Spring 1999 Volume 3, No. 2

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center

Family-Center Family-Centered

Research &

Practices Practices

SUPPORTING FAMILY HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

2

Vol. 3, No.1

SUPERVISING EDITORS

Virginia Buysse & Pam Winton

EDITOR

Loyd Little

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Miki Kersgard

CIRCULATION

Jay Hargrove

PHOTOGRAPHY

Don Trull

COPY EDITOR

David Syracuse

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FOCUS ON FAMILIES—

cultural diversity 

is expanding 

intervention and

early education 

practices, 

page 6

I DON’T WANT TO TALK

ABOUT IT!—marital

disagreements and

infant interaction, 

page 8

WHY DO THEY

DO THAT?—new 

research examines

intentionality of

infants, 

page 4

PUTTING PARENTS

IN THE PICTURE—

increasing family

involvement in 

early education and

intervention, 

page 10

Gazelle Technologies, Inc. Adobe Image Library Kersgard Trull

Cover photo by 

Adobe Image Library
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

3

From the director’s office

The big picture

MOST YOUNG CHILDREN in America today are raised in some

sort of family. However, there is enormous variation in the

nature of the American family—who is in it, where they

live, their financial resources, their values and ways of interacting

with each other. Understanding the development of young children

cannot be studied apart from understanding the families in which

they live.

We know quite a bit about the importance of the family’s role in children’s social development and on their success in school. Early relationships with parents and siblings form the basis for later social

development with peers and teachers. Language use in the home and

the variety of experiences families provide for their children shape

later language and cognitive competence of children. Attitudes about

school, work, and whether effort can make a difference in one’s life

are transmitted very early to children and their effects are evident in

children’s participation in school.

This issue of Early Developments highlights some of the work on families being conducted at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development

Center. Some of our research is devoted to understanding families

better and how they influence their children. We are interested in how

families respond when they have a child with a chronic illness or disability, and how cultural background influences those responses. We

are studying early childhood, early intervention and early elementary

school programs to find out how “family-friendly” those programs

are. Finally, a number of investigators have developed and are testing

strategies for helping programs be more supportive of families in the

context of parenting roles.

So, although we call ourselves a child development center, that

inevitably means a focus on families as well. Hopefully this work will

lead to a better understanding of families in today’s society and how

agencies, schools, and programs can be more responsive to the wide

variation in family needs, parenting styles, and goals for their children.

—Don Bailey

Bailey is director of the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center

and holds academic appointments in both the School of Education and

the School of Medicine at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Kersgard
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

4

HOW A FAMILY INTERACTS

during its very earliest formation is the focus of new

research by two fellows at the

Frank Porter Graham Child

Development Center. Steve

Reznick and Barbara Goldman are

studying parent perception of

infant behavior that seems intentional and how this perception

affects parent-child interaction.

Byproducts already include a new

series of measuring tools, and may

include a way to screen parents in

cases of child neglect or abuse as

well as suggestions on intervention in cases of risk to infants.

A study that Reznick began at Yale

University is still underway, and

depending on the results may be

replicated at FPG. He had been at

Yale for 10 years before joining the

UNC-CH psychology department

last year. Barbara Goldman, who

is also in the psychology department, has worked on a number of

studies involving children over the

years.

The two are beginning a study

funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human

Development to pinpoint cognitive changes in infants during the

first year.“I believe the data support the idea that there is a change

somewhere between 4-6 months,” Reznick explains.“This change in

the infant’s cognitive ability can be viewed from two perspectives.”

From the infant’s perspective, the world changes such that it has a

past and a future. The infant recalls things that have occurred previously, and that same ability allows the infant to extrapolate into the

future, to predict what’s going to happen, to form expectations. For

example, a six-month-old hears footsteps in the hall and smiles

wider and its father sticks his head into crib. Before that age, the

infant would recognize the footsteps but wouldn’t necessarily go the

next step and expect a particular face to appear.

From the parents’ perspective, it is when these changes begin taking

place that infants become capable of

what parents call goal-directed

behavior and capable of expressing

their desires explicitly and acknowledging when their desires have been

met or not met. Parents begin to perceive that an infant is doing something on purpose.

Study at Yale

Reznick’s study at Yale, funded by

the W.T. Grant Foundation, is looking at several issues. Whether early

signs of infant memory-based

behavior presage early emerging

sophistication of thinking skills is

one. Another is what difference the

parents’ perception of intentionality

makes. One difference may be in

how parents provide a framework or

scaffolding to let children find their

way into an interactive world. The

reasonable bet, Reznick says, is that

it’s important that parents provide

scaffolding but individual differences in the normal range aren’t that

significant.

Because parents are interviewed and

tested repeatedly during these studies, a natural question is,“Does

interaction with the researchers and their tests change how parents

perceive intentionality?” Numerous measures and cross-measures

are used to check this.“If you take mothers who are being tested for

the first, second and third times, mothers taking the test for the

third time see more intentionality. Perhaps our interviews raised

their consciousness. On the other hand, if we want to intervene,

then we already have a clue that we can do that successfully,”

Reznick adds.

