Poster #100 - Instability in family and child care settings and developmental outcomes for infants and toddlers

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Family Context & Processes

Integrative Statement

Growing empirical evidence demonstrates that early exposure to instability in the home (e.g., residential change) and child care settings (e.g., multiple care arrangements) during the first three years have detrimental effects on development (Rumbold et al., 2012).  Multiple risk models have suggested that different risk factors from various settings (e.g., family and child care) interactively and cumulatively affect children’s learning and development (Lima, Caughy, Nettles, & O’Campo, 2010; Roche & Leventhal, 2009). The Double Jeopardy Effect hypothesis posits that the adverse effects of family instability on early development are amplified when there is instability in another setting such as child care. Alternatively, Compensatory Care Effect hypothesis posits that negative effects of family instability can be mitigated if children have stable experience in another proximal context. Current literature, however, rarely examine stability in both proximal contexts, making it difficult to understand how multiple instability experiences in the proximal contexts are associated with concurrent and later child development.  In this study, we examined the main and interaction effects of instability in family and child care on toddlers’ social-emotional outcomes when they were age 3 in the context of Early Head Start programs.

Method

We used Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Study data (Vogel & Boller, 2009-2012), a large longitudinal secondary dataset providing comprehensive information on EHS children and families as well as EHS programs for data analysis. The present study included 463 children from 88 programs who graduated from EHS at age 3. We created family instability and child care instability variables using information from parental and caregiver (i.e., home visitor and teacher) interviews when children were age 1, 2, and 3. The family instability includes whether a child experienced a change(s) of family structure and how many times a child’s family moved from child ages 1 to 3. The child care instability includes a number of teacher chance a child had in EHS and multiple child care arrangements from age 1 to 3. Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted for each child outcome (see Table 1)

Results and Discussion

The main findings of this study indicated that toddlers who experienced frequent changes of teachers and multiple child care arrangements from ages 1 to 3 were more likely to exhibit problem behaviors reported by teachers.  Toddlers from homes where family structure has changed (e.g., divorce or separation) showed higher scores on social competence than toddlers living in a single-parent household. These findings held the same after controlling for child and family characteristics including parent demographics and psychological risk factors. This study highlights the importance of taking instability in both home and child care settings into account to better understand on the negative impact of instability in proximal contexts on the early social-emotional development of toddlers from the disadvantaged home environment. Analyses for the interaction effects between home instability and child care instability will be finalized at the time of presentation.

Authors

• Kyong-Ah Kwon, University of Oklahoma
  Presenting Author

• Shinyoung Jeon, University of Oklahoma-Tulsa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ji Young Choi, Iowa State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Timothy G. Ford, University of Oklahoma
  Non-Presenting Author