A Follow-Up Study of Group Day Care and Family-Based Childrearing Patterns

This paper reports the results of Phase 2 in a prospective study comparing childrearing patterns in Swedish day-care centers and home settings and considering their effects upon certain aspects of child development. This first follow-up includes 102 Swedish 5 year olds drawn from an original baseline sample of 120 families. One-third of the sample had been exclusively in home care since birth, one-third had been enrolled in center care full-time since infancy, and the remainder had experienced both full-time center andfull-time home care during preschool years. Observation data focusing on social interaction were gathered with the Social Interaction Scale. The Griffiths Mental Development Scale was used to measure social aspects of child development. Family background data from both the baseline study and the follow-up provided documentation of stability and change in family characteristics. Results showed, first, that the family characteristics of homeand centerbased children had diverged over time, especially as related to number of siblings and housing arrangement. Second, girls and boys had substantially different social experiences in both the home and the center settings. Third, girls performed better on the developmental scale regardless of setting. Center-based boys from two-parent families performed better than their counterparts from one-parent families. The discussion focuses on reasons for differential changes in family circumstances over time; differences in observed interaction patterns in terms of role expectations, the gender of caregiving adults, and the availability of age mates in the two milieux; and developmental outcomes in relation to differences in interaction patterns.