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High-quality child care is associated with gains in cognitive and language development over the first 3 years of life.

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In the United States, more than half of all mothers of infants under 1 year old, and over two thirds of mothers of children under 6, are employed (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). The infants and young children of working mothers are cared for in a variety of settings: in center-based care, in the home of someone other than a relative, or with a relative such as a father, grandparent, or older sibling (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2014). A common misconception is that nonfamilial center-based care is damaging to children’s development and places children at risk for insecure attachment. However, this belief is not supported by research. What are the effects of nonparental care?

One of the best sources of information about the effects of nonparental care is a longitudinal study of over 1,300 children conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD). This study found infants’ developmental outcomes are influenced more by characteristics of the family, such as parenting, maternal education, and maternal sensitivity, than by the type of child care (Axe, 2007; Dehaan, 2006). Center-based care did not predispose infants to forming insecure attachments (Belsky, 2005; Harrison & Ungerer, 2002). Some research suggests that center-based care is associated with more disobedience and aggression but is accompanied by greater sociability (Jacob, 2009). Other work suggests that behavior problems may be more common in low-quality care but do not appear in high-quality care (Gialamas, Mittinty, Sawyer, Zubrick, & Lynch, 2014; Huston, Bobbitt, & Bentley, 2015).

Quality of child care matters. Infants and young children exposed to poor-quality child care score lower on measures of cognitive and social competence, regardless of demographic variables such as parental education and socioeconomic status (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2005). In contrast, high-quality child care that includes specific efforts to stimulate children is associated with gains in cognitive and language development over the first 3 years of life and can even compensate for lower-quality and chaotic home environments (Berry et al., 2016; Gialamas et al., 2014; Mortensen & Barnett, 2015; Watamura, Phillips, Morrissey, McCartney, & Bub, 2011).

Child care quality has long-term effects as well. A recent study of Dutch infants showed that high-quality care, defined as providing high levels of emotional and behavioral support, predicted children’s social competence a year later; specifically, children who spent at least 3.5 days a week in care showed lower levels of behavioral problems (Broekhuizen, van Aken, Dubas, & Leseman, 2018). Longitudinal research in Sweden showed that older children and adolescents who had received high-quality care as infants and toddlers scored higher on measures of cognitive, emotional, and social competence later in childhood (Andersson, 1989; Broberg, Wessels, Lamb, & Hwang, 1997). In addition, a longitudinal analysis of over 1,200 children from the NICHD study revealed that the quality of care predicted academic grades and behavioral adjustment at the end of high school, at age 15 and 18, as well as admission to more selective colleges (Vandell, Belsky, Burchinal, Steinberg, & Vandergrift, 2010; Vandell, Burchinal, & Pierce, 2016).

The challenge is that high-quality child care is expensive. In 2016, the annual cost of center-based care in the United States ranged from about $6,000 in Arkansas to $16,000 in Washington, D.C. (Schulte & Durana, 2016). In some countries, such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland, child care is heavily subsidized by the government (Gothe-Snape, 2017). In the United States, however, it remains a private responsibility. The few public subsidies for child care available in the United States are tied to economic need and are mainly targeted at low-income families who receive other forms of public assistance.