The influence of early childhood education and care on the relation between early-life social adversity and children’s mental health in the environmental influences for Child Health Outcomes Program

Abstract

Early adversity increases risk for child mental health difficulties. Stressors in the home environment (e.g., parental mental illness, household socioeconomic challenges) may be particularly impactful. Attending out-of-home childcare may buffer or magnify negative effects of such exposures. Using a longitudinal observational design, we leveraged data from the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Program to test whether number of hours in childcare, defined as 1) any type of nonparental care and 2) center-based care specifically, was associated with child mental health, including via buffering or magnifying associations between early exposure to psychosocial and socioeconomic risks (age 0–3 years) and later internalizing and externalizing symptoms (age 3–5.5 years), in a diverse sample of N = 2,024 parent–child dyads. In linear regression models, childcare participation was not associated with mental health outcomes, nor did we observe an impact of childcare attendance on associations between risk exposures and symptoms. Psychosocial and socioeconomic risks had interactive effects on internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Overall, the findings did not indicate that childcare attendance positively or negatively influenced child mental health and suggested that psychosocial and socioeconomic adversity may need to be considered as separate exposures to understand child mental health risk in early life.