The Effects of Daycare Reconsidered

Abstract

The transactional process of early daycare: Do the children of employed mothers differ from other children, even before mother's entry to employment?If parents seek to protect more vulnerable infants by placing them in fewer hours of substitute care, if mothers seek respite from the care of more "difficult" infants, or if it were easier to find substitute care for "easier" children, then studies in the existing daycare literature may have underestimated, or overestimated, the hazards of substitute care and maternal employment.The present study explores the possibility that infant health, temperament and development may have significant effects on mother's employment.Economists, psychologists, policy analysts, and parents continue to be concerned about the possible effects of maternal employment on young children.Although several studies have reported a modest cognitive advantage among children in early daycare (eg, Blau and Grossberg, 1992;O'Brien-Caughy et al, 1994, andBurchinal et al, 1997), and other studies have reported a higher rate of behavior problems and insecure infant-mother interactions (eg, Belsky and Eggebeen, 1991;Lamb et al, 1992; Egeland and Heister, 1995;and Clark et al, 1997), design limitations have made it difficult to draw causal inferences from this literature.Mothers who enter the labor force and mothers who remain at home with their young children are known to differ from each other in a number of

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