Family and Child Welfare

Family and Child Welfare 3 (3+0)

Lesson 31 : Child Care and Development - Day Care Service

The Social context of the Day care

The proportion of working mothers change from year to year and it is of greater significance that the number of working mothers with preschool children has increased too. One out of every three working mothers had a preschool child at home. Because of the steady, sharp increase in working mothers of children under six years of age, increasing numbers of mothers are potentially interested in day care. "At the same time that more mothers have gone to work, the number of adults in the home who can care for children has decreased," intensifying the need for day-care services. The considerable interest in day care that developed during the 1960s re­sulted from a number of other factors as well:

1. Increasing costs of the Aid to Families of Dependent Children (AFDC) program have sparked interest in day care. The effort to reduce welfare rolls by requiring work and training has, as a corollary, provision of day-care services for the dependent children of the AFDC mother. The Work Incentive (WIN) pro­gram provides special day-care funding to enable AFDC mothers to accept work or training.
2. Recent research on the educability of young children and pressure from the civil rights movement have generated an interest in day care as a compen­satory educational experience. Developmental day care could be provided for children of low-income families whether or not the mothers are working. Here the interest in day care derives from a concern with enriching the supposedly limited educational stimulation available in low-income homes in order to pre­pare the child for school. This is the intent of the Head Start program.
3. Child care increases the number of jobs available to human services para­professionals. It is potentially one of the most productive areas for the implemen­tation of the concept of new careers for the poor. The day-care center can utilize the qualifications of many lower-class women who seek employment but whose only marketable skill is experience in caring for children, and many have been re­cruited as aides of one kind or another.
4. Advocates of participatory democracy and community control see day care as an excellent vehicle for politicizing local residents. Parents are concerned with and responsive to the needs of their children, so day-care centers can often be organized by the action of community volunteers. As a matter of fact, a study of the Head Start program suggests that its effects on parents and community may be as great as the effects on children: a sizable percentage of Head Start programs have increased the involvement of the poor with local institutions, "particularly at decision-making levels and in decision-making capacities". Consequently community action groups of one kind or another have contributed to the growing support for day care.
5. For women's groups, day care is crucial in freeing women from their "primary identification as mothers and from the sole responsibility for child rearing." The community, it is argued, shares with the parents the responsibility for child rearing. Consequently such groups are actively supporting the develop­ment of day-care centers available to all mothers, employed or not.

Effects on child

If mother satisfied with her job and the provision for her child is reasonably good and stable, there is no adverse effect on the child’s development. Reviews of many research studies on the effect of mother’s employment on children shows that,

1. The consequences of mother’s employment conclude that “the results disprove the theory that maternal employment fosters the deprivation of the child. (Hoffman, Nye, 1974).
2. No consistent differences between preschool children of working and non working mothers have been found when potentially confounding variables (such as, SES, Mother’s age, child’s age, mother’s attitude towards work, stability of the home, presence of the father and alternative child care arrangements) have been controlled (Clarke Stewart, 1977).
3. Positive consequences of the mother’s employment : relief from financial strain, increased share of responsibility in family life by the father and children, widening of the mother’s interests and increased independence of children.
4. Report of comparing the development of very young children cared for in a day-care centre for pat of the day over a period of time with that of children cared for at home indicate little difference (Caldwell, 1964 Kaga, Kearsley, Zelazo,1977).