Effects of Child Care on Psychological Development: Issues and Future Directions for Research

Research about the effects of child care on the psychological development of children has been stimulated by social reality. Industrialized societies, including the US, have witnessed two simultaneous social trends: an increase in the number of mothers in the work force and a decrease in the age at which children enter child-care arrangements.1-3 These trends, in conjunction with cultural beliefs, psychological theories, and research findings emphasizing the important role of mothers in early child development,4-6 have motivated researchers to investigate the effects of maternal employment and of child care on the development of infants and older children. Issues facing developmental psychologists who study child care and its effect on children's development are theoretical, methodological, and budgetary. The waves of psychological research about child care1 reflect changes in conceptual emphasis: Originally, it seemed sufficient to compare children reared in any child-care context with those reared by the mother as the primary care provider. As the results from these investigations were accumulating, investigators recognized a need to focus on variations in the quality of child-care arrangements and to relate these to children's psychological development. Because of issues of access to child-care arrangements, much of the research on quality of care that was generated pertained to center-based care. Most recently, investigators have turned their attention to the relationship between demographic characteristics of families and their choices of child-care arrangements for their children. Even though the research appeared in waves, they all continue to coexist and they all elaborate and enrich our knowledge. Investigators are now interested in weaving the earlier lines of research into a more comprehensive framework.