seven family variables were entered as covariates: 6-month family income-to-needs ratio, 1-month minority status, single-parent status, and maternal education, 6-month maternal work hours and work schedule (0 = daytime, 1 = variable/non-daytime), and 1-month belief in harm of maternal employment.^† p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001. Significant statistics also noted in boldface.