Article
Caregiver-mother partnership behavior and the quality of caregiver-child and mother-child interactions

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2006(00)00073-9Get rights and content

Abstract

Parent-caregiver communication, particularly concerning the behavior and experiences of the child, is a means of linking the home and child-care contexts of the child’s experience and enriching the caregiver’s and parent’s capacity to provide supportive and sensitive care of the child. The Parent-Caregiver Partnership Scale was administered to 53 mothers of 3-year-old children and to the children’s primary caregivers in child-care centers (n = 20) and less formal child-care settings (n = 33) to examine relations of mother-caregiver communication about the child to the quality of caregiver-child and mother-child interactions. More communication between mother and caregiver about the child as reported by both mothers and caregivers was significantly related to more sensitive and supportive caregiver-child interactions in child care, even after controlling for the mother’s and caregiver’s childrearing beliefs that were related to partnership behavior and the quality of child care. The quality of mother-child interaction was significantly associated with the mother’s communication with her child-care provider about her child. After controlling for maternal childrearing beliefs, mothers who engaged in more partnership behavior with their providers were more supportive and sensitive with their children.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants in the study were 53 mothers and their children’s 53 primary child-care providers when the children were 3 years old. The families were participants in the Wisconsin site of the multisite NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Only the families from the Wisconsin site were included in the present report because the measure of parent-caregiver partnership behavior was administered only to participants at this site in the larger NICHD Study.1 Families in the present study were restricted

Preliminary analyses

On average, most mothers and caregivers reported frequent seeking and sharing of information about the child and the child’s experiences with each other. To examine differences in maternal and caregiver Partnership Behavior and the relation of partnership behavior to type of child care (center-based vs. less formal care), a 2 × 2 repeated measure multivariate ANOVA was run with partnership behavior as a within-subjects measure (caregiver Partnership Behavior and maternal Partnership Behavior)

Discussion

The hypothesized relation between partnership behavior of mothers and their child-care providers and more positive caregiver-child interaction was supported in the present study. When mother and caregiver reported more frequent communication with each other about the child and the child’s experiences, by seeking and sharing information about the child, the caregiver’s interactions with the child were observed to be more sensitive, supportive, and stimulating, indicative of higher quality

Conclusion and implications

In summary, the importance of supportive linkages between children’s home and child-care experiences was demonstrated in finding positive associations with the quality of interactions with the child in child care and in the home. The present study thus adds support to the current professional emphasis on communication between parent and caregiver as a feature of high quality child-care programs. It indicates that the child’s quality of experience in each environment may be enhanced when parent

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    The research reported here was supported by a subcontract with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, through a cooperative agreement (U10) with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. We wish to express our appreciation to Deborah Lowe Vandell who directed the Wisconsin site of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care, to Anne Stright who supervised data collection, to the research assistants who collected the data, and especially to the families and child-care providers who welcomed us into their homes and workplaces.

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