Measuring tools

Over the years, Reznick and graduate students working with him

have developed a number of measuring tools.“We do straightforward things such as interviewing parents about what they believe.

Also, we have a tape with 25 snippets of infant behavior between 6-

12 months. For example, a ball falls from an infant’s hand. One parent may say that the baby intentionally threw the ball, while another

New research examines the intentionality of infants 

and their parents’ perception of it

Why do they do that?

Gazelle Technologies, Inc.
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

5

parent looking at exactly the same tape will say that the ball

dropped and give the child no credit. In another technique, we show

each parent a videotape of a baby and ask each parent to narrate

what the baby is doing. The parent’s

language can betray an attitude of

intentionality or an attitude of less

intentionality,” he explains.

The other side of measuring is, can

one say definitively that a baby does

something deliberately? “It’s a remarkably important distinction in our culture. It’s the difference between

murder and manslaughter, pardoning someone and not pardoning

him or her. With babies, we determine what kinds of behavior that

parents regard as intentional, and we set up situations where babies

have the opportunity to perform those behaviors,” Reznick says.

“For example, we tie a string to a toy and the child pulls the string

and the toy moves. Then we remove the string without the child

realizing it and see if the child persists in trying to move the toy. We

play peekaboo with a child and see how the child responds and

whether the child will initiate the game. We have 14-15 of these procedures, and we put children through these, which are opportunities to behave intentionally. We feel this is the first battery of tests

that is an explicit measure of this construct,” he says.

Reznick and Goldman began pilot testing of infants in late 1998 for

the new NICHD study of cognition. One aspect of that study is measuring where babies are looking. In the past, this was done by frameby-frame analysis of videotape, which was

tedious, slow and not particularly accurate. They are now using a new procedure

involving a video camera that follows the

movement of an infant’s eyes. Most of the

study is being carried out in the FPG

Observational Methods Unit.

Reznick is cautious about over-interpreting the significance of when a child

becomes intentional and the parental response.“You have to distinguish behavior inside and outside a normal range. We run the risk

of leading people to assume that doing more will make a difference.

That’s not necessarily what the data would let us say. This is a very

sensitive topic because some parents are so eager to do the very

best for their child, and if they read a research paper that says you

can get infants to learn words faster if you present information in a

certain way, then some parents will feel that if they’re not presenting it in that way, they are harming their child. I have no reason to

believe that is the case.”

If you want to know more

Reznick, J.S., & Feldman, R. (1996). Maternal perception of

infant intentionality at 4 and 8 months. Infant Behavior and

Development (19), 483–496.

“W hat has attracted interest to thistopic and what makes it salient to

people interested in policy is that extremes

of parent perception could be extremely

important,” Reznick says.

At one extreme are parents who dramatically underperceive infant intentionality. If

you don’t think of a baby as doing things on

purpose, then there’s no reason to read, to

play, to interact with them. What’s the point

in telling these parents to read to their children? It’s like telling them to read to their

plants. At this extreme, a parent may use

underperception of intentionality to justify

child neglect.

At the other extreme are parents who overstate infant intentionality. They believe

babies do things on purpose that most people would believe was not on purpose.

These parents are particularly willing to

make that attribution concerning negative

behaviors. Reznick gave examples:

“She soiled her diaper because she

knew I was in a hurry,” or “She’s crying now to get the upper hand.” If a

parent believes a 6-month-old is

capable of such distinct intentional

behavior, then that can be license to

forms of punishment that most in

our culture regard as abuse. “Indeed,

if you interview parents who have

abused infants, the language they use

is one of punishment, and we believe

that this extreme overt view of intentionality may be dangerous,” Reznick

says.

If their studies support these observations, Reznick and Goldman may

discover ways to help parents get a

sense of how they view an infant’s

behavior. “Furthermore, if we want

to intervene and reduce a child’s risk, our

work is revealing how you might go about

doing that,” says Reznick.

Intentionality study may yield policy implications 

Research by Steven Reznick and Barbara Goldman on parent perception of infant 

intentionality may have significant policy and practice implications.

The other side of measuring 

is, can one say definitively

that a baby does something 

deliberately?

Gazelle Technologies, Inc.
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

6

GETTING A BETTER UNDERSTANDING

of how Latino families view and

use services for young children

with disabilities is but one of a number of

studies at FPG involving the center’s commitment to increasing our knowledge of

families. For example, one study is studying

family literacy programs, while another is

looking at how researchers can better

ensure that families understand what “consent” means when helping researchers.

Transition considerations for families with

fragile X children are being examined, and

several research instruments concerning

families are being translated into Spanish.

Updates on these projects

Regarding services, findings indicate that

only 39% of 200 Latino parents of young

children with disabilities were “mostly” or

“very satisfied” with services for their children. This finding was lower than

found in several previous

studies.

Don Bailey, one

of the study

investigators,

said that an

interesting

inverse relationship was found

between satisfaction and awareness as well as

use of services.

