Family child care providers' responsiveness toward children: The role of professional support and perceived stress

Highlights

• Family child care providers having more resources utilized less negative guidance.

• Connectedness with children's families was associated with positive responsiveness.

• Providers' perceived personal stress was associated with responsiveness to emotions.

• Professional support and stress interacted in prediction of responsiveness.

Abstract

Approximately 7 million 0- to 5-year-old children attend family child care, which is a non-parental, paid care provided in a child care provider's home in the U.S. Despite the importance of family child care providers' role in supporting young children's development, studies on family child care providers' responsiveness for children in their care are lacking. This study investigates whether family child care providers' perceived professional support (i.e., professional resources and connectedness with children's families) and perceived personal stress are independently and jointly associated with their responsiveness toward children's emotional and social challenges. Survey data were collected from 888 family child care providers in 40 states in the U.S. We found that when family child care providers have more professional resources, they utilize less negative guidance. Further, when family child care providers have more positive connectedness with children's families, they utilize more positive guidance. Family child care providers' perceived personal stress was significantly associated with their responsiveness toward children's negative emotions. Examining interactions between perceived professional support and personal stress, we found that perceived professional support was positively associated with family child care providers' responsiveness only when their stress level was low. The study emphasizes a need for providing targeted interventions for family child care providers to support their professional development as well as psychological wellbeing.

Introduction

Family child care (FCC) is a non-parental, paid care that is generally provided in a child care provider's home, serving a multi-age group of children ranging from infants to school-age children (Smith, 2000). In the U.S., there are approximately 118,000 licensed, regulated, or registered family child care providers (FCCPs) serving approximately seven million 0- to 5-year-old children (National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team, 2015). Although the use of FCC among families choosing non-relative care has dropped (28% in 1995 to 14% in 2011), a substantial number of families with working mothers still use FCC as their child's primary care arrangement (Laughlin, 2013). Parents often choose FCC because of the smaller group size and more intimate and individualized care in FCC settings (Browne, 2009). In addition, families with disadvantaged characteristics, such as families with low-income background or single-mother households, are more likely to use FCC over center-based care as FCC is generally more flexible, easily accessible, and affordable than center-based care (Davis & Connelly, 2005; Iruka & Carver, 2006; Johnson, 2005; Layzer & Goodson, 2007; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2005).

While FCC is a choice of many families' primary child care arrangement, the quality of FCC varies widely, more than those of center-based care, with less than 10% of FCC found to offer good quality care (Knoche, Peterson, Edwards, & Jeon, 2006; Layzer, Goodson, & Brown-Lyons, 2007; Raikes et al., 2013). Various factors may explain these phenomena regarding FCC quality. For example, average FCCPs have lower educational attainment than providers working in center-based care (National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team, 2013), with limited availability and access to ongoing in-service professional development opportunities targeting FCCPs (Layzer & Goodson, 2007; Whitebook, McLean, & Austin, 2016). FCCPs also report a high degree of feeling of isolation due to a lack of social connections (Fuligni, Howes, Lara-Cinisomo, & Karoly, 2009). Indeed, FCCPs often solely plan, design, supply, and manage every aspect in care without receiving supervision or oversights from others (Forry et al., 2013). Further, FCCPs are likely to face a unique set of stressors in part due to their low earnings and a lack of boundaries between work and personal life resulting from the use of their homes for the child care (Helburn, Morris, & Modigliani, 2002; Layzer & Goodson, 2007).

Much literature on center-based care has suggested the importance of professional support for care providers and the impact of their psychological wellbeing on the quality of caregiving (Gerber, Whitebook, & Weinstein, 2007; Hamre & Pianta, 2004; Jeon, Buettner, & Hur, 2016;Jeon, Buettner, & Snyder, 2014; Weaver, 2002; Zinsser, Bailey, Curby, Denham, & Bassett, 2013). Although FCCPs' lack of professional support and high levels of stress may similarly hamper their abilities to provide high quality care to children (Groeneveld, Vermeer, van IJzendoorn, & Linting, 2012; Rusby, Jones, Crowley, & Smolkowski, 2013), limited studies have examined whether FCCPs' professional resources and stress contribute to variations in the quality of care. To extend the current understanding of FCC settings, we investigated potential predictors of care quality in FCC. Among various aspects of care quality, we focused on FCCPs' responsiveness toward children, defined as FCCPs' contingent reactions to children's negative emotions and social challenges. We first examined whether two types of FCCPs' perceived professional supports (i.e., professional resources and social connectedness with children's families) and personal stress are associated with the quality of their responsiveness to children. Second, we investigated whether the associations between each type of professional support and their responsiveness to children are attenuated or strengthened by FCCPs' perceived level of personal stress.

Young children's social-emotional competence is an important predictor of their later school readiness skills (CASEL, 2013; Choi, Elicker, Christ, & Dobbs-Oates, 2016; Denham, 2006). Child care providers play a significant role in facilitating children's social-emotional competence because children develop these skills while interacting with significant adults through the process of modeling and coaching (Denham, Bassett, & Zinsser, 2012; Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996). In FCC, the role of child care providers in providing responsive care for children is particularly important because it is likely that they are the only adult whom children can rely on and interact with in an extended period of the day.

Child care providers who are responsive in their interactions with children acknowledge and validate children's emotions and encourage them to express their emotions in a socially acceptable manner. They also provide opportunities for children to independently solve social problems, and help them learn how to constructively resolve conflicts with peers (Buettner, Jeon, Hur, & Garcia, 2016; Fabes, Poulin, Eisenberg, & Madden-Derdich, 2002). When child care providers are sensitive to children's emotional needs, cues, and behaviors, and provide positive and developmentally appropriate guidance in a supportive manner, children are more likely to learn how to manage their emotions, understand others' emotions, and solve problems in social conflict situations (Buettner et al., 2016; Morris, Denham, Bassett, & Curby, 2013). On the other hand, child care providers who are insensitive or negative in their response toward children are often punitive in their reactions (e.g., using timeout) and ignore children's emotions or conflicts (Fabes et al., 2002). When child care providers exhibit negative or low levels of responsiveness toward children, children tend to present low levels of emotion regulation and social skills and high levels of behavioral problems (Eisenberg et al., 1996).

Although the importance of responsive caregiving has widely been acknowledged in literature, practice of such contingent responsiveness is not an easy task as it takes a considerable amount of training, knowledge, skills, and emotional energy (Weaver, 2002). Responsive caregiving requires child care providers to be attentive to each child's needs and to have skills to intervene at an appropriate teachable moment using developmentally appropriate guidance strategies (Denham et al., 2012; Hamre, 2014). This practice might be especially challenging for FCCPs because they often do not have assistance in their care, have limited professional resources and social support, and have a tendency to experience their own psychological difficulties, leading to high levels of stress. Four out of five FCCPs have reported needing professional training for child behavior management (Rusby, 2002), indicating that many FCCPs are not confident in their skills in child guidance. Nonetheless, we have a limited understanding of factors that are associated with FCCPs' responsive caregiving and guidance in situations where children present difficulties regulating negative emotions and resolving social conflicts.

Professional support, such as professional resources and connectedness with children's families, plays a particularly crucial role in FCC. Professional support is a complex, context-specific construct as individuals' needs for support differ by circumstance, personal characteristics, culture, and expectations (Williams, Barclay, & Schmeid, 2004). In the literature, professional resources, such as training and professional development opportunities as well as provider network and organization, have been found to be linked to high quality care in various types of child care settings, including FCC (Clarke-Stewart, Vandell, Burchinal, O'Brien, & McCartney, 2002; Doherty, Forer, Lero, Goelman, & LaGrange, 2006; Raikes, Raikes, & Wilcox, 2005; Schaack, Le, & Setodji, 2017; Weaver, 2002). Professional resources are particularly important for FCCPs considering average FCCPs' low educational attainment levels relative to center-based providers (Whitebook et al., 2016), and limited opportunities to receive professional feedback in their daily settings (Fuligni et al., 2009). Despite these needs, there are several barriers that preclude FCCPs from participating in professional trainings, such as long work hours (60 h per week on average), isolation in the work environment without additional staff or substitute, and unclear boundaries between work and home due to the use of their homes as their work places (Walker, 2002).

Professional support related to connectedness with children's families may also play an important role in FCCPs' interaction with children. FCC settings are unique in a way that FCCPs work alone and have limited professional social networks and time to spend outside of care, and thus have increased reliance on their relationships with children's families they interact with on a daily basis (Layzer & Goodson, 2007). FCCPs often have opportunities to build positive relationships and partnerships with parents that extend to close friendship and/or outside care socialization (Layzer & Goodson, 2007). This type of positive partnerships and close relationships appears to be associated with positive provider-child interactions as well (Morrissey & Banghart, 2007; Owen, Ware, & Barfoot, 2000). At the same time, relationships with or demands of children's families are often identified as a major challenge for child care providers that may undermine the quality of care in FCC (Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2000; Kelly & Berthelsen, 1995).

With a lack of professional support, such as adequate professional training and support from children's families, FCCPs are likely to find it difficult and frustrating to meet children's social emotional needs (Hale-Jinks, Knopf, & Knopf, 2012). Yet, we have a limited empirical understanding of their associations with FCCPs' quality of care, such as the quality of responsiveness toward children.

Many FCCPs experience high levels of stress (e.g., 63% reported high levels of stress in Layzer & Goodson, 2007). In FCC, a provider's home becomes a place of business, and providers must balance their own families' needs with those of the children they care for (Doherty, 2015; Gerstenblatt, Faulkner, Lee, Doan, & Travis, 2014; Layzer & Goodson, 2007). In addition, because FCCPs' job includes running a business, they have to deal with business aspects of the job, such as monitoring child enrollment, handling late payments, managing license-related documentations, and responding to parents' complaints above and beyond caring for children (Gerstenblatt et al., 2014; Helburn et al., 2002; Layzer & Goodson, 2007; New Jersey Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, 2006). Given these unique challenges, it is not surprising that stress management training is a highly preferred training option for many FCCPs (Rusby, 2002).

Empirical evidence, mostly drawn from center-based child care, suggests that higher levels of providers' stress are associated with more conflicts with children (Whitaker, Dearth-Wesley, & Gooze, 2015), lower-quality caregiver behavior (De Schipper, Riksen-Walraven, Geurts, & De, 2009; Zinsser et al., 2013), and negative children's social and emotional outcomes (Jeon, Buettner, Grant & Lang, 2018). This may be because stressed individuals are less attentive and sensitive to other people's needs and emotions, and less tolerant of conflicts (Chang, 2009). Although limited, studies have shown that FCCPs' perceived stress is associated with less frequent positive attention, lower sensitivity, and fewer verbal interactions with children (Groeneveld et al., 2012; Rusby et al., 2013). In particular, Groeneveld et al.'s (2012) study with a sample of both FCCPs and center-based child care providers found a significant association between perceived stress and lower quality caregiver behaviors, particularly in FCC, not in center-based child care. Given these studies, we hypothesized that the level of FCCPs' perceived stress would be associated with their responsiveness to children. Yet, such empirical examination in FCC has received less attention than that in center-based care, leaving room for additional research.

In addition to examining FCCPs' perceived stress as a predictor of their responsiveness to children, we explored whether FCCPs' perceived stress could serve as a moderator of the associations between FCCPs' professional support and their responsiveness to children. Two plausible hypotheses explain how FCCPs' perceived stress and professional support could interact with each other. First, the “buffering model of social support” posits that social resources have buffering (or protective) effects for individuals under risks and stress (Cohen & Wills, 1985). This hypothesis implies that social support and resources, such as interpersonal supports, become particularly important for individuals who experience high levels of stress. This hypothesis suggests that FCCPs' professional resources and networks, and perceived connectedness with children's families may serve as social support and resources to buffer their stress. While the buffering model has rarely been tested in early childhood education (ECE) contexts, it has extensively been supported in developmental literature on resilience (Bartlett & Easterbrooks, 2015; Li, Godinet, & Arnsberger, 2011).

An alternative hypothesis proposes “the dysregulating role of stress on behavior,” such that individuals' perceived stress may attenuate the positive effects of protective factors (e.g., professional resources and social support) on their functioning. In contrast to the buffering model, this hypothesis explains that positive experiences would lead to positive outcomes, particularly for those who are in less challenging circumstances (e.g., individuals having a lower level of stress). While empirical evidence is limited in ECE literature, this hypothesis is supported by parenting literature, which has shown that environmental stress attenuates effects of protective factors (e.g., social support) on positive parenting (e.g., Ceballo & McLoyd, 2002). This hypothesis suggests that FCCPs would receive limited benefits from professional resources and social support when they are under conditions of stress. With these two contradicting, yet plausible, hypotheses, this study examined interactions between perceived professional support and stress in predicting FCCPs' responsiveness to children.

While FCCPs play a critical role in early development for many young children, there is scant research focusing on FCCP and factors predicting FCCPs' practice of high quality care. This study focused on FCCPs' perceived professional support (i.e., professional resources and connectedness with children's families) and levels of perceived personal stress as predictors of FCCPs' responsiveness toward children. Five types of FCCPs' responsiveness were examined, either related to social guidance (i.e., positive social guidance and negative social guidance) or emotional guidance (i.e., expressive encouragement, positively-focused reactions, and negative emotion reactions).

We first examined whether FCCPs' perceived professional support and personal stress were associated with their responsiveness toward children's negative emotions and conflicts. We hypothesized that FCCPs would report that they provide more positive and less negative responsiveness toward children when they have higher levels of perceived professional support, including access to professional development resources and social connectedness with children's families. We further hypothesized that FCCPs who reported a higher level of perceived personal stress would report that they provide less positive and more negative responsiveness toward children.

Second, we tested interaction effects between FCCPs' perceived stress and professional support in predicting responsiveness toward children using two contradicting, yet plausible, hypotheses from the buffering model of social support and the theory of the dysregulating role of stress on behavior. This study attempts to fill in the gap in the ECE literature by exploring how FCCPs' perceived stress and professional support interact in predicting FCCPs' responsiveness to children.