Child Care Instability and Maternal Work Experiences in Low-Wealth, Rural Settings

Background and Purpose. Child care is an important work support for mothers joining the labor force. However, given the lack of a strong child care system in the US, care arrangements are often difficult to make and frequently fail. This situation can negatively impact maternal employment experiences, forcing mothers to leave their jobs, work multiple jobs to make care arrangements that work for the family, or ultimately negatively affect family life. This challenge is further compounded in rural settings where child care arrangements are more difficult to make given geographic isolation and a dearth of formal programs. Prior research indicates that maternal work characteristics, such as flexibility, are related to the quality and type of child care that families utilize in low-wealth, rural settings (De Marco, Crouter, & Vernon-Feagans, 2009). However, less is known about how instability is related to maternal work experiences in these settings. To address this gap we asked: How is child care instability related to maternal work experiences, such as number of jobs, turnover, and shift? Method. We use data from the longitudinal Family Life Project, a representative sample of predominantly low-income, nonmetropolitan families in North Carolina and Pennsylvania (n=1123), oversampled for African American and low-income families. Data was collected when the children were 6, 15, 24, and 35 months old, with interim phone calls to inquire about work and child care changes. Extensive data was collected including demographics, information about maternal work experiences, and child care use. Multivariate and logistic regression models were conducted to analyze the relationships between work conditions and instability.

Results. Bivariate analysis indicated that number of jobs held at 35 months and number of job changes across time were positively related to instability, whereas working a traditional day shift at 35 months was negatively related. In multivariate regression models controlling for demographics, including race, maternal age and education, income, and number of children, instability was a significant positive predictor of number of jobs and number of job changes. In the regression model for job shift, the relationship between instability and shift was reduced to trend level after controlling for demographic characteristics.

Conclusions and Implications. Child care instability, often reflecting the challenge of locating care, can impact employment, and, in this study was related to less optimal work conditions including nontraditional schedules, multiple jobs, and job turnover. These characteristics may inhibit the ability to develop the work history necessary for attaining jobs with better pay and benefits. Care instability may be influenced by the desire to find the most suitable arrangements given resource and job constraints, dissatisfaction with providers, difficulties accessing subsidies, and changes in provider availability (Scott, London, & Hurst, 2005). Initiatives are needed to improve the stability of care available in rural settings, as most care is informal, such as grandparents or other relatives, and typically less reliable. Supports are needed to allow families to access more stable arrangements or to support informal providers in their caregiving environments.