Shared caregiving: comparisons between home and child-care settings

The experiences of 84 German toddlers (12-24 months old) who were either enrolled or not enrolled in child care were described with observational checklists from the time they woke up until they went to bed. The total amount of care experienced over the course of a weekday by 35 pairs of toddlers (1 member of each pair in child care, 1 member not) did not differ according to whether the toddlers spent time in child care. Although the child-care toddlers received lower levels of care from care providers in the centers, their mothers engaged them in more social interactions during nonworking hours than did the mothers of home-only toddlers, which suggests that families using child care provided different patterns of care than families not using child care. Child-care toddlers experienced high levels of emotional support at home, although they experienced less prompt responses to their distress signals. Mothers' ages were unrelated to the amounts of time toddlers spent with them, but older mothers initiated more proximity.