In the U.S., licensed child care is funded through a mostly private market, constraining the supply of accessible high-quality care. Child care providers are limited in their ability to offer high-quality early child care that is easily accessible by parents across the economic spectrum. In a mostly private market, there is variation in options for early child care at the community- and provider-levels

Parenting in very early childhood (0-2 years) provides important context for children's socioemotional development. The present study aims to address limitations of extant parenting literature, namely the reliance on white, middle-class samples and use of variable-centered approaches that often mask the rich heterogeneity of parenting styles. Using data from an efficacy trial of a tiered parenting

Research has found demand for child care in the United States outpaces supply. However, the most widely available proxy for child care supply—authorized capacity—likely overestimates care availability in many studies. Authorized capacity represents the maximum children a provider can legally serve based on safety regulations and physical characteristics of the site. However, the slots available across

Utilization rates of early care and education (ECE) programs among young children (ages 0-5) involved with child protective services (CPS) are significantly lower than those of all U.S. children in this age group (39% vs. 74%). Research on factors contributing to this disparity, potentially driven by inequitable access to care, is limited. Expanding access to quality ECE for CPS-involved children depends

The present study examined to what extent children's enrollment in Head Start and public Pre-Kindergarten (PreK) is associated with their absenteeism from kindergarten to fifth grade. Using a cohort of kindergarteners (5-years-old) in the Baltimore City Public Schools District (n = 7,447), Head Start and Pre-K enrollment and school attendance records were analyzed. About half of students were male

The goal of this supplement is to expand the extant literature about racism's toxic effects on the nation's youngest children– infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. The supplement contains articles that (a) focus on how racism is manifested in early care and education systems, policies, and programs, (b) demonstrate how racism influences the economic and community contexts children live in, and (c)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian racism intensified in the United States (US), impairing the mental health of Asians and Asian Americans. However, no research has investigated how Asian and Asian American early educators’ experiences of racism affect them and their students in early childhood education (ECE). Thus, this study examined how Asian and Asian American early educators’ racial discrimination

What are the effects of environmental racism on early childhood development? This paper argues that this is a largely unanswered question that reflects more than a research gap, but a research vacuum. This paper reviews the available literature on the intersection of environmental racism and early childhood from a sociological perspective. I rely on Iruka et al.’s (2022) Racism + Resilience + Resistance

Early care and education (ECE) was created to support the social, emotional, and academic development of young children. Yet, there are marked disparities and inequities in how Black children and their families are perceived and treated in ECE. The current review article seeks to document how anti-Blackness in ECE is detrimental to young Black children and their families. Following Black Critical Theory

Efforts to bolster the school readiness of Latine children from low-income and immigrant homes have focused on fostering parent engagement in children's education. In assessing parent engagement, most measures center school-based activities in alignment with middle class, European American dominant norms, missing the multiple ways that Latine families engage with their children to support their educational

The effects of persistent antiblackness are not without consequence for young Black children. It slowly kills, steals, and destroys the humanity, joy, and spirit of Black children in a phenomenon known as spirit murder. As a consequence, spirit murder is a spiritual problem requiring a spiritual solution. In order for Black children to be whole and well, they need life affirmation and spirit enrichment

Academic and public discourse continues to center discussions of structural racism, its effects, and policy remediation of its lasting impacts on the well-being of racial minorities over the life course. We contribute to this discourse through a research synthesis of scholarship on the health and well-being consequences of vicarious and environmental racism for Black youth. Utilizing a sociological

The long-existing racial/ethnic wealth gaps in the U.S. persist during the COVID-19 pandemic due to income inequalities and other structural racism experiences, which may contribute to racial/ethnic disparities in material hardship experiences. This study examined material hardship disparities and factors that may contribute to racial/ethnic wealth gaps among U.S. families with young children during

To explore the ways that Indigenous Knowledge can inform the field of early childhood development, the current study examines how cultural traditions and relationships support Indigenous children's well-being. Using a participatory approach and Indigenous methods, the study team, which included Michigan-based researchers, community partners from Indigenous early childhood programs, and Indigenous community

Racial disparities in early care education (ECE) utilization and quality continue to persist in the United States and have considerable implications throughout the life course. This study applied a population health framework and an antiracist lens to conduct peer-led qualitative interviews (n = 20) and facilitate community synthesis and design sessions (n = 6) with parents, ECE staff, and thought

