Parent users of high-quality long day care: Informed consumers of child care?

In Australia and many other western industrialised countries, governments adopt a marketised approach to the provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) (OECD, 2006). Implicit in such an approach is the assumption that parents have the capacity to discern centre quality. Undermining this premise, however, is a body of research that generally positions parents as having limited knowledge to make informed judgements about a centre’s provision of quality. Findings pertaining to long day care (LDC), the most utilised type of formal child care in Australia (Commonwealth of Australia, 2010), suggest first, that parents generally have limited knowledge about what constitutes childcare quality (Leach et al., 2008; LiGrining & Coley, 2006; Shpancer et al., 2002; Turner & Smith, 1983; Van Horn, Ramey, Mulvihill & Newell, 2001). As uninformed consumers, these parents may evaluate centres of mediocre quality as high quality (Shpancer et al., 2002). Second, while some parents may be informed about what childcare professionals deem to be important for the provision of quality ECEC, this knowledge does not necessarily translate into a capacity to discern centre quality. Indeed, considerable evidence suggests that informed parents may also overestimate the quality provided at the centre their child attends (Browne, 1984; Cryer & Burchinal, 1997; Cryer, Tietze & Wessels, 2002; Knoche, Peterson, Edwards & Jeon, 2006; Shpancer et al., 2002).