Child care quality and Dutch 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds' socio‐emotional outcomes: Does the amount of care matter?

Abstract

High amounts of early child care have sometimes been linked to higher levels of behaviour problems, while high‐quality child care has more often been related to fewer behaviour problems and more social competence. The current study investigated whether the level of centre emotional and behavioural support (child care quality) interacted with the amount of child care in predicting children's socio‐emotional behaviour. Participants were 417 children (mean age = 27 months) from 61 Dutch daycare centres. The amount of daycare ranged from 1 to 5 days per week (M = 2.3 days). Multi‐level analyses showed that, independent of the amount of daycare, high levels of centre emotional and behavioural support were related to more caregiver‐rated social competence 1 year later. In addition, children spending 3.5 days or more in highly supportive daycare centres showed the lowest levels of parent‐rated externalizing behaviour 1 year later. The findings emphasize (a) that the combined effects of the amount and quality of child care are important and (b) that high‐quality early child care is related to children's socio‐emotional development. Further policy, practice, and research implications are discussed. Highlights We studied in a Dutch sample how the amount and quality of daycare interacted in relation to children's socio‐emotional outcomes. High levels of daycare quality were related to more teacher‐rated social competence. Children spending 3.5 days or more in highly supportive daycare centers showed less parent‐rated externalizing behavior.

Promoting the Quality of Teacher-Toddler Interactions: A Randomized Controlled Trial of “Thrive by Three” In-Service Professional Development in 187 Norwegian Toddler Classrooms

“…This was true for only one of the five dimensions within the Emotional and Behavioral Support domain (EBS): Behavior guidance. The lack of effect on the Negative climate dimension is probably due to low variability and a “floor effect” with most classrooms scoring 1 or 2 and confirms what has typically been found in other studies ( Pakarinen et al, 2010 ; Broekhuizen et al, 2018 ). We also found that whereas the quality in classrooms in the intervention groups increased on most quality dimensions, the quality of the teacher-child interactions in the control classrooms decreased over the course of the intervention period, strengthening the conclusion that the improvement in the quality of caregiver-child interactions was due to the Thrive by Three intervention.…”

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“…This was true for only one of the five dimensions within the Emotional and Behavioral Support domain (EBS): Behavior guidance. The lack of effect on the Negative climate dimension is probably due to low variability and a "floor effect" with most classrooms scoring 1 or 2 and confirms what has typically been found in other studies (Pakarinen et al, 2010;Broekhuizen et al, 2018). We also found that whereas the quality in classrooms in the intervention groups increased on most quality dimensions, the quality of the teacher-child interactions in the control classrooms decreased over the course of the intervention period, strengthening the conclusion that the improvement in the quality of caregiverchild interactions was due to the Thrive by Three intervention.…”

External childcare and socio-behavioral development in Switzerland: Long-term relations from childhood into young adulthood

“…We focused on the amount and type of external childcare but not on its quality, which is another aspect that has been related to child development but was not included in our data [3]. This is a limitation of our study, as previous studies have found some support for the notion that children visiting very high quality centers showed less externalizing behavior than children who visited low-or regular-quality centers [4,5]. On the other hand, prior research has also shown that the relation between childcare quantity and behavior cannot be accounted for by the quality of care as more time in external care was related to more externalizing behavior at all levels of quality [6].…”