For both mothers

and fathers,

greater awareness and use of

services was

associated with

greater dissatisfaction. A potential explanation

is that those who

actively seek out

and use services

have higher

expectations for the service system and thus

are likely to be less satisfied than those who

have lower expectations.

OTHER FINDINGS

❍ Mothers (but not fathers) of children

with more severe delays and older children reported less satisfaction with

services. The fact that this relationship

was not found for fathers likely reflects

the greater awareness and use of services by mothers and the fathers’ frequent allocation of decision making

with respect to services to the mother.

❍ Dissatisfaction is more likely to occur

when the program characteristics do

not match the needs of the family, as in

the case where a Spanish-speaking family does not have access to materials in

Spanish or a translator, or when service

providers are perceived to be nonaccepting or unwilling to be helpful.

❍ Researchers found very little pursuit of

alternative treatments, such as the use

of folk medicines or practices that

seem exotic to western medicine.

Bailey reports several implications for practice have emerged so far.

❍ Families of Puerto Rican and Mexican

heritage vary widely in terms of awareness, use, and satisfaction with services,

and the family characteristics commonly believed to influence these outcomes

generally did not seem to be related.

Professionals should be careful to not

draw general conclusions about Latino

families; thus, again, emphasizing the

need for an individualized approach.

❍ Clearly for some families, providing

written materials in Spanish or a translator would be of both functional help

as well as send an important message

about the program’s willingness to be

responsive to individual differences.

❍ Although it is critical to understand

the history, traditions, and values of

various cultures, “it is probably a disservice and a misrepresentation to

assume that members of immigrant

groups do not subscribe to what we

consider a modern approach to services,” said Bailey.

In many FPG

projects cultural

diversity is

expanding early

education and

intervention 

practices

Adobe Image Library
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

7

Others working with Bailey are Debra

Skinner and Patricia Rodriquez at FPG, and

Vivian Corea at the University of Florida.

Helping parents 

understand research 

One important barrier to

obtaining informed consent while enrolling people

in studies is a lack of true

comprehension of what a

given study involves. Most

consent forms used by

researchers to get permission from those participating in research are at a

college reading level.

Parents who have limited

reading are especially vulnerable in this situation.

With that in mind, a team

head by FPG researcher

Frances Campbell is examining better ways to

explain research procedures to parents when

seeking their permission.

Working with parents representing a range of literacy levels, the team is evaluating how

information is comprehended when it is

presented in four ways.

1 A traditional printed consent form

2 A graphically enhanced consent form

3 A video-enhanced consent procedure

4 A procedure in which the parent interacts with a computer using a video and

a touch screen

Parents will be recruited for a hypothetical

study and assigned to one of the above consent procedures. The research capitalizes on

FPG ’s expertise in research involving children and vulnerable populations, such as

low-income families. Other researchers

working with Campbell are Barbara

Goldman and Maria L. Boccia.

Fragile X children

Fragile X syndrome is the most common

inherited cause of developmental disability, affecting as many as one in 2,500 people. Since 1993, FPG has been following

selected young children with fragile X syndrome in Virginia and the Carolinas.

Children in these two studies are now moving into kindergarten and first grade.

Researchers Don Bailey and Deborah

Hatton say that while most parents are

pleased with the transition from preschool

programs to kindergarten and from

kindergarten to first grade, such transitions can create anxiety.

OTHER EARLY FINDINGS

❍ Placement in classes is driven more by

the resources of school systems rather

than the goals in the Individualized

Education Plans.

❍ Some parents shop around and look at

classes that they think would be best

for their child, and then they try to

secure the label necessary for getting

the child into that class.

❍ Fragile X is not an eligibility category

for receiving services, and so children

are given different labels, depending in

part on schools’ resources and eligibility requirements and in part on the

desires of the parents.

❍ While most fragile X children may be

mentally retarded, that label can be

misleading for teachers. In many

cases, teachers find attention and

hyperactivity disorders and behavior

problems more of a challenge than

mental retardation.

❍ By the second grade, virtually all parents of fragile X children request specialized services, even those who had

been adamant about inclusion in preschool and kindergarten.

Translating instruments

Researchers Syndee Kraus and Robin

McWilliam are translating two broad-based

questionnaires (Brass Tacks: The Family

Report and Children’s Engagement

Questionnaire) into Spanish and will test

and disseminate them so that early intervention specialists can do a better job capturing the “voice” of Latino families who

receive these services.

Brass Tracks measures the family’s perceptions of services they are receiving and what

is important to them. The Children’s

Questionnaire measures the family perceptions of their children’s persistence, social

behavior, and attentiveness.

“We want to ensure that our practices with

these families and their children are based

on first-hand perceptions rather than making assumptions based on previously gathered research data from members of other

cultures,” says McWilliam.

Adobe Image Library
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

8

mental to parent-child relationships as

angry arguing.” She said other studies

show avoidance of conflict, particularly in

the form of withdrawal from interaction, is

a marker of poor marital relationships.

