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OCR Page 1 of 70ΓΓ
NICHD
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
National Institutes of Health
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Public Health Service
Child Care Does Not Affect Infant's Attachment to Mother,
Unless Mother Insensitive to Infant's Needs
NICHD-supported scientists conducting a longitudinal study of the effects of child care on children's
development through age seven have found that child care in and of itself neither adversely affects, nor
promotes, the security of children's attachment to their mothers at the 15-month-age point. Low-quality
care, more than 10 hours per week in care, and multiple child-care arrangements, however, adversely
affected attachment when combined with maternal insensitivity to infant needs, cautioned the scientists
who announced their findings today at the International Conference on Infant Studies in Providence,
Rhode Island.
Behavioral scientists define attachment as an infant's comfortable sense of trust in his or her mother. For
this study, the child-care arrangements evaluated in relationship to attachment security were diverse and
included father care, grandparent care, care by a non-relative in the child's home, family day care, and
center-based care.
In 1991, the NICHD Study of Early Child Care enrolled more than 1,300 families and their children from
1 0 locales throughout the country. The children, who were one month old or less at enrollment, their
families, and their child-care arrangements are being followed through the child's seventh year of life. The
families are diverse in terms of race, maternal education, family income, family structure (single-parent
families are included), maternal employment status, type and quality of child care, and the number of
hours that children spend in non-maternal care arrangements.
Initiated by the NICHD and conducted by investigators at the NICHD and 14 universities nationwide, the
study was spurred by the increase in the use of early child care over the past decade, and questions about
its effects on children. In 1980, 38 percent of mothers ages 18-44 with infants under one year old worked
outside the home. Ten years later, this percentage had climbed to 53. Since most of these mothers return
to work in their child's first three to five months of life, their children spend much of their early lives in
various kinds of child-care situations.
This increase in the use of child care has led to many questions from parents, developmental
psychologists, and policy makers about the effects of such early child care on children's development. One
of their core interests is how early child care affects a cl-child's attachment to his or her mother.
Psychologists have linked insecure attachment to the mother to compromised developmental and social
adjustment at older ages, including difficult interactions and relationships with peers, parents, and other
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