Child Care Quality 1 Child Care Quality: Does It Matter and Does It Need to be Improved?

Child care has become the norm for young children in the United States. In 1995, 59 percent of children who were 5 years or younger were in nonparental care arrangements on a regular basis (Hofferth, Shauman, Henke, and West, 1998). This care typically began at early ages and lasted substantial hours: with 44 percent of infants under the age of 1 year were in nonparental care for an average of 31 hours a week. In the late preschool years, 84 percent of 4- to 5-year-olds were recorded as being in child care for an average of 28 hours per week. The use of nonparental care in the United States is expected to grow even further as welfare reform is fully implemented (Vandell, 1998). It is within this framework of widespread and early-age use that questions about child care quality have been raised. Among child care researchers, the established view is that child care quality contributes to children’s developmental outcomes, higher quality care being associated with better developmental outcomes and poorer quality care being associated with poorer outcomes for children (Clarke-Stewart and Fein, 1983; Phillips, 1987). This view is reflected in Michael Lamb’s (1998) comprehensive critique of child care research that was published in the Handbook of Child Psychology. Lamb concluded, based on extant research, that: “Quality day care from infancy clearly has positive effects on children’s intellectual, verbal, and cognitive development, especially when children would otherwise experienc