Constructive conflict

Indeed, conflict may be constructive in

some marital relationships. Conflict can

highlight the individual differences, needs,

desires, and goals of each partner. Ideally,

making those individual needs an understood part of the couple’s dialogue and

planning would let the marriage stay close

and the partners connected.

Conflict between marital partners may be

necessary to stimulate the adjustments

needed to keep a marriage intimate and satisfying. Furthermore, constructive conflict

may provide children with models of effective strategies for conflict resolution. Cox

said that this quality of marriage has not

been sufficiently explored.

There is also the growing recognition of the

need for a more complex understanding of

the association between conflict in marital

relationships and children’s adaptation.

Conflict, whether marital or parent-child or

sibling, is a fact of family life, and it may

have constructive as well as destructive

effects on the development of children.

Spillover of tensions

For distressed couples (those who scored as

distressed on screening instruments and

desired treatment for their difficulties) as

compared to nondistressed couples, one

study found there was greater continuity of marital tensions from one day to

the next and greater “spillover” of tensions from the marital relationship to

the parent-child relationship. “It may

be,” observed Cox,“that the ongoing tension in the marital relationship and the

failure to resolve conflicts, rather than

the frequency of conflict or negative

affect is most detrimental to parenting.”

Another thread running through this book

is that development is seen as occurring in

W

ITHDRAWAL FROM A PARTNER

during a marital disagreement, rather than the

amount of disagreement, predicts

more negative interactions months

later with infants.

This is one of the findings

reported in a longitudinal

study of the transition

to parenthood headed

by Martha Cox, a

researcher at the Frank

Porter Graham Center.

Cox says women who

were more withdrawn

in their interactions with

their husbands were later

more likely to be flat and disengaged in interactions with

their infants, especially with

sons, than were women who

were not withdrawn during

marital interactions.

This finding occurred even after

researchers controlled for mothers’

depressive symptoms, mothers’

education, and the child’s negative

affect in the interaction with the

mother. Withdrawal in the marital

interaction also predicted fathers’

flat, disengaged parenting, but

fathers were especially disengaged

from their infants when they were

withdrawn and angry in interaction

with their wives.

Cox has studied families through a

variety of projects over the years at FPG,

and some of her work is included in

Causes and Consequences, a book just published by Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates.

Cox and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn of Columbia

University are editors of the book.

“We need to understand more about when

conflict and tension in the marital relationship spill over into other family relationships,” notes Cox. “It is clear that the

avoidance of conflict that accompanies

withdrawn marital behavior can be as detriHow wives handle

marital 

disagreements

may indicate 

how they interact

with infants

Illustrations by M. Kersgard, source photos by

Kersgard and Gazelle Technologies, Inc.
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

9

the context of relationships. Thus, the way

healthy or disturbed

relationships are

defined for children in

families must take into account the way that

the relationships serve a child with respect

to critical developmental issues. For example, cohesive parent-child relationships are

important in fostering the collaboration

needed for good parental supervision of

young adolescents. Supervision as an aspect

of parenting in adolescence is a key to preventing delinquent behavior.

Parents who are emotion-coaching are more

likely to be in marriages in which the couple

believes in discussing emotional issues and

that marital conflict is worth the struggle.

The willingness to tolerate and accept some

negative affect in family relationships may

be an important common element associated with good outcomes for family members.

Relationships

An overarching theme of the book, and

indeed most of Cox’s research, is that individual development needs to be understood

in the context of relationships in the family.

In line with that, another portion of the

book theorizes that changes in parent-adolescent relations derive not only from biological and cognitive changes in the adolescent

which result in increases in conflict (overt

hostility and negative affects) and decreases

in cohesion (observable warmth and support) in parent-child relationships, but also

from the social interactional histories of parents and adolescents.

One study shows even

greater hostility among

adolescent girls toward their parents than

among boys, reflecting perhaps the more

rapid pubertal and social development of

girls during that age. The findings also

showed that parents and children who were

higher on warmth and support at an earlier

time increase their emotional closeness over

time, while those who were low on warmth

and supportiveness showed declines over

time.

A 1995 study showed that closeness and

conflict coexist in most families, and consequently, the balance between the two may

be important for the adolescent daughter’s

development. Mother-daughter relationships do change at the time of puberty.

The patterns have long-term implications.

For example, in one sample, a pregnancy

during the daughters’ college years was predicted by lower family cohesion, more family

conflict, and a more controlling environment

than for girls who did not become pregnant

as early as the college years. Interestingly, it

was conflict with fathers that predicted the

early pregnancy, rather than conflict with

mothers.

In another study reported in this book,

mothers and daughters show difficulties in

negotiating autonomy when daughters have

a high degree of symptoms that are kept

inside. Chronic internalizing symptoms in

girls lead to

high levels of

both conflict and submission. And conflict and submission together are a

behavioral combination unlikely to lead

to success in negotiating more

autonomous relations with mothers.

One study of mothers and daughters supports the idea that it is developmentally

important for mothers of adolescent girls

to tolerate a moderate degree of conflict.

Again, noted Cox, tolerance for a certain

amount of negative emotion in family

relationships may be important for

healthy outcomes.

