Attitudes of caregivers, maternal experiences with day care, and children's development

The Link Between Caregiver‐Parent Relations and Children's Experiences in Daycare and at Home: What Does the Research Tell Us?

“…The authors found that mothers who were held in low regard by caregivers were disproportional single mothers and that they generally did not use nor wished to include the caregivers as sources of social support Further, none of the mothers interviewed in Kontos and Dunn (1989) spontaneously reported that caregivers offered help, encouragement, or information when it was needed, suggesting that modiers did not perceive caregivers as part of dieir social support network.…”

“…However, as mentioned above, caregiver-parent interactions have not been found to involve extensive sharing of educational information. Moreover, several studies have shown that parents do not generally utilize caregivers as resources for child rearing information (Crittenden, 1985;Kontos, 1987;Kontos and Dunn, 1989;Roberts, 1989), thus casting further doubts about the viability of this path of influence.…”

“…To elucidate further the relations between staff evaluation of parents and children's experiences, Kontos and Dunn (1989) collected data on 100 children (ages 3 to 5-years-old) and 99 mothers from 10 centers. Caregivers rated mothers on child-rearing competence.…”

“…Since the 1970s, a substantial body of descriptive literature on various aspects of caregiver-parent relationships has been accumulating. Research on caregivers' perceptions of parents has consistently shown that caregivers have an ambivalent and often negative view of parents' competence (Galinsky, 1989(Galinsky, , 1990Howes, 1991;Kontos and Dunn, 1989;Kontos, Raikes and Wood 1983;Leavitt, 1995;Phillips, 1991;Powell, 1989). Research on the parental side of the caregiver-parent link has shown that parents look for warm and nurturing caregivers who will relate well to their child (Hoffertii et al, 1991) and who are like them (Clarke-Stewart et al, 1994;Howes, 1987;Phillips and McCartney, 1986), often regardless of formal training (Galinsky, 1992).…”

“…Research on the parental side of the caregiver-parent link has shown that parents look for warm and nurturing caregivers who will relate well to their child (Hoffertii et al, 1991) and who are like them (Clarke-Stewart et al, 1994;Howes, 1987;Phillips and McCartney, 1986), often regardless of formal training (Galinsky, 1992). Parents also tend to report satisfaction with their daycare arrangements regardless of caregivers' negative attitudes toward them (Galinsky, 1990;Kontos and Dunn, 1989;Kontos and Wells, 1986), objectively assessed daycare quality (Anderson et at, 1981;Clarke-Stewart et al, 1994;Kontos and Dunn, 1989;Mason and Duberstein, 1992), type of care (Roopnarine, Mounts and Casto, 1986;Sonenstein and Wolf, 1991), or child care arrangement changes (Mason and Duberstein, 1992).…”