Variations in Child Care by Grandparents during the First Three Years.

Routine child care by grandparents was examined for 1,229 children who were participants in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care. Four groups were identified: extended full-time care, extended part-time care, sporadic care, and no routine care during the first three years. The odds of sporadic child care by grandparents were higher when mothers were relatively young and worked nonstandard hours. The odds of extended full-time grandparent care versus extended part-time grandparent care were higher for mothers of color and mothers with more extensive full-time employment. All types of grandparent care were more likely when a grandparent lived in the household. These findings suggest that grandparent care is heterogeneous and may occur in response to different family circumstances. Key Words: child care, child-care selection, grandparents, maternal employment. In the United States, 63% of children under the age of 5 years receive nonmaternal child care on a routine basis (Smith, 2002). Researchers have typically focused on two types of child care: in centers and in child-care homes (cf. Lamb, 1998). Informal care settings have received much less attention, even though substantial numbers of children are cared for in these settings (Smith, 2002). In his comprehensive review of child-care research, Lamb (1998) called for an expanded research agenda that investigates informal arrangements. This research is needed because the development of policies to support working families necessitates understanding which families use informal care and for what reasons (Kuhlthau & Mason, 1996; Presser, 1999). Additional research also is needed to identify meaningful variations in informal care arrangements because it is unlikely that these settings are homogeneous. The goal of the current study is to examine variations in one type of informal child care-care provided by grandparents, or "grandparent care." Interestingly, several widely used child-care surveys such as the National Child Care Survey, the National Household Education Survey, and the National Survey of American Families, provide only indirect evidence about grandparent care. In these surveys, grandparents are subsumed under the broader category of relative care. Other surveys, however, have specifically considered care that is provided by grandparents. In a substudy of the National Child Care Survey that focused on low-income families, Brayfield, Deich, and Hofferth (1993) reported that grandparents provided routine child care for 29% of children who were under the age of 5 years. A recent report from the 1997 Survey of Income and Program Participation (Smith, 2002) indicated that grandparents were the single most common form of nonmaternal care for children under the age of 5 years, with 21% of the children reported to be cared for by grandparents during the previous month. An important issue is the identification of the factors that are associated with grandparents providing routine child care. An elucidation of these factors can help to understand the conditions under which grandparent care is used. Is it more likely when families have limited financial resources or when other types of arrangements are not available? Is grandparent care used because it is convenient or because it is consistent with cultural values, or both? The available research suggests that the routine grandparent care is related to a number of maternal and family factors. There are indications that grandparent care is more likely when families have lower incomes (Crispell, 1994; Kuhlthau & Mason, 1996; Smith, 2002); and when mothers work nonstandard hours (Presser, 1989), are younger (Baydar & Brooks-Gunn, 1998; Jayakody, Chatters, & Taylor, 1993; Presser), are less educated (Folk, 1994), and are single parents (Brayfield et al., 1993; Folk; Presser; Smith). Grandparent care also is more common when grandparents reside in the household (Baydar & Brooks-Gunn). …