Cox said that “while a fair amount is

known about how families fail under

conditions of severe or pervasive adversity, little is known about the many families whose children show successful

adaptation, positive functioning, and

competence despite conditions of adversity. We know little about families that

successfully negotiate risk conditions,

although we know that many of these

families exist.”
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

10 T

WO OF THE NEWEST PROJECTS at the Frank Porter Graham

Child Development Center and the National Center for Early

Development & Learning are creating models to increase family involvement and empowerment in early childhood arenas.

THE PARENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROJECT is developing a

cadre of parents to fill a variety of advocacy and advisory roles with

state and local agencies and organizations.

THE COMMUNITY-BASED MODEL FOR IMPROVING EARLY CHILDHOOD

PRACTICES AND POLICIES PROJECT will integrate parents into the

planning process of local Smart Start partnerships in North

Carolina.

Both projects build on a growing body of research showing the efficacy of involving parents and other family members in all aspects

of planning, delivering, and evaluating early education and intervention services.“Developing strong parent-professional alliances

is a critical first step in improving the quality and cultural responsiveness of services to children and families,” explains FPG

Researcher Pat Wesley, co-principal investigator of the Parent

Leadership project.

Here’s a closer look at these two projects, each of which is developing a model that can be replicated by local communities, agencies,

and education partnerships.

Parent Leadership

Comprehensive, high-quality, individualized early care and intervention for children with disabilities now require simultaneous

attention to child development, community building, professional

development, and family involvement. Virginia Buysse, another

FPG researcher and co-principal investigator of the Parent

Leadership Development Project, says, “Families should be considered essential advisors in public policy, research, personnel

preparation, and program development, as well partners is all

aspects of their children’s care and education.”

The Parent Leadership project is recruiting 72 parents and other

family members of children with disabilities interested in developing or improving partnerships with professionals. These parents will receive intensive training, including follow-up activities

to develop leadership skills. This cadre will then be linked to

institutions of higher learning and organizations and agencies

providing early education, early intervention, and family support

services.

Although many professionals recognize the value of having families serve as consultants, advisors, and members of boards and

committees, there are a number of barriers.

■ Logistical problems such as lack of transportation or difficulty

in making child care arrangements and balancing family

needs

■ Administrative constraints

■ Lack of money for parent reimbursement

■ Parent’s lack of knowledge or experience with leadership roles

■ Limited opportunities and support for parents in these positions

■ Inadequate representation of the full spectrum of families

who participate in early intervention

Projects aim a

family involvement

and inte

Putting 

in the 
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

11

“Our assumption is that most early intervention professionals

already understand the importance of collaborating with families,

but lack effective strategies for putting this philosophy into practice,” explains Wesley. Project participants will represent diversity

of culture, language, family constellations (single parents, teenage

parents, foster parents, grandparents) and socioeconomic

resources.

OTHER FEATURES OF THE MODEL

■ A series of leadership retreats for parents focusing on information about early care and intervention systems to increase parent leadership skills

■ Follow-up activities with parents as they implement action

plans to expand their partnerships with professionals and

develop individual portfolios

■ Production of a Parent Leadership Directory, a Facilitator’s

Guide to Parent Leadership Development, and a videotape about

parent leadership roles

■ Helping professional organizations, programs, and agencies

across North Carolina meet their goals to increase parent representation and involvement

■ A comprehensive program evaluation and dissemination of

findings to a wide audience 

The Parent Leadership project is funded for 3 years by the U.S.

Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.

Model to aid Smart Start

The Community-Based Model for Improving Early Childhood

Practices and Policies is aimed at developing specific guidelines,

tools, and strategies for involving families in reforming early childhood policies and practices. Specifically, the study will work with

the NC Partnership for Children, which oversees a statewide childhood initiative known as “Smart Start.” Smart Start is a publicprivate initiative and is not just one program; it’s many. Local

Smart Start partnerships of parents, educators, child care

providers, nonprofits, churches, and business people plan how to

improve (or provide, in some cases) local child care, health care,

and family services to children under the age of six. (See related

story on page 15.)

Pam Winton, director of the project, says that Smart Start evaluation studies have shown that a particular challenge for communities is implementing the state requirement that families be involved

in the planning process.“People know it’s important, but it’s really

hard and because of that sometimes they give up. An immediate

need is the development of a technical assistance model, and that’s

what we’re doing. The involvement of families is based on the

assumption that families have unique perspectives about gaps in

systems and solutions that are likely to work. Without these perspectives, it is felt that plans likely will promote the status quo,” she

explained.

PROMOTING INVOLVEMENT

Researchers have posed these questions:

■ What are strategies for meaningfully involving families in decision-making?

■ What are strategies for providing current, relevant early childhood research data to stakeholder groups, including families?

at increasing 

t in early education

rvention

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parents

picture

Trull/Kersgard
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

12

Key findings from the

NICHD family study

Overall, family economics, rather thanother demographic characteristics,

account for both the amount and kind of

nonmaternal care that infants receive,

according to a study by the NICHD Early

Child Care Research Network. Among the

authors of that study, published in the

Journal of Marriage and the Family (May,

1997), was Martha Cox, a FPG researcher.

