Maternal education, early child care and the reproduction of advantage

The social and human capital that educational attainment provides women enables them to better navigate their children’s passages through school. In this study, we examine a key mechanism in this intergenerational process: mothers ’ selection of early child care. Analyses of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Develop-ment revealed that maternal education was positively associated with configurations of child-care characteristics (i.e., type, quality, quantity) most closely linked to children’s school readiness. This association was not solely a function of mother’s income or employment status, persisted despite controls for many observable confounds (e.g., maternal cognitive and psychological skills, paternal characteristics), and, according to post-hoc indices, was fairly robust in terms of unobservable confounds. Rates of educational attainment among American women are increasing dra-matically, with women now more likely than men to graduate from high school and college and pursue advanced degrees (Buchmann and DiPrete 2006; Nevill and Chen 2007). The intergenerational implications of this trend are profound (Kalmijn 1994). In short, educational attainment enhances the economic posi