This article summarizes what is known about the cost and quality of full-time child care in centers and family child care homes, and about parents' attention to quality in making child care choices. It relies primarily upon two recent studies which are among the first to collect detailed information about child care operating costs: the Cost, Quality, and Child Outcomes in Child Care Centers st...

OBJECTIVES To examine child characteristics (age, gender) and child care center environments (socioemotional quality, physical safety) that jointly predict injuries for preschool children. METHODS A two year prospective study of 360 preschool children, ages 2-6 years, was conducted in four urban child care centers. Composite scores for center quality and physical safety were derived from on-s...

Where to Put the Kids? Effects of Type of Non-parental Child Care on Pre-teen Skills and Risky Behavior This paper investigates pre-teenage effects of the choice of type of non-parental child care at age three (preschool relative to more informal family day care). We exploit a Danish panel data child survey merged with administrative records along with a pseudo-experiment that generates variati...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to assess state licensing and administrative regulations promoting healthy sleep practices in child care and to compare these regulations to national recommendations. METHODS We reviewed regulations related to healthy sleep practices for all states and territories for both child care centers (centers) and family child care homes (homes). We compared re...

PURPOSE This research identified the potential for infantilization of clients in centers that offer an occasional program of combined adult and child day care. DESIGN AND METHODS The study used a comparative ethnographic approach, which analyzed observation and interview data collected from two adult day centers that offered intergenerational activities. Special attention was paid to the envi...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to review state regulations promoting increased physical activity and decreased sedentary behaviors in infants in child care and to assess consistency with recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendations. METHODS We compared existing state and territory licensing and administrative regulations to recent IOM recommendations to promote physical activi...