The Relationship of Relative Child Care and Parenting Behaviors Among Fragile Families

Background and Purpose: Child care serves not only to help parents with respite for childrearing but also to support children’s development. Relative care accounts for a higher proportion of child care arrangements because of its affordability, availability, and convenience. It is particularly common among low-income and racial/ethnic minority families and especially beneficial for households of single and adolescent mothers. Although relative care can provide emotional support and strengthen family relationships, this kind of family support can sometimes generate stresses, difficulties, and disappointments. Conflicting past research findings make it necessary to examine whether the use of relative care improves child and family well-being, especially parenting behaviors which may be a risk factor for child maltreatment. This study addresses several questions: (1) Is the use of relative care related to parenting? If so, (2) Does parental stress moderate the relationship between relative care and parenting? (3) Does this relationship differ by race/ethnicity and immigrant status? (4) Is this relationship consistent across early childhood?

Methods: Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW) are analyzed. This study applies four waves of core data (baseline, 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year) and in-home assessments. The sample includes mother who have provided data on child care and parenting behavior at each wave (N=1,762). Four types of child care are compared: relative care, parental care, institutional care, and non-relative home care. Four types of parenting behaviors (i.e., physical aggression, psychological aggression, neglect, and non-violent discipline) are constructed from items from the Parent-Child Conflict Tactic Scales. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are employed and covariates for child age, mother characteristics (i.e., age, race, education, employment, and relationship status), and family characteristics (i.e., household income and grandparent co-residence) are included in all models. Sub-analyses are conducted by family race/ethnicity.

Results: Findings from the analyses suggest that there is a significant relationship between the use of relative care and parenting behaviors. Using relative care is associated with more maternal psychologically aggressive behaviors, and fewer non-violent discipline behaviors. This relationship is found to differ by race/ethnicity and immigrant status, including that there is no significance among African American families. The results also suggest that this pattern is consistent across early childhood: The negative relationship between the use of relative care and non-violent discipline is found at each wave. There is no moderating effect of parental stress on the relationship between care arrangements and parenting for the study sample or any subsample.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings from this study do not support the idea that relative care, as a source of social support, facilitates the development of positive and effective parenting. Possible explanations include the intergenerational transmissions of harsh parenting and parent-child relationship patterns among vulnerable families. The findings suggest that practitioners need to pay more attention to the quality of informal child care (i.e., relative care or non-relative home care) and explore increasing accessibility of other child care options. Future research is needed to examine factors influencing intergenerational patterns and how these differs by race/ethnicity and culture.