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Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
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Understanding the Association Between Childcare Precarity and Emotional Distress

Mateus M Mazzaferro1, Sihong Liu1, Philip Fisher1

  • 1Stanford University Graduate School of Education, Stanford, CA, United States.

Child: Care, Health and Development
|April 3, 2025
PubMed

Insights

Childcare precarity, including search status, impacts caregiver and child emotional distress. Understanding these diverse experiences can inform targeted support for families facing unreliable care arrangements.

Area of Science:

  • Child and family well-being
  • Socioeconomic factors in early childhood

Background:

  • Childcare precarity, defined as insecure or unreliable childcare, affects families' economic and psychosocial well-being.
  • Factors like rising costs and the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated childcare instability.
  • This instability impacts family life and early care settings.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To broaden the concept of childcare precarity to include childcare search status.
  • To examine the association between childcare precarity indicators and caregiver/child emotional distress.
  • To identify distinct profiles of childcare precarity and their links to emotional distress.

Main Methods:

  • Survey data from 3115 US caregivers (Nov 2022-Dec 2023).
  • Assessed childcare unreliability, disruptions, and search status.
  • Employed latent class analysis (LCA) to identify precarity profiles.

Main Results:

  • Childcare unreliability and disruptions correlated with caregiver distress.
  • Childcare unreliability linked to child fear/anxiety; disruptions linked to fussiness/defiance.
  • Childcare search status also predicted emotional distress, enhancing predictive models.

Conclusions:

  • A multidimensional view of childcare precarity is essential.
  • Distinct precarity profiles correlate with varying emotional distress levels.
  • Findings can guide policy interventions for family support.
Abstract

Keywords:
ChildcareEmotional DistressEmotional Well‐BeingPrecarity

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