Caregiver -parent relations: Testing the buffer hypothesis

The present study was designed to test the ‘buffer’ hypothesis of caregiver-parent relation, predicting that parents will tend to seek out the caregivers\u27 help primarily in situations involving child-related difficulties, transitions, or crisis in daycare. Parents of 79 daycare children completed demographic questionnaires. In addition, parents were presented with a set of 12 short vignettes depicting positive and negative child-related situations in the daycare and home contexts. The parents were asked to indicate, in an open-ended format, if and how they would respond to each of the situations. Results revealed that, as expected, parents reported most caregiver inclusions in negative daycare situations. Parents with less children, who had larger support networks, who reported close relations with caregivers, and whose children entered later into care reported higher levels of caregiver inclusion. Parents generally excluded caregivers from their social support networks. The implications of these results for child care quality and for the caregiver-parent relations are discussed