Child Care and Attachment

Effects of Child Care on Attachment

Child care is not an orphanage; the children have families who are raising them. Child care is supplemental to these families, not a replacement for them. A way to look at attachment in out-of-home-child care is this. Children in child care have not just one person who cares about them—a parent—but often two or more. Children usually arrive in child care already firmly attached to their own family and may well acquire a secondary attachment or two in child care.

A look to Israel reassures us that parents and children can remain attached even if the parents never live with their children or are never responsible for their day-to-day care. In some of the kibbutzim in Israel, where communal living was a norm and a value, children were raised from infancy separate from their parents. They visited their parents, but they didn’t live with them. Full-time caregivers/teachers, rather than the parents, were in charge of child rearing and education.

There was no lack of attachment between parents and children in the kibbutzim. Attachment looked different because children split their attachment between parents and peer group. However, each child was well aware of his or her identity as a member of his or her own family—and each felt a sense of belonging.

Another question to ask when looking at the effects of child care on attachment to family is: What is the situation of the child’s family? Obviously if a family is overwhelmed by stress and the members are not functioning well, and a baby is born into the family at this point, some protective factors may be crucial. The early care and education program can provide these factors. In some situations, as when an overburdened single parent is able to get the support and referral to services needed, the child care program can literally be a lifesaver.

Such programs exist. Some child care and early education programs in the United States today not only give services to children but also give families the support they need to get on their feet so they, themselves, can provide for their children’s needs. These kinds of programs are cost-effective because they deal with attachment and other needs at the beginning rather than trying to fix problems that arise later, which is much more expensive (Pawl, 1995; Raikes, 1996). We could use many more of these kinds of programs! Prevention is a key word when looking at early deprivation and attachment problems.

Unfortunately, these kinds of comprehensive programs are too few in number. If the baby in the above example is placed in a child care program in which he never gets to know any of his caregivers and his mother gets little or no support, it’s a different story. Attachment may be delayed because caregivers come and go too fast. Not one of the adults gets to know him well enough to read his signals, understand his uniqueness, become fond of him. Child care may save his life yet still not provide for his attachment and trust needs. Because of underfunding, that’s the tragedy of the state of many child care programs in the United States today. The turnover rate of caregivers and teachers in underfunded programs is shocking.

You can’t know exactly how child care affects attachment without considering countless variables that have to do with the quality of the care and the way the family works. One important aspect of quality care is the partnership between the parents and the program. When child care staff and providers develop a collaborative relationship with the parents that includes more than just parent education and involvement, everybody stands to gain—including the child!

Some parents don’t have much choice about using child care for their babies and won’t until parental leave becomes a societal policy. It may reassure these parents to know that most studies have shown that babies become attached to their own parents even when child care is begun quite early.