adversely impacts children
As women move from welfare to work, their children are moving into child care settings of diverse and sometimes questionable quality, according to the interim results of a three-year study by Yale and Berkeley researchers.
The report comes from the Growing up in Poverty project done by Sharon Lynn Kagan, senior research scientist at the Yale Child Study Center and in psychology at Yale's Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy, and Bruce Fuller in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley.
"Welfare reform succeeded in moving many people from welfare to work, but as a result, there are early signs of child care problems," says Kagan.
The Growing up in Poverty project examined whether welfare-to-work efforts alter maternal practices, homes and child care settings in ways that advance children's well being. The team selected a total of 948 single mothers with children 1 to 3 years old living in Connecticut, California and Florida.
Participating women in California and Florida had been enrolled for six months in the new welfare programs. In Connecticut, the participants had been enrolled in the program longer and were randomly assigned to experimental (Jobs First) or control (AFDC) programs. The results are based on interviews with the mothers, visits to child care providers at centers and homes, and direct assessments of children's early language and social development.
The team found that while the majority of children were placed in home-based care as opposed to center-based care, the type of child care selected varied considerably by state, with 70% of mothers in Florida selecting center-based care. In Connecticut, 77% selected unregulated care offered by neighbors or relatives, as did 54% of California mothers.
The quality of the child care settings also varied, with child care centers in California demonstrating high quality. By comparison, centers in Connecticut and Florida were of poorer quality and considerably lower than the quality of average child care centers in those states. Across the three states, the majority of children were placed in both regulated and un-regulated home-based care, where the overall quality was poor.
In addition, the share of women drawing from their child care subsidies ranged from 13% in Connecticut to 50% in Florida. In California, 48% of the women drew from their child care subsidies. In future studies, the researchers will examine the reasons behind the low subsidy usage rates.
A closer look at the mothers' quality of life revealed high rates of maternal depression, as well as a lack of some important parenting practices, such as reading to the child. The team's examination of early learning development showed a delay in language development of participating toddlers in California and Florida, relative to national norms. Connecticut children appeared to be developing language proficiency at a higher rate. The team will use this baseline data to help with future findings on young children's performance.
The Kagan/Fuller report is being published together with two other studies. One is a Yale study by Sarah Horowitz and Bonnie Kerker in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the School of Medicine. The other is by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) in New York.
The second Yale study looked at children aged 3 to 10 in Connecticut, whose mothers had moved from welfare to work. The researchers found that there were no significant differences in academic or behavioral performance between children under the old system of welfare and children of welfare-to-work mothers.
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