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The current study examined whether young children's executive functions and emotionality are related to childcare experiences and whether they work as mediators explaining the associations between childcare experiences and early school outcomes. Findings from a national sample of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 990) revealed that centre-based care experiences and childcare quality positively predicted preschool children's executive functions, which then were linked to their academic skills and social skills in preschool and kindergarten years. Childcare hours were negatively related to executive functions. Further, childcare experiences did not predict children's emotionality, which was related to their social skills. Overall, childcare experiences, of higher quality, more structure and less hours, were modelled as predicting early school outcomes directly as well as indirectly through executive functioning.

The relationships between early maternal social support, maternal psychological well-being, the home learning environment, and children's language skills at age 3 in Korean families were examined. We hypothesized that maternal social support would predict children's language development through its effect on maternal psychological well-being and the home learning environment. Structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the conceptual model, using data collected from 1,725 Korean families who participated in the Panel Study of Korean Children. Mothers' early social support predicted children's language skills via 2 indirect paths. First, greater social support predicted more positively adjusted psychological well-being; maternal psychological well-being was significantly associated with the quality of the home learning environment, which in turn predicted the positive development of language skills in children. Second, greater social support predicted a better home learning environment; again, the home learning environment positively predicted children's linguistic development. The direct paths from social support to language development were not significant. Social support during the child's infancy was observed to be beneficial for stimulating the home learning environment later. A comparison between working mothers versus nonworking mothers yielded no significant differences in the relationships between the variables. The results shed light on the importance of sensitive measures of social support in order to better understand its beneficial effects on mothers and young children.

We examine the effects of 10 welfare and employment programs on single mothers' use of Head Start for their 3- to 4-year-old children, considering concurrent program effects on employment, income, and the use of other types of childcare settings. In general, these welfare and employment experiments increased parental employment and the use of center-and home-based childcare, but decreased families' use of Head Start. The findings suggest that two types of policies affecting low-income families--welfare and employment on the one hand, and early childhood intervention on the other--are operating independently, and may actually conflict. Policy-induced increases in maternal employment generated an increased need for childcare; however, mothers did not appear to use Head Start to meet this need, instead increasing their use of other types of care arrangements. The part-day, part-year structure of Head Start at the time of these programs and issues of eligibility are discussed as potential barriers to the use of Head Start among low-income families under a welfare system that requires parents to work.

Draws on data from three demonstration studies to examine predictors of low-income parents' child care use, child care problems, and public subsidy receipt. Finds that the best predictors of center-based care use were ages and number of children, parents' education, and personal beliefs about family and work. Race and ethnicity effects were inconsistent. Subsidies were most effective in reaching parents with relatively less consistent prior employment experience. (Author/KB)