Child Care in Perspective

The Research of Professor Kathleen McCartney When HGSE professor Kathleen McCartney and her colleagues at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) released the results of a large-scale investigation about the impact of child care on children's behavior, the media immediately flew into a frenzy. The next day, McCartney was interviewed on NPR'sTalk of the Nation, Market Place, and Morning Edition. That same day, the findings became the center of controversy in newspapers across the nation. [caption id="attachment_8832" align="alignleft" width="185" caption="Professor Kathleen McCartney (© 2002 Tony Rinaldo)"] [/caption] The study revealed that children who spend long hours in child care have a higher than normal chance of developing behavior problems. But many headlines ended there, seizing on the sensational and missing the real impact of the research. "A lot of stories exaggerated the risks, with headlines like 'Child Care Causes Aggression' and 'Child Care Causes Bullying,'" McCartney says. "Young parents who had no choice about whether the mother was employed—who were completely reliant on two incomes—ended up feeling worried and guilty." What the study actually found was that the effects of child care on children's behavior were small—smaller than the effect of family variables such as maternal sensitivity and family income. Moreover, very few children were rated as having behavior problems high enough to warrant clinical intervention; in fact, 85 percent of the children in full-time care (35-40 hours per week) were not at risk at all.

The study revealed that children who spend long hours in child care have a higher than normal chance of developing behavior problems. But many headlines ended there, seizing on the sensational and missing the real impact of the research.

McCartney and her colleagues on the NICHD study have been following the progress of more than a thousand children who were born in 1991. Almost three-quarters of the participants were in child care at least part-time by their first birthday. Examiners asked parents, caregivers, and teachers to rate the children's behavior when the children were four and a half, and again when they were in kindergarten. Although the risks of behavior problems among children in child care programs are low, McCartney and her colleagues did find a correlation between the number of hours spent in child care each week and the likelihood of adults to report disobedience, aggressiveness, or assertive behavior such as bragging and demanding attention. In addition, they found that children's behavior depended not just on the quantity of care but, to a slight extent, also on the quality. To gauge this, observers rated caregivers on whether they treated their young charges lovingly and sensitively and provided a stimulating environment. (Under those criteria, only 44 percent of the settings in the study qualified as high quality.) Children in higher-quality settings exhibited fewer problems. According to McCartney, "This might have to do with the level of caregiver training. All children get frustrated and have aggressive impulses toward other children, but good caregivers know how to prevent or manage behavior problems." Despite reaching a consensus on their findings, many researchers within the NICHD group debated the implications of this work, wondering whether the effects they found were even large enough to be of concern. "We disagreed about whether the findings suggested that parents should limit or curtail the use of child care for their children," McCartney says. This issue of accounting for mitigating factors raised concerns among several scholars. Many wondered whether these possible effects of child care could be attributed to other variables: the individual characteristics of the children, the child care providers, the other members of the children's peer group, or the family backgrounds themselves. To solve this debate, McCartney and her colleagues are now conducting follow-up analyses. They hope that findings from this study will illuminate the circumstances that foster challenging behavior. "If we find, for example, that children in large groups of peers are the ones at risk," McCartney says, "then parents may select different settings and policymakers may reexamine child-care regulations." About the Article A version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.