Child Care and Early Education for Infants and Toddlers

In this article, Ajay Chaudry and Heather Sandstrom review research on child care and early education for children under age three. They describe the array of early care and education arrangements families use for infants and toddlers; how these patterns have changed in recent decades; and differences by family socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity. Chaudry and Sandstrom note that families face many challenges both in getting access to child care and in finding care of more than mediocre quality. These challenges include limited supply and limited affordability relative to the needs of working parents and those pursuing education. Other challenges are based on families’ and children’s circumstances; for example, parents may work nontraditional or variable hours, or children may have special developmental needs. Although experts agree that the quality of children’s care is important for their learning and development, the authors write, there is no consensus on how to best measure quality and what factors are most important. They review what we know about the quality of infant and toddler child care in the United States, why child care quality matters for children’s learning and development, and how the federal government as well as the states are trying to improve child care quality. Chaudry and Sandstrom also examine the major public programs that support early care and education, primarily for children in low-income families—child care subsidies, tax credits, and the Early Head Start program. Overall, they note, the United States’ public investment in quality child care and early education is relatively minimal, though bold proposals to bolster that investment are now on the table.