Too early for early education? Effects on parenting for mothers and fathers

Objective: To estimate the effect of children's age of entry into early childhood education and care (ECEC) on parenting quality of mothers and fathers in a context of universal access to subsidized ECEC following a 1 year paid parental leave. Background: Children entering non-parental care settings in early childhood may have negative consequences for parenting quality. Yet, current evidence supporting this claim is predominantly from the United States, is focused almost exclusively on mothers, and is predominantly based on statistical approaches that are vulnerable to unobserved selection bias. Method: Data are from a Norwegian longitudinal study, including ratings of observed mother–child (n = 901) and father–child (n = 621) interactions, and children's age of entry into ECEC. Multivariate regression models and instrumental variable models were used to estimate the causal effect of age of entry on parenting quality. Results: There was no support for the hypothesis that an earlier age of entry into ECEC negatively affects parenting quality, for either fathers or mothers. This was true for the sample as a whole, and for different sociodemographic subgroups. Conclusion: In a Norwegian context in which families have universal access to subsidized ECEC from the time their child is 1 year of age, and most children enter ECEC in their second year, there is no evidence that an earlier age of entry in ECEC harms parenting quality.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Too Early for Early Education? Effects on Parenting for Mothers and Fathers

Objective To estimate the effect of children's age of entry into early childhood education and care (ECEC) on parenting quality of mothers and fathers in a context of universal access to subsidized ECEC following a 1 year paid parental leave. Background Children entering non‐parental care settings in early childhood may have negative consequences for parenting quality. Yet, current evidence supporting this claim is predominantly from the United States, is focused almost exclusively on mothers, and is predominantly based on statistical approaches that are vulnerable to unobserved selection bias. Method Data are from a Norwegian longitudinal study, including ratings of observed mother–child (n = 901) and father–child (n = 621) interactions, and children's age of entry into ECEC. Multivariate regression models and instrumental variable models were used to estimate the causal effect of age of entry on parenting quality. Results There was no support for the hypothesis that an earlier age of entry into ECEC negatively affects parenting quality, for either fathers or mothers. This was true for the sample as a whole, and for different sociodemographic subgroups. Conclusion In a Norwegian context in which families have universal access to subsidized ECEC from the time their child is 1 year of age, and most children enter ECEC in their second year, there is no evidence that an earlier age of entry in ECEC harms parenting quality

Parenting quality from observational ratings at age 2: validation from Norwegian and U.S. Samples

This study investigated the construct validity of a proposed measure of parenting quality derived from extensively used observational ratings of parenting in mother-child interaction procedures with 2-year-olds in two large samples. Data included global ratings of mother-child interaction in an unstructured free-play and a semi-structured teaching task from the Behavior Outlook Norwegian Developmental Study (N = 1157) and from the Three Boxes procedure used in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1364). Confirmatory Factor Analyses, including ratings of mothers’ sensitivity, detachment, intrusiveness, cognitive stimulation, positive regard and negative regard, revealed a similarly structured latent parenting construct across samples and observational procedures, supporting the structural and content validity, and the generalizability of the measure. In the Norwegian sample, better predictive validity to child outcomes at age 4 was found from the semi-structured teaching task than from the less structured free-play task. Comparable predictive validity to child outcomes was found for the U.S. sample’s latent parenting quality construct. The results hold implications for the careful selection and study of observational procedures for measuring parenting quality in early childhood