Effects of early child care on children's functioning from 4(1/2) years through the end of 6th grade (M age=12.0 years) were examined in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n=1,364). The results indicated that although parenting was a stronger and more consistent predictor of children's development than early child-care experience, higher quality care predicted higher vocabulary scores and more exposure to center care predicted more teacher-reported externalizing problems. Discussion focuses on mechanisms responsible for these effects, the potential collective consequences of small child-care effects, and the importance of the ongoing follow-up at age 15.

The disparity in the amount and quality of language that low-income children hear relative to their more-affluent peers is often referred to as the 30-million-word gap. Here, we expand the literature about this disparity by reporting the relative contributions of the quality of early parent-child communication and the quantity of language input in 60 low-income families. Including both successful and struggling language learners from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we noted wide variation in the quality of nonverbal and verbal interactions (symbol-infused joint engagement, routines and rituals, fluent and connected communication) at 24 months, which accounted for 27% of the variance in expressive language 1 year later. These indicators of quality were considerably more potent predictors of later language ability than was the quantity of mothers' words during the interaction or sensitive parenting. Bridging the word gap requires attention to how caregivers and children establish a communication foundation within low-income families.

Couples were studied before and after the birth of their 1st child to understand processes by which marital conflict influences child development. Hypotheses were tested concerning direct and indirect processes relating marital conflict to the security of infant-mother and infant-father attachment and disorganized attachment behavior. Findings supported the prediction that chronic marital conflict interferes with sensitive, involved parenting and thereby predicts insecurity in attachment relationships, particularly for fathers. It was also argued that chronic marital conflict presents the infant with experiences of frightened or frightening parents and diminished behavioral options to alleviate accompanying distress. As predicted, disorganized attachment behavior with mother and father was explained by chronic marital conflict and not mediated by parental ego development or sensitive parenting.

One of the assumptions of attachment theory is that individual differences in adult attachment styles emerge from individuals’ developmental histories. To examine this assumption empirically the authors report data from an age 18 follow-up (Booth-LaForce & Roisman, 2012) of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a longitudinal investigation that tracked a cohort of children and their parents from birth to age 15. Analyses indicate that individual differences in adult attachment can be traced to variations in the quality of individuals’ caregiving environments, their emerging social competence, and the quality of their best friendship. Analyses also indicate that assessments of temperament and most of the specific genetic polymorphisms thus far examined in the literature on genetic correlates of attachment styles were essentially uncorrelated with adult attachment, with the exception of a polymorphism in the serotonin receptor gene (HTR2A rs6313), which modestly predicted higher attachment anxiety and that revealed a G × E interaction such that changes in maternal sensitivity across time predicted attachment-related avoidance. The implications of these data for contemporary perspectives and debates concerning adult attachment theory are discussed.

Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development were used in this investigation, because they include repeated measures of child care experiences, externalizing behavior, and family characteristics. There were three main findings. First, the evidence linking child care hours with externalizing behavior was equivocal in that results varied across model specifications. Second, the association between child care hours and externalizing behavior was not due to a child effect. Third, child care quality and proportion of time spent with a large group of peers moderated the effects of child care hours on externalizing behavior. Child care hours was more strongly related to externalizing behavior when children were in low-quality child careand when children spent a greater proportion of time with a large group of peers. The magnitude of associations between child care hours and externalizing behavior was modest. Implications for parents and policymakers must take into account that externalizing behavior is predicted from a constellation of variables in multiple contexts. TIME IN CHILD CARE Testing a Series of Causal Propositions Relating Time in Child Care to Children's Externalizing BehaviorReviewers of the literature on early child care have frequently noted an association between spending more time in child care and exhibiting more externalizing behavior, such as assertive, disobedient, and aggressive acts (Belsky, 1986;2001;Clarke-Stewart & Fein, 1983).Longitudinal investigations of externalizing problems indicate that these behaviors often persist into elementary school (Campbell, 1995(Campbell, , 2002Campbell, Pierce, Moore, Marakovitz, & Newby, 1996;Verhulst & Van der Ende, 1992) and that elevated levels of externalizing problems are accompanied by peer rejection and poor academic performance (Campbell, 2002;Farmer & Bierman, 2002). Behavior problems can interfere with a child's acquisition of age-appropriate skills (Campbell, 2002), potentially leading to antisocial behavior in adolescence (Zahn-Waxler, Usher, Suomi, & Cole, 2005) and adulthood (Levenston, 2002). Even though child care experience has not been linked to clinical levels of problems, researchers and policymakers have worried that extensive use of child care in the early years might be a risk factor for increasing problem behaviors without causing clinical problems.Studies have demonstrated that children exhibit more of these negative behaviors if they spend more time in care before they enter kindergarten (Bates, Marvinney, Kelly, Dodge, Bennett, & Pettit, 1994;Magnuson, Meyers, Ruhm, & Waldfogel, 2004;Vandell & Corasaniti, 1990), are in more hours of care in the first year of life (Hofferth, 1999), start care at younger ages, or spend more hours there each day (Loeb, Bridges, Bassok, Fuller, & Rumberger, 2007).In the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD), associations were documented between the amount of time children had spent in child care and externalizing behavior at 24 months of age (NICHD Early C...