Other key findings of the study, which

examined 1,281 children in 10 locations

around the U.S., include:

■ A startling finding with regard to

the quality of nonmaternal care was

that at 15

months boys

received less

responsive care

than girls in both

child-care homes

and centers. This

suggests that sex

may be a particularly salient child

characteristic,

even in toddlers.

Further, that such differences were

observed with unrelated caregivers

but not with relatives suggests that

fathers and grandparents may be

responding more sensitively to the

unique characteristics of the children

in their care, but care providers who

are not relatives may be responding

more stereotypically to children.

■ Children at the lowest and highest

income levels received higher quality

care than those in the middle. This

pattern is consistent with early findings for centers serving preschool 

children. One reason may be that the

care for children from families with

very low incomes is often directly 

subsidized, and families with higher

incomes receive a child-care tax 

credit. Those in the middle are less

likely to receive any federal benefit.

■ Nonmaternal income tended to be

negatively related to the hours per

week that children were in child care,

whereas mothers’ income was positively related to the hours that children were in child care. 

■ In contrast to families whose infants

began to receive care before they

were 2 months old and who were

more dependent on mothers’ income

than any other families studied, families whose children entered care

between 3 and 5 months of age had

relatively high nonmaternal income,

as well as the higher mothers’ income

of any group. These families also

tended to have fewer children, better-educated mothers, and mothers

who scored higher on measures of

extraversion and agreeableness.

■ Demographic variables other than

income were not good predictors of

the amount of nonmaternal care

received by children at 6 and 15

months of age. 

If you want to know more

FAMILY INVOLVEMENT IN LEADERSHIP

Winton, P., & DiVenere, N. (1995). Family-professional partnerships in early intervention personnel preparation. Topics in Early

Childhood Special Education, 15(3), 296–313.

Capone, A., Hull, K., & DiVenere, N. (1997). Parent-professional

partnerships in preservice and inservice education. In P. Winton,

J. McCollum, & C. Catlett (Eds.), Reforming personnel preparation in early intervention (pp. 435–451). Baltimore, MD: Paul

Brookes.

PARTNERSHIPS IN SERVICE DELIVERY

Winton, P., Roberts, J., & Zeisel, S. (1997). Family-professional

partnerships in managing otitis media. In J. Roberts, I. Wallace,

& F. Henderson (Eds.), Medical, developmental, and educational

considerations: Otitis media in young children. Baltimore, MD:

Paul Brookes.

Winton, P. (1996). Family-professional partnerships and integrated services. In R. McWilliam (Ed.), Rethinking pull-out services in

early intervention: A professional resource (pp. 49–69) .

Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes.

■ What processes lead to shared knowledge and values among

different stakeholder groups, including families?

■ What are strategies to meaningfully identify the needs of families and children in ways that lead to realistic plans for change?

■ How can family involvement in making improvements in early

childhood programs and policies be monitored and evaluated?

A participatory evaluation approach is based on the needs and 

perspectives of the NC Partnership for Children and local Smart

Start participants, including families. The study is in two phases.

During Phase 1, which is taking place now, information is being

gathered about ways to involve families and the effectiveness of

those strategies.

Data collection includes interviews with key informants, including

families; observations of board meetings; document reviews, and

surveys. Researchers will examine the relationship between family

involvement in decision-making with positive outcomes for children

and families. According to Winton, this is a missing piece of evidence in the field now.“We believe that family involvement in decision-making is important. We also know it is challenging to

implement and requires time, money and resources. If we could

document the ways that it makes a difference, then we would know

it is worth the time and money to enlist and support family participation. This evidence would encourage community leaders to make

that extra effort.” During Phase 2, the researchers will work in partnership with local communities in developing a model that supports

family involvement.

This project is part of the Research to Practice Strand of the National

Center for Early Development and Learning, which is administratively based at UNC-Chapel Hill. Winton is director of the strand and also

a FPG researcher. Researchers at FPG have been involved in a number

of Smart Start studies and projects over the years.
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

13

Recent publications

by researchers at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center

Resources within reason: Materials that translate brain research into activities for daily use

C. Catlett, & P. Winton. (1998). Young Exceptional Children, 1(4), 29.

Infant-todder planning guide

F. Derks, B. Bardin, L. Lohn, & P. Wesley. (1998). Lewisville, NC:

Kaplan Corp.

The family-centeredness of individualized

family service plans

R. McWilliam, A. Ferguson, G. Harbin, P. Porter, D. Munn, & 

P. Vandiviere. (1998). Topics in Early Childhood Special Education,

18, 69–82.

A longitudinal study of factors associated

with Wechsler Verbal and Performance IQ

Scores in students from low-income African

American families

F. Campbell, & L. Nabors. (1998). In J.S. Carlson (Series Ed.),

Advances in cognition and education practice, W. Tomac, & 

J. Kingman (Eds.), Conceptual issues in research on intelligence 

(pp. 77–112). Greenwich, CT: JAI.

