3-142 - Families’ Use of Multiple or Unstable Child Care Arrangements and Implications for Children and Families

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Although most 3- to 5-year-old children in the United States attend nonparental child care (U.S. Department of Education, 2012), children rarely attend just one child care setting before kindergarten. A growing body of literature has explored variations in children’s child care experiences, including sequential transitions, termed long-term instability (De Schipper et al., 2003), and simultaneous transitions, termed multiple arrangements or multiplicity (Morrissey, 2009). Although instability and multiplicity have been consistently negatively associated with child behavioral and health outcomes (Bacharach & Baumeister, 2003; Claessens & Chen, 2013; Morrissey, 2013; Pilarz & Hill, 2014), little is known about how instability and multiplicity relate to parenting outcomes and child academic outcomes or about the characteristics of families using multiple arrangements.

In this symposium, Paper 1 explores the use of multiple arrangements by immigrant families, finding that immigrant children with mothers who were not U.S. citizens (compared to immigrant children of U.S. citizens) were less likely to experience multiplicity. Paper 2 examines relationships among child care instability, multiplicity, maternal parenting, and child behaviors, finding that instability was adversely associated with maternal stress, engagement, and use of physical discipline and multiplicity was associated with lower levels of engagement. Paper 3 tests the association between multiple arrangements and children’s kindergarten reading decoding, showing that boys who experienced a higher number of arrangements had higher scores than boys with a lower number of arrangements. Using three distinctive datasets, these papers offer insight into the unique interplay of child care instability, multiple arrangements, families’ lives, and children’s development.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Mary Bratsch-Hines, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

Discussant

• Taryn W Morrissey, American University

Individual Presentations

• Maternal Citizenship Status and Child Care Arrangements: Configuration and Multiplicity - Presenting Author: Jen-Hao Chen, University of Chicago

• Does Maternal Parenting Mediate the Relationship Between Child Care Instability and Child Behavior Problems? - Presenting Author: Alejandra Ros Pilarz, University of Chicago; Heather D Hill, University of Washington

• Associations among Multiple Arrangements, Child Gender, and Reading Decoding in Kindergarten - Presenting Author: Mary Bratsch-Hines, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill; Lynne Vernon-Feagans, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill