Elsevier

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Volume 44, 3rd Quarter 2018, Pages 124-135
Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Neighborhood context and center-based child care use: Does immigrant status matter?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.03.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Multilevel models examine neighborhoods and use of center-based child care.

  • Neighborhood affluence associated with use of center-based child care.

  • Child collective efficacy associated with less use of center-based child care.

  • Neighborhood friends/kin associated with immigrants’ use of center-based child care.

Abstract

This study examined associations between individual families’ use of center-based child care and neighborhood structure (concentrated poverty and concentrated affluence, as measured with Census data), processes, and resources (child-centered collective efficacy, presence of friends/kin, and availability of services for children, as measured in a survey of neighborhood residents). The potential moderating role of family immigrant status also was investigated. Data were obtained from the 3-year-old cohort of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (N = 999; 42% immigrant). Multilevel models accounting for background factors at the individual level revealed that greater neighborhood concentrated affluence was associated with families’ higher likelihood of using center-based child care, whereas greater neighborhood child-centered collective efficacy was associated with their lower likelihood of using this type of care. In addition, among immigrant families only, as the size of neighborhood friends/kin networks increased, the likelihood of participating in center-based child care programs was higher. Findings are discussed in terms of the potential for improving immigrant families’ access to center-based child care by reducing neighborhood structural barriers and fostering neighborhood networks.

Introduction

Immigration to the United States is expected to continue increasing in the coming decades, but already 24% of children three years of age and younger are from immigrant families, that is, families with at least one parent born outside the United States (U.S. Census Bureau Population Division, 2014; Urban Institute, 2015). These young immigrant children are less likely to participate in center-based child care than their nonimmigrant peers (Crosnoe, 2007; Hernandez, Denton, & Macartney, 2011; Karoly & Gonzalez, 2011). This difference in early experiences may have significant ramifications for the two groups: On average, immigrant children in the United States begin kindergarten at an academic disadvantage relative to their nonimmigrant peers (Han, 2008; Magnuson, Lahaie, & Waldfogel, 2006). Given the importance of early education opportunities in setting children on a positive academic trajectory in elementary school, understanding the differential enrollment of immigrant and nonimmigrant children in center-based child care is essential. This information can assist practitioners and policymakers in identifying strategies that maximize the school readiness of the large and growing population of immigrant young children (Marks, Ejesi, & García Coll, 2014; Perreira & Ornelas, 2011; Pong & Landale, 2012).

Neighborhoods are a key context that may help explain variation in children’s participation in center-based child care as a function of immigrant status (García Coll & Szalacha, 2004; Miller, Votruba-Drzal, Coley, & Koury, 2014; Portes & Rumbaut, 1996). Despite the fact that neighborhoods are often hypothesized to be important for immigrant families, few studies examine the specific aspects of neighborhoods that may matter for immigrant families with young children, notably the neighborhood circumstances that might promote or inhibit use of center-based child care (Leventhal & Shuey, 2014; White, Burleson, Pasco, & Nair, 2016). Increasing residential segregation between immigrants and nonimmigrants is likely to exacerbate many of the differences between communities that historically are home to one group or the other (Cutler, Glaeser, & Vigdor, 2008; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001), raising the imperative of illuminating how neighborhood conditions may matter for families.

The goal of this study is to address whether neighborhood conditions are associated with families’ use of center-based child care and whether these associations are moderated by immigrant status. Consistent with the majority of research on immigrant young children, we consider children who have at least one foreign-born parent to be “immigrants” and children with only U.S.-born parents to be “nonimmigrants” (see Crosnoe & Fuligni, 2012; Karoly & Gonzalez, 2011). We expand on past theoretical and empirical literature on immigrant families’ use of center-based child care by examining multiple aspects of neighborhood structure (e.g., concentrated poverty and concentrated affluence) and processes and resources (e.g., child-centered collective efficacy, presence of friends/kin, and services for children).

The conceptual framework for this study is rooted in the bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), recognizing that neighborhoods, child care, and individual family characteristics are dynamic and interactive parts of the developmental system. In addition, the study framework draws heavily from the integrative model of development for minority children proposed by García Coll et al. (1996) and García Coll and Szalacha (2004). This model situates children within a stratified society, emphasizing the roles of social position and segregation in setting minority and immigrant children apart from nonimmigrant European American children, with special attention to how these types of stratification occur in schools and neighborhoods. In addition, we rely on a broad definition of neighborhoods as distinct geographic areas that provide “a proximal social context in which children and families engage… with individuals and institutions that control access to opportunities and resources” (Leventhal, Dupéré, & Shuey, 2015, p. 494).

Using this framework, the study considers how contexts of development beyond the family (i.e., neighborhoods) are associated with families’ use of center-based child care and the moderating role of immigrant status (see Fig. 1). Fig. 1 depicts the complexity and interdependence of various child, family, and neighborhood characteristics, suggesting all play a role in determining families’ use of center-based child care. Fig. 1 also acknowledges that family characteristics are linked to neighborhood characteristics, due to families’ varying constraints and choices that determine neighborhood residence. Given the mutual influence of neighborhood and family characteristics on one another, we do not attempt to address causality in this study. Rather, we consider family characteristics when examining neighborhood associations with use of center-based child care to mitigate selection bias associated with both neighborhood residence and use of center-based child care. Selection bias occurs because children from different family backgrounds are neither equally likely to live in comparable neighborhoods, nor are they equally likely to participate in center-based child care (see Burchinal, Magnuson, Powell, & Hong, 2015; Leventhal et al., 2015). Thus, the conceptual model identifies specific family characteristics noted in past literature that are associated with families’ differential access to residential neighborhoods and/or center-based child care use.

Center-based child care options are less available in less-advantaged neighborhoods (Burchinal, Nelson, Carlson, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008; Hatfield, Lower, Cassidy, & Faldowski, 2015), and families are more likely to use care that is locally available (Coley, Votruba-Drzal, Collins, & Miller, 2014). Nonetheless, Ha and Ybarra (2014) found that neighborhood poverty was more important in predicting families’ use of center-based child care than the neighborhood supply of child care. This finding from the Los Angeles Families and Neighborhoods Survey, a neighborhood-based study, raises the possibility that neighborhood conditions may matter for families’ child care decisions even within a constrained market.

Neighborhood structural features, like poverty and associated conditions (e.g., unemployment and single-parenthood), are generally thought to give rise to neighborhood social dynamics that may affect families’ child-rearing strategies more directly, including their decisions about child care (Leventhal et al., 2015). For instance, a study in North Carolina found that the quality of center-based child care programs was lower in neighborhoods with greater residential stability (Hatfield et al., 2015). Collective efficacy theory argues that social cohesion and social control (the components of collective efficacy) are likely to be higher in communities with greater residential stability and racial/ethnic homogeneity (Sampson, 2009). Consistent with this idea, Hatfield et al. (2015) suggest their findings may be due to parents in more stable communities having greater trust in neighbors as sources of child care, thereby lowering demand for high-quality regulated child care programs. Unfortunately, as is often the case due to the difficulty of measuring neighborhood social processes (see Leventhal et al., 2015 for a thorough discussion of these challenges), this hypothesis could not be tested directly. The current study is an effort to address this limitation in the literature by including assessments of neighborhood social processes.

In the few studies that have looked beyond neighborhood structural conditions to include neighborhood social processes, results demonstrate that neighborhood social dynamics play a role in families’ child care decisions (Burchinal et al., 2008; Chaudry et al., 2011; Yoshikawa & Kholoptseva, 2013). Findings from a study using the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) reveal that larger neighborhood social networks were associated with families’ lower likelihood of using family child care settings over parental care, but conversely, in neighborhoods with greater collective efficacy, families were more likely to use family child care settings than parental care (Burchinal et al., 2008). This pattern of findings suggests neighborhood social networks, comprising family and friends, and broader neighborhood social processes like collective efficacy may factor differently into families’ child care choices; however, whether these neighborhood characteristics matter for use of center-based care remains unclear.

Although neighborhood research typically focuses on areas of concentrated poverty and related social disadvantage, neighborhood socioeconomic advantage also may be meaningful for families’ use of local resources like center-based child care (Dupéré, Leventhal, Crosnoe, & Dion, 2010; Kohen, Leventhal, Dahinten, & McIntosh, 2008). Further, quality child care (both center-based and family child care homes) is generally more prevalent in more advantaged neighborhoods (Hatfield et al., 2015), potentially making it more desirable for families to access than in neighborhoods where overall quality is lower. In contrast to neighborhood concentrated poverty, neighborhood advantage assesses the degree to which well-educated neighbors with higher status jobs and high incomes are concentrated in the neighborhood. Such neighbors may be motivated to advocate for high-quality institutions like center-based child care in the local area, both as a means of investing in their children and as an employment support for dual-income households (Lareau, 2011). In recent years, the concentration of advantage has grown more rapidly than the concentration of poverty within neighborhoods, contributing to increasing social stratification at the neighborhood level (Reardon & Bischoff, 2011).

Public resources often are targeted to impoverished neighborhoods, and private resources may be more plentiful in affluent neighborhoods, with more middle-income neighborhoods being at a particular disadvantage in regard to institutional resources such as child care (Hatfield et al., 2015; National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team, 2016). Some argue, however, that it is not the presence of resources, but the extent to which individuals are connected to institutions and institutions are connected to one another that matters most to child and family outcomes (Hatfield et al., 2015; Leventhal et al., 2015; Small, 2006). In this vein, neighborhood social processes may shape families’ engagement with resources such as center-based child care over and above neighborhood socioeconomic conditions such as concentrated poverty or affluence. Despite suggestive findings, research on the neighborhood features that support or hinder families’ access to center-based child care remains sparse, and the current study is intended to fill this gap.

