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Publication #FAR0304

 

Child Care Safety1

Suzanna Smith2

Parents who both work outside the home have a difficult decision—how to care for their young children while they're 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, childcare is "quite safe," and is even safer than care within children's own families (Wrigley & Dreby 2005).

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" (Lewin p. A21). The workplace itself may be a crucial difference—family daycare providers have less support from other adults who can step in to help or monitor their work, have less training, and are more isolated than center providers. 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 2005 p. 740), and high quality family daycare 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 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 http://www.familyalbumradio.org.

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http://www.radiosource.net/radio_stories/312.mp3

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References

Lewin, T. (2005, November 1). Three new studies assess effects of child care. The New York Times, p. A21.

Wrigley, J. & Dreby, J. (2005). Fatalities and the organization of child care in the United States, 1985-2003. American Sociological Review, 70, 729-757.

Footnotes

1.

This document is FAR0304, one of a series of the Family Youth and Community Sciences Department, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Broadcast as program 312 and published March 2009. Reviewed March 2012. In the interest of time and/or clarity, the broadcast version of this script may have been modified. Visit the EDIS website at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu.

2.

Suzanna Smith, associate professor, Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.

The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) is an Equal Opportunity Institution authorized to provide research, educational information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function with non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations. For more information on obtaining other extension publications, contact your county Cooperative Extension service.

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida, IFAS, Florida A. & M. University Cooperative Extension Program, and Boards of County Commissioners Cooperating. Nick T. Place, Dean.