Effects of parental resources and child care arrangements on preschoolers' cognitive skills.

This study investigates the role of parental resources, maternal work patterns, and the type and quality of child care arrangements in accounting for variation in preschoolers' cognitive abilities. A subset of children from the 1986 Maternal-Child Supplement to the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth are used for this research; specifically including those three- to four-year-old children whose mothers were married and reported to use non-parental child care arrangements (n = 274). The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Revised served as the indicator of receptive language skills. After holding parental resources and maternal work patterns constant, family home care was found to be related to more favorable cognitive outcomes while in-home care was associated with less favorable cognitive outcomes as compared to center care. Of the parental resources and patterns of maternal work examined, present and past family income and 1 to 39 hours of maternal work (as compared to no work or 40 to 60 hours/week), were positively associated with preschoolers' language skills, above and beyond the other variables in the model. Continuity of type of care since the age of two was also associated with more favorable cognitive outcomes for all but those in center care. As compared to continuous center care, continuous family home care was associated with higher cognitive skills and recent, non-continuous experience of in-home care was associated with lower cognitive skills. Minority status was negatively associated with cognitive skills, and no interaction was found between type of care and race. Among children in center care, cognitive skills did not vary by quality (an index combining adult-child ratio and group size), even after holding parental resources and maternal work constant. Though a small number of cases limits the generalization of these findings, there was a suggestion of differences by family income groups in the relationship between quality and cognitive skills. Children from families earning less than $18,000 annually have cognitive outcomes which are positively associated with quality of care, as compared to non-linear patterns of association among those in higher income groups.PhDIndividual and family studiesSocial structureDevelopmental psychologyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162369/1/9001719.pd