Written by: Suzanna Smith, Ph.D. and reviewed by Donna Davis, M.S.
Listen to the Podcast: Child Care Safety
Parents who both work outside the home have a difficult decision—how to care for their young children while they are at work. Parents often worry about their child’s safety as they evaluate various childcare options.
New research offers a comparison of the risks of injury and death in different childcare settings. According to a study published in the American Sociological Review, childcare centers might be safer than private homes. Researchers caution that overall, child care is “quite safe,” and overall
is even safer than care within children’s own families.
Researchers from the City University of New York found that between 1989-2003 fatalities were seven times more likely to occur in family day care, than in center care. Most deaths in private homes involved babies, who died from being shaken “by a caregiver stressed by constant crying” (p. 2). The work place itself may be a crucial difference--family day care providers have less support from other adults who can step in to help or monitor their work, have less training, and more isolated than center providers have. These findings provide more support for the importance of the providers’ training, licensing and support to ensure that children are safe.
Certainly, parents need to take a number of factors into account when making their decision about child care, such as the location of care, cost, and group size. “No one type of care is uniformly ‘better’ than another” for all families (Wrigley and Drebly quoting NICHD, p. 740), and high-quality family day care can provide a warm and responsive environment, especially for infants.
Listening, learning and living together, it’s the science of life. “Family Album” is a co-production of the University of Florida IFAS Extension, the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences and of WUFT-FM. If you’d like to learn more, please visit our website at familyalbumradio.org.
References
Lewin, T. (2005). Three new studies assess effects of child care. The New York Times, November 1, 2005. Retrieved November 4, 2005 from http://www.nytimes.com.
Wrigley, J. & Dreby, J. (2005). Fatalities and the organization of child care in the United States, 1985-2003. American Sociological Review, 70, 729-757.
