Multiple Child Care Arrangements and School Readiness at Kindergarten

Purpose:  To fulfill their caregiving needs in the face of various family, employment, and child care market constraints, working parents often rely on multiple child care providers.  Nationally, nearly one in every five children younger than age 5 is in multiple, concurrent arrangements (Laughlin, 2013).  Preschool-aged children are more likely to use multiple arrangements than younger children, potentially because early education programs for preschoolers (i.e., Head Start and prekindergarten), tend to be part-time or follow a school-day schedule, requiring working parents to use a secondary arrangement to cover all work hours.  Prior research on multiple arrangements has found that multiple arrangements are associated with adverse socioemotional outcomes (Morrissey, 2009); however, recent studies suggest these effects may be short-lived as children adapt to multiple arrangements over time (Claessens & Chen, 2013; Pilarz & Hill, 2014) and may depend on the type(s) of care used (Gordon et al., 2013).  Moreover, it remains unknown whether multiple arrangements matter for school readiness at kindergarten-entry, an important predictor of later school achievement.  This study extends prior research by estimating the relationships between the use of multiple arrangements at three key developmental periods in early childhood and school readiness at kindergarten-entry.

Methods:  Using a nationally-representative study of children born in 2001, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Birth Cohort, I estimate the effects of multiple arrangements at ages 9 months, 2 years, and 4 years on school readiness outcomes in the fall of kindergarten (N=5,850).  Multiple arrangements are defined as two or more regular, concurrent arrangements and are compared to using a single arrangement and parent care only.  School readiness outcomes include two measures of cognitive ability—math and reading—and three measures of teacher-reported socioemotional skills—externalizing behaviors, social competence, approaches to learning.  I use OLS longitudinal regression models, controlling for a prior measure of the outcome and a large set of child and family characteristics to minimize selection bias. 

Results: Experiencing two or more regular, concurrent arrangements in and of itself was not associated with school readiness.  Instead, these relationships varied by the type(s) of care used.  Children in multiple home- and center-based arrangements at age 4 had higher scores on reading, math, and social competence compared to children in exclusively home-based arrangements.  Children in multiple center-based arrangements at age 4 had higher reading scores but also more externalizing behaviors compared to those in home-based arrangements. There was limited evidence that the number and type of arrangements used at ages 9 months or 2 years was associated with school readiness.  Further analyses will examine children in Head Start separately from those in other center-based programs. 

Implications:  Center-based early education programs for preschoolers have been shown to benefit children’s school readiness, especially children from low-income families, yet these programs tend to be part-time or follow a school-day schedule, potentially making them difficult to access for working parents.  Children who combined home-based and center-based care at age 4 also appear to benefit, suggesting the importance of assisting working parents who need secondary arrangements to access these programs.