Early Childcare Especially Helps Children from Disorganized Households

Growing evidence suggests that childhood experiences significantly shape fundamental cognitive and social development skills. One key question to consider is how such experiences vary among families with different socioeconomic backgrounds and whether available social support systems (e.g. childcare services) generate the same impact among all socioeconomic groups. A recent study by Daniel Berry and colleagues, based on the Family Life Project, examines how childcare affects children’s cognitive and social development in chaotic household environments. The study presents strong evidence that large-scale childcare services, especially those targeted at low-income families, have large beneficial effects.

Children growing up in low-income families often face household chaos, a term that describes disorganized, unpredictable, and unstable family environments. Household chaos can have negative effects on children’s cognitive and social development. Various family patterns contribute to household chaos. For instance, parents near or below the poverty line are more likely to be employed in low paying, service sector jobs that entail irregular work hours. Children in these households are also less likely to have access to spacious and organized living spaces. Additionally, individuals join and leave these chaotic households more frequently, which contributes to higher levels of transience. Considered together, household chaos leads to less than optimal developmental outcomes for children at early ages.

The study examines whether the relationship between household chaos and children’s development is mitigated by experiences in childcare, as determined by quantity, type, and caregiver responsiveness. In total, the authors collected data from 1,292 children, up until age five, from two high poverty areas in Eastern North Carolina and Central Pennsylvania with mean family incomes of ‘near poor’ or ‘working poor.’ This classification is based on the federal poverty threshold, which was $15,260 for a family of three when the data was collected.

Interviewers visited families to measure household chaos level, interview primary caregivers, and videotape parenting behaviors. To measure household chaos, researchers used two sets of indicators: the first was an index meant to reflect household instability, comprising indicators such as the frequency with which the child had moved between residences, changes in the primary/secondary caregiver, and household transience. The second index was meant to represent household disorganization, measured by household density, cleanliness, neighborhood noise, TV hours per day, and other factors.

Once children were in non-parental care for at least 10 hours per week, researchers began rating caregiver quality. Children’s cognitive and social development progress was tested through an executive functioning test at age four and an assessment of their language, math, and reading abilities at age five.

Key findings from the research emphasize the important role parents have on children’s development, regardless of their household background: Parenting quality consistently predicts better developmental outcomes, regardless of children’s childcare experiences or environmental risks.

Moreover, to address the question of whether childcare provides a buffer role for household chaos, the findings show significant benefits from childcare services for those in highly chaotic households. Similarly, for children from highly disorganized homes, a greater number of hours in childcare services is associated with more effective executive functioning, stronger cognitive abilities, and better receptive vocabulary.

Troublingly, the researchers find that children from disorganized households tend to attend fewer hours of childcare. In other words, children from the most disorganized homes, who benefit the most from early childcare, may be the least likely to access it, due to low family income or because of the very disorganization that childcare is meant to mitigate.

This study suggests that the beneficial effects of full-time early childhood education may be most pronounced for children experiencing broader contextual risks, such as unstable and disorganized household environments. Good early childcare organizations serve as a critical leverage point for minimizing cognitive and social disparities caused by these living environments. Though parents play an important and irreplaceable role in children’s development, for children from highly chaotic households, childcare experiences offer some value that may not otherwise be available to them from their own parents or living environment, but that research indicates leads to better social and cognitive outcomes. These extra benefits for children from chaotic homes should be taken into account when conducting cost-benefit analyses on programs, like Head Start, that offer this chaos-buffering environment for children at a low cost.

Article Source: Berry, Daniel, Clancy Blair, Michael Willoughby, Patricia Garrett-Peters, Lynne Vernon-Feagans, and W. Roger Mills-Koonce. “Household Chaos and Children’s Cognitive and Socio-Emotional Development in Early Childhood: Does Childcare Play a Buffering Role?” Early Childhood Research Quarterly 34, 2016.

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