Enhancing the life course for high-risk children: Results from the Abecedarian Project.

C. Ramey, F. Campbell, & C. Blair. (1998). In J. Crane (Ed.), Social

programs that work (pp. 163–183). New York: Russell Sage

Foundation.

Identity and agency in cultural worlds

D. Holland, W. Lachicotte, D. Skinner, & C. Cain. (1998). Cambridge:

Harvard University Press.

Selves in time and place: An introduction

D. Skinner, D. Holland, & A. Pach III. (1998). In D. Skinner,

A. Pach III, & D. Holland (Eds.), Selves in time and place: Identities,

experience, and history in Nepal (pp. 3–16). Lanham: Rowman &

Littlefield Publishers.

Contested selves, contested femininities:

Selves and society in process

D. Skinner, & D. Holland. (1998). In D. Skinner, A. Pach III, & 

D. Holland (Eds.), Selves in time and place: Identities, experience,

and history in Nepal (pp. 87–110). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield

Publishers.

Early developmental trajectories of males

with fragile X syndrome

D. Bailey, D. Hatton, & M. Skinner. (1998).American Journal on

Mental Retardation, 1, 29–39.

Socially valid but difficult to implement:

Creative solutions needed

P. Winton. (1998). Journal of Early Intervention, 21(2), 114-117.

Resources within reason: Materials for supporting fine and gross motor development

C. Catlett, P. Winton, J. Case-Smith, H. Masin, K. Perrin, B. Sher, & 

J. Solomon. (1998). Young Exceptional Children, 1(4), 28.

Otitis Media, the caregiving environment, and

language and cognitive outcomes at 2 years

J. Roberts, M. Burchinal, S. Zeisel, E. Neebe, S. Hooper, J. Roush,

D. Bryant, M. Mundy, & F. Henderson. (1998). Pediatrics, 102(2),

346–354.

Interactions of African-American infants and

their mothers: Relations with development at

1 year of age

I. Wallace, J. Roberts, & D. Lodder. (1998).Journal of Speech,

Language, and Hearing Research (41), 900–912.

Adobe Image Library
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

14

Following are excerpts from a 

presentation made by Richard

Clifford, associate director of the

National Center for Early

Development & Learning (NCEDL),

during the fall, 1998, “Education in

the Early Years” conference in

Atlanta. NCEDL was one of the 

sponsoring agencies for the conference.

AFTER DECADES OF THINKING THAT the changes occurring in

family and work life were temporary, policy makers in the

1990s

have given serious

attention to

increasing

resources for programs for child

care and early

education. While

this attention has

been heartening,

the programs have

mainly been

aimed at providing

financial assistance to families and providing the very basic rights of family members to family leave and job security. Much remains to be done.

On the other hand, little attention has been paid to the development of an early childhood services system to meet the needs of

families. The result is a market-based set of services. That means a

set of unconnected services reacting to the pressing needs of families for child care has emerged with little attention to the impact

on the children themselves or to the long-term consequences for

our society.

This approach has been quite effective at generating new programs

and controlling costs, which have remained essentially flat in inflation-adjusted terms over the past decade. However, in terms of quality, we have not fared as well. We use the term quality to describe the

degree to which programs meet the needs of young children — protection from injury and disease and enhancement of learning

potential. Several major studies of early childhood services have

painted a rather bleak picture. Reports that less than 15% of child

care centers and family child care homes can be rated as good are

disturbing. Salaries for those who care for and educate our youngest

citizens are among the lowest of any work group in the country.

Turnover rates for people working in these settings are three times

those for teachers in elementary and secondary schools.

Four policy questions

Over the next decade the US must deal with four pressing policy

issues related to services for young children. I will phrase them as

“Who cares?”“Who serves?”“Who governs?” And “Who pays?”

Who cares? 

We allow virtually anyone to be a teacher for children belowkindergarten age in most states in the U.S. This contrasts with

kindergarten teachers who are universally required to hold at least

an undergraduate degree and a formal teaching certificate. No state

has an effective system for monitoring and upgrading the training

of early childhood professionals, and no state mandates college-level

training. Is this good enough for America’s future?

Who serves? 

I

n the U.S., we have a parallel set of players in the early childhood

field. We have Head Start, child care centers (for profit, nonprofit,

and public), family child care (both regulated and unregulated),

school-based prekindergarten programs, early childhood intervention programs, and family and relative care. We have no policies to

establish the relative roles of each of these service providers. Will we

let the marketplace decide which providers will survive?

Who governs?

With the wide variety of service providers we have a nebulousgovernance structure for services. Many programs are governed by a set of child care regulations set by states. Some have to

meet federal standards (Head Start). Some have to meet standards

set by education agencies. Many do not have to meet any external

set of standards. This situation puts enormous financial pressures

on the regulated providers since most services are paid for by the

families themselves. Some overarching decisions are needed about

the role of government in relation to these programs.

Who pays? 

