Child Care during the Summer and First Grade Year: How Extent and Type of Care Relate to Child Socioemotional Skills

Amy E. Claessens, University of Chicago

Nearly half of all school-age children are exposed to non-parental care in their early school years and summers, yet, how these typical school-age child care arrangements relate to child outcomes is poorly understood. The present study addresses this gap in the school-age child care literature by examining the links between extent and type of child care during the summer before first grade as well as during the first grade year and children’s socioemotional well-being using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort (ECLSK). In addition, this study uses multiple imputation to produce two different sets of results and compares the estimates from these different imputation specifications with more typical regression estimates. Preliminary results indicate that attending center child care during the summer before first grade is related to increased behavior problems at the end of first grade. First grade child care experiences do not appear to relate to child socioemotional well-being.