Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

The use of loosely regulated family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) child care providers has become a growing concern in child care subsidy programs. Critics of FFN care point to research findings demonstrating greater learning benefits in licensed settings, and argue that parental choice of FFN may result from limited options. Proponents counter that FFN care is needed to meet nontraditional and irregular schedule demands of low-wage workers.

States have adopted varying positions regarding subsidy provision for FFN caregivers, yet research on why subsidy users choose these caregivers has been limited. This study examined parental reasons for selecting FFN providers in one state program. Of particular interest was whether parental decisions were driven largely by child-centered reasons (i.e., learning opportunities, individual attention, and health and safety), as opposed to parent-centered concerns (i.e., affordability, provider location, and scheduling).

Methods

Analysis was based on survey responses from the Illinois Study of License-Exempt Child Care. A random sample of 399 subsidy users was asked to select their three most important reasons for choosing their current FFN provider, from a list of eight reasons suggested by previous research. The list was randomly shuffled in interviewing to prevent ordering biases, and a randomly identified focal child was selected to assure a focus on a particular child and to provide child age variation.

Initial descriptive analysis determined the reasons considered most important in selecting the FFN provider. Analyses of how decision-making reasons varied depending on the age of the child also were conducted.. Logistic regression analysis then was employed to examine whether parental demographic, social, work, and other economic factors were related to their emphasis on child-centered versus parent-centered decision-making reasons.

Results

Trust most often was mentioned as a primary reason for caregiver selection (85.1% of respondents). Parent-centered reasons also were prominently selected (location by 55.4%, scheduling availability by 29.4.%, and costs by 31.7%). In contrast, learning opportunities were considered a priority by only 12.2% of parents.

Logistic regression results indicated that African American parents and those with higher out-of-pocket costs were significantly more likely to emphasize parent-centered reasons. Conversely, nontraditional work hours, perceived quality of neighborhood residence, and age of child each were negatively associated with child-centered reasons. Analyses also revealed that parents having children with special care needs were significantly more likely to emphasize trust in decision-making, and less likely to select cost. As expected, parents with nontraditional work hours were significantly more like to select convenience and scheduling as decision-making reasons.

Conclusions and Implications

The emphasis on trust in provider selection suggests a common core value in choosing FFN providers. However, the positive relationship between nontraditional work hours and scheduling and location reasons illustrate a difficult dilemma for parents in low-income employment markets. Faced by these constraints and concerns about neighborhood safety, child-centered goals such as individual learning often become secondary. Policy attention thus is needed to extend licensed child care availability to serve those with nontraditional schedules, and simultaneously to improve training and other mechanisms to foster learning opportunities in FFN settings.