Neighborhoods are theorized to figure prominently in immigrant families’ postmigration experiences (e.g., García Coll & Szalacha, 2004; Portes & Rumbaut, 1996). Immigrant families often face greater economic hardship than nonimmigrant families, and as such typically live in neighborhoods that are more disadvantaged (e.g., rates of poverty, public assistance, and education levels) and have more foreign-born residents than nonimmigrant families (Cutler et al., 2008; Leventhal, Xue, & Brooks-Gunn, 2006; Pong & Hao, 2007). Residing in such neighborhoods may limit immigrant families’ child care options, both real and perceived. Moreover, quality child care is generally less available in neighborhoods with larger immigrant and language minority populations (Fuller & García Coll, 2010; Fuller, Kagan, Caspary, & Gauthier, 2002; Matthews & Jang, 2007). This lower availability of quality child care may partially explain the older average age of enrollment in child care in neighborhoods with greater concentrations of Hispanic and language-minority residents compared with neighborhoods with more non-Hispanic and English-speaking residents (Chaudry, Henly, & Meyers, 2010; Fram & Kim, 2008).

In part because immigrants often settle in communities comprising other immigrants (i.e., ethnic enclaves) with a shared language, values, practices, and possibly social ties (Portes & Rumbaut, 1996), neighborhood social dynamics may contribute to differential center-base child care usage between immigrants and nonimmigrants (García Coll & Szalacha, 2004; Leventhal et al., 2006; Pong & Hao, 2007). That is, despite socioeconomic disadvantages, immigrant neighborhoods may facilitate individual families’ adjustment to the United States by sharing knowledge of local resources (Yoshikawa & Kholoptseva, 2013), as well as through reinforcing cultural values, such as norms around parents’ roles as caregivers of young children (García Coll & Szalacha, 2004; Shields & Behrman, 2004).

This conceptualization of immigrant neighborhoods as providing strong social cohesion and control suggests that collective efficacy (comprising social cohesion and control) may be high in these neighborhoods. Findings from previous research showing that neighborhood collective efficacy is linked with use of family child care (Burchinal et al., 2008) raise the question of whether this neighborhood-level construct may matter for immigrant families’ use of center-based child care; however, collective efficacy as generally construed in the literature may not adequately capture the elements of social control most meaningful to immigrant families. For instance, typical measures of social control include items related to interacting with local governments (e.g., neighbors intervening if a local fire station were to be closed), which may have less direct relevance for child care usage among immigrant families with young children than aspects of child-centered social control (e.g., adults intervening when neighborhood children misbehave). Thus, a narrower form of collective efficacy with an explicit child-centered orientation may be most relevant to immigrant families’ use of center-based child care.

Despite the theoretical importance of neighborhoods for immigrants in the United States (Portes & Rumbaut, 1996), very little empirical research attempts to identify how, or if, neighborhood conditions may function differently for immigrant and nonimmigrant families. To this point, one study reveals that immigrant families’ neighborhoods may not provide the socially cohesive environments presumed to characterize the communities where immigrants live (Leventhal & Shuey, 2014). For instance, this study found that neighborhoods with high concentrations of foreign-born residents had, on average, lower social cohesion than neighborhoods with fewer foreign-born residents. Nonetheless, immigrant children in this study appeared particularly sensitive to their neighborhood conditions—with some neighborhood conditions acting as protective factors and others as risk factors—raising the possibility that neighborhood conditions may be especially important for immigrant families, even if, on average, their neighborhoods do not offer social advantages relative to the neighborhoods of nonimmigrant families. Thus, further research is needed to understand how neighborhood contexts may matter for immigrant families’ experiences in the United States., including their use of center-based child care.

On average, immigrant children are less likely to attend center-based child care than nonimmigrant children, but this pattern varies by children’s age (Brandon, 2004; Crosnoe, 2007). For example, some studies find that among four-year-old children who are enrolled in some form of non-parental care, immigrant children are as likely as their nonimmigrant peers to be in center-based programs (Crosnoe, 2007; Karoly & Gonzalez, 2011). Moreover, by age five, immigrant children are no less likely than their nonimmigrant peers to be enrolled in early education programs (including kindergarten; Bainbridge, Meyers, Tanaka, & Waldfogel, 2005; Matthews & Ewen, 2006). These patterns underscore that immigrant parents value early education opportunities for their children, as they are likely to take advantage of programs, like pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, that are universally available through the public-school system. Along these lines, Mexican immigrant families are somewhat more likely than Mexican American families to use academic-based settings, such as Head Start, when their children are in some form of nonparental care (Crosnoe, 2007).