Best estimates are that 30–40% of the cost of early childhoodservices is born by some level of government. While business

and industry have been identified as partners in providing services,

they provide only about 1% of the costs. Parents continue to be the

primary source of financing services for children prior to entry into

kindergarten. High quality services for young children are expensive. Economic pressures force parents to make unacceptable choices

in regard to how to allocate scarce family financial resources. Are we

willing to have parents continue to be responsible for paying for

these services?

Changes in child

care programs 

and early education 

programs are 

raising critical 

policy questions
earlyDevelopments Spring 1999

15

I

n his Atlanta presentation, Dick

Clifford pointed out that there appear

to be two fundamental approaches to

handling services for young children.

One is a single-service model and one is a

collaborative model. Clifford discussed

the collaborative model using the Smart

Start initiative in North Carolina as his

example. The operation and early results

of Smart Start were featured in a previous issue of Early Developments (Vol. 1,

No. 3). Here are excerpts from his talk.

The funding and 

infrastructure of 

Smart Start

The heart of Smart Start is a set ofnonprofit agencies established in each

county (in a few cases multi-county agencies). Each agency, usually called a partnership for children, is governed by a

board comprised of the major early childhood players in the community, business

leaders, parents, and other community

leaders. (See related article on page 10.)

Individual agencies are charged with

improving early childhood services and

ensuring that all children

come to school healthy

and ready to succeed. The agency

develops a plan

and once the plan is

approved, the

agency gets a

substantial

allocation. North Carolina is spending about

$100 million annually for the first 45 of

the 100 counties in the state. The cost is

projected to be somewhat over $300 million a year when all counties are fully

integrated. This money complements

existing resources for child care, Head

Start, public schools, early intervention,

and family support. 

Some 95% of the

funding for Smart

Start is from state

tax revenues funded

from the general

fund of the state.

The enabling legislation requires a

match of 5% cash

and 5% in kind from

other sources. Most

of the cash match has

come from business and industry with

smaller amounts from foundation and

matching federal government grants.

The NC Partnership for Children (NCPC) is

a nonprofit agency at the state level that

approves local plans and allocates

money. Funding is

through the

State

Department

of Health

and Human

Services to

NCPC and then

to the local

partnership.

Other funding

streams

remain in

place

through traditional agencies. Staff of

NCPC provides technical assistance. For

example, a common financial accounting

system has been adopted, and regular

training is provided to executive directors of the local partnerships. 

Another part of the overall Smart Start

program is TEACH Early Childhood, which

brings together the resources of the

community college and university systems and the early childhood

providers. Financial incentives are

offered staff who improve their education and are willing to work with young

children. 

An ongoing evaluation of the Smart

Start initiative provides formative information to help with program modifications as well as summative data for

evaluation.

Smart Start has changed the expectations

of parents, providers and policy makers

in North Carolina and is improving the

lives of children and their families all

across the state. 

How one state provides services for young children

The collaborative service model

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T

HE LINCHPIN OF EARLY INTERVENTION for infants and toddlers

with disabilities and their families is the individualized family service plan (IFSP). This is the document that lists both the

outcomes for the family and the services required to achieve those

outcomes. The family is supposed to participate in the development

of the IFSP. Because it is supposed to be a tool for the family and

one that reflects their concerns, priorities, and resources, investigators at FPG, with officials from the state of North Carolina, assessed

the family centeredness of 100 randomly selected IFSPs from four

agency types (home-based early intervention, home-based health

department, center-based segregated, and center-based inclusive).

Overall, the items that were rated highest (according to a number of

factors) were identifying the family’s role and writing in the active

voice. The lowest-rated items were integration across disciplines/

professionals, specificity, and positiveness. Overwhelmingly more

child-rated goals were written compared to family-related goals.

Other findings

■ Home-based health department IFSPs contained about the

same number of family-related concerns as child-related concerns.IFSPs from the other three programs showed far fewer

family-related concerns.

■ Center-based segregated IFSPs contained more child-related

long-range outcomes than did IFSPs from the other programs.

■ Center-based inclusive IFSPs contained more family-related

long-range outcomes than did the others.

■ Home-based health department IFSPs had one half as many

child-related goals as the others.

■ Center-based segregated IFSPs had one half as many familyrelated goals as the others.

The authors said that in 1993, when the data for this study were collected, the focus of family goals and the level of goal specificity had

not changed much since 1986, when IFSPs were first mandated.

They were still overwhelmingly child related and nonspecific.

These results suggest that training in family-centered practices

should include skills in IFSP development. Training should also

address the characteristics of a family-centered IFSP: writing, active

voice, positiveness, judgment, necessity, specificity, context-appropriateness, match outcome, inclusion, target date, integration, and

family’s role. These efforts could increase the likelihood of IFSP

development being used as a medium for supporting families. The

document itself could even become useful and appreciated.

Research spotlight

Recent findings at FPG

The Family-Centeredness of Individualized Family Service Plans

R.A. McWilliam, Ardith Ferguson, Gloria Harbin, Patricia Porter, Duncan Munn, & 

Patricia Vandivere. (1999). Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 18(2), 69–82.