The Protective Impact of Childcare Subsidies on the Emotional Neglect of Children

Background and Purpose: Each year 1.5 million children receive childcare subsidized under the Child Care Development Fund, which supports working parents with low income in affording childcare. Such macro-level policies hold promise for reducing child neglect; mothers who experience childcare concerns or lack emergency childcare are likely to report neglect. Less supportive work environments, greater work pressures, and nonstandard work hours are similarly linked to emotional neglect, and this especially among parents facing challenges securing childcare. Thus, the current study examines whether policies that alleviate work stress may reduce emotional neglect. It was hypothesized that receiving childcare subsidies would reduce mothers’ stress around difficulty handling childcare and family needs due to working, and that in turn, this reduced work stress would translate to mothers being more present and attentive when at home with their children.

Methods: Data came from wave three (child age three) of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a cohort study in which births to unmarried mothers were oversampled. Participants who were not eligible for the subsidy or had missing emotional neglect data were dropped from the final analytic sample (N = 2,250). Childcare subsidy receipt was determined by mothers’ self-reports. Work stress due to difficulty handling childcare and family needs was measured by a 3-item scale developed by the FFCWS research team. Emotional neglect was measured via the revised Conflict Tactics Scale. A path model estimated the association between childcare subsidy receipt and emotional neglect as mediated by maternal work stress.

Results: The sample was majority non-Hispanic Black (54%; followed by Hispanic [30%], and non-Hispanic White [13%]), unmarried at baseline (87%), and had completed high school (56%). Receipt of the childcare subsidy was significantly associated with decreased work stress (b = -.09, p < .05) and emotional neglect (b = -.27, p < .05). Work stress was significantly associated with increased emotional neglect (b = .24, p = .001). However, notably, the path model results did not show a mediating effect of work stress on the link between receipt of the childcare subsidy and emotional neglect (b = -.02, p = .09). Covariates associated with emotional neglect included maternal depression (b = .36, p < .01), child assigned male sex (b = .21, p < .05), material hardship (b = .83, p < .01), and physical neglect (b = .25, p < .001).

Conclusions and Implications: This study investigated the relationship between childcare subsidies and emotional neglect, and whether this link functioned in part through work stress. Results partially supported our hypotheses; despite lack of a mediating relationship, work stress was directly associated with both subsidy receipt and emotional neglect in the expected directions. Mothers who received childcare subsidies reported lower work stress compared to those who did not, and significantly lower levels of emotional neglect toward children. Findings therefore point to key benefits of childcare subsidies to reduce emotional neglect, and underscore the importance of cultivating interprofessional partnerships to evaluate, disseminate, and advocate for policies that can act as safeguards against neglect.