In contrast to these studies of four- and five-year-olds, other work suggests that immigrant families prefer informal and home-based child care programs for cultural reasons (see Fuller et al., 1996). Yet, national data reveal that immigrant children are less likely than nonimmigrant children to be cared for by non-parental kin (Brandon, 2004), which may be due to nonimmigrant families’ more extensive networks available to provide informal care compared with immigrant families, whose social networks may be disrupted by migration (Guzman, Hickman, Turner, & Gennetian, 2016; Roschelle, 1997). Additional research suggests that Mexican families’ use of familial caregivers in the United States was not a true preference for informal child care, but rather a strategy to support extended family economic well-being (Uttal, 1999). Among immigrant families who are able to maintain large social networks in their neighborhoods, qualitative data show that these networks are related to enrollment in a greater range of child care programs, in comparison with immigrant parents with small neighborhood social networks (Chaudry et al., 2011). Larger networks are more likely to provide a greater breadth of information on available child care options, and this knowledge of neighborhood resources is critical because most parents use input from friends or relatives in their child care search (National Survey of Early Care and Education Project Team, 2014).

Parents who are unauthorized immigrants to the United States are less likely than authorized parents to access child care subsidies, or to use center-based child care (Yoshikawa & Kholoptseva, 2013). Although children born in the United States are entitled to access free public programs such as Head Start, immigrant parents may not know these programs are available to them—and for parents who are unauthorized, fears around accessing public programs may further curtail participation in such programs. In these cases, neighborhood networks of shared information and resources may allow immigrant parents to learn about an array of child care programs from trusted sources (Chaudry et al., 2011; Suárez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, Teranishi, & Suárez-Orozco, 2011).

Thus, examining the neighborhood structural and social features that support or hinder immigrant families’ access to child care is a major contribution of the current study. Notably, it is unclear to what extent immigrant families may leverage social networks or tap into broader neighborhood collective efficacy to access center-based child care options in the context of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage. It is possible that even in neighborhoods with favorable social conditions, structural barriers, including individual and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantages, simply preclude most immigrant families from using center-based child care. Moreover, it is unclear whether immigrant and nonimmigrant families interact with their neighborhoods in similar fashions. Theory suggests that neighborhoods are a salient context for immigrant families (e.g., García Coll et al., 1996; Portes & Rumbaut, 1996), but it is possible that neighborhoods play a comparable role in nonimmigrant families’ usage of center-based care.

The goals of this study are to determine whether neighborhood structural and social process features matter for families’ use of center-based child care and if immigrant status moderates associations between neighborhood characteristics and participation in center-based child care. Moderators can alter the association between predictor and outcome variables (Baron & Kenny, 1986); in this case, we expect immigrant status to strengthen the associations between particular aspects of neighborhoods and families’ use of center-based child care. More specifically, we hypothesize that associations between neighborhood social processes (child-centered collective efficacy, friends/kin, and services for children) and child care use will be stronger among immigrant than nonimmigrant families. In addition, we anticipate neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, notably concentrated affluence, will be significant for center-based child care use among all families, regardless of immigrant status. By using data with rich measures of neighborhood social processes, we aim to extend past theoretical and empirical work on the role of neighborhood characteristics for immigrant families’ participation in center-based child care.

Section snippets

Method

Data were drawn from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). PHDCN is a multilevel, longitudinal study designed to investigate the role of neighborhoods for individual development (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2003). In addition to the longitudinal Cohort Study with data on children and families, PHDCN is one of only a few studies to include an independent Community Survey, which provides neighborhood-level data on social dynamics. This fact makes the PHDCN data uniquely

Results

Bivariate, descriptive analyses revealed that immigrant and nonimmigrant families differed on many of the variables of interest (see Table 1). Immigrant children were less likely to be African American or European American and more likely to have Hispanic or other minority heritage than nonimmigrant children. Immigrant children also had lower exposure to English compared with their nonimmigrant peers. Immigrant mothers were somewhat older than nonimmigrant mothers when their children were born

Discussion

The goal of this study was to examine associations between families’ neighborhood characteristics and use of center-based child care, as well as the potential moderating role of immigrant status. We extended past research on families’ child care choices by including aspects of neighborhoods beyond structural conditions: child-centered collective efficacy, presence of friends/kin, and availability of services for children. The multilevel nature of the PHDCN provided a unique opportunity to

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    We are grateful for support from the Foundation for Child Development and the Doris Duke Fellowship for the Promotion of Child Well-Being.

    1

    The author’s views are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Organisation or its Member countries.

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