Current approaches to identifying the impacts of structural racism on human development focus on downstream consequences or developmental outcomes rather than the upstream processes that create and perpetuate those negative consequences. Yet, the hallmarks of complex problems like structural racism include feedback relationships linking factors, path dependence, dynamics, non-linear effects, time delays

Racial disparities in educational outcomes start early in childhood and persist through adulthood. High quality Early Care and Education (ECE) programs tend to show benefits for Black children, but less is known about how larger contextual inequalities, both historical and contemporary, relate to young children's outcomes in these high-quality settings. Previous work has shown that historical racism

The purpose of this study was to investigate White early childhood educators’ beliefs about the effects of children’s use of African American English (AAE) on children’s academic performance. The study investigated the extent to which educators’ background and training, knowledge of AAE, and perceived competence predicted their beliefs. Two-hundred and nine White early childhood educators, working

The present study examined associations between social, emotional, and behavior (SEB) problems in toddlerhood and social and emotional strengths and difficulties at eight years of age. In addition, we were interested in associations between parental worry about the child´s psychosocial and language development in toddlerhood and social and emotional strengths and difficulties at age eight years. Participants

In the present study, we examine the extent to which demographic factors, including household subsidy receipt, predict child care access among families with low incomes. To operationalize access, we investigate parental decision-making factors that align with multiple dimensions of the family access framework (i.e., reasonable effort, affordability, support of child development, and meeting parent's

Countless studies have highlighted the critical relation between children's vocabulary during the preschool years and their future academic success. Although much of this work has focused on the number of words young children are exposed to, another key aspect of children's vocabulary is their knowledge and use of sophisticated words. However, to date, there has been no systematic tool for capturing

Numerous studies have examined the processes parents use in accessing early care and education (ECE) for their children and the barriers parents face to enroll. To our knowledge, previous studies have not engaged both parents and frontline ECE enrollment staff as co-investigators to examine family perspectives and a systems perspective simultaneously. This qualitative study compiled a research team

Developmental monitoring is an early identification practice essential to identifying a developmental disability in young children. Families play a critical role in developmental monitoring and report greater reliance on community-based programs than on their children's physician to support child development; however, little research has focused on the role of community-based home visitors. We sought

Research on early mother-child relationships have long established the associations between maternal thought processes and their children's thoughts and behaviors; however, the pathways behind this intergenerational transference have not yet been fully clarified. Accordingly, the current study focuses on the potential indirect associations between mothers’ social cognition, that is their thinking about

This qualitative study examined the child care usage, preferences, and access constraints experienced by diverse parents and primary caregivers in New Mexico in 2020 and 2021. It also investigated the accommodations or compromises families made in response to constraints. Recruitment focused on families with at least one child under age five in four groups of interest: Native Americans, Spanish speakers

Children with disabilities experience various barriers to accessing child care and early education despite federal legislation that supports their inclusion in early care programs. This secondary analysis of mixed methods data explores factors that influence enrollment of children with disabilities from the perspective of licensed, center-based early childhood providers in Arkansas. Using survey data

This study focused on the ways in which early childhood special education teachers (ECSETs) perform their consultative work and the prevailing structural factors that are connected to it. The significance and centrality of ECSETs’ consultative work have increased as a growing number of ECSETs provide consultative support to other personnel with the aim of enhancing support for children's daily lives

In the absence of large-scale investments of public resources, families in many communities are faced with making early care and education (ECE) decisions within a set of limited options. There is a need to better understand how families make decisions in these environments, the factors that influence their decisions, the information they need and how specific program or community characteristics may

Early childhood is a particularly important time to nurture resilience. Strengthening measurement of resilience processes for young children is essential to advancing resilience science and application. The current study provides an initial validation of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM) for parent/caregiver-report during early childhood (CYRM-EC). Participants included 265 children in

Working conditions in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) changed significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand how these changes affected preschool teachers, a longitudinal study was conducted in Germany from September 2020 to February 2022, a period that covers different phases of the global health crisis. Multilevel models were used to observe phase-specific changes

Families living in homeless shelters with young children (birth-36 months) face a variety of complex challenges which make it difficult to locate and maintain child care enrollment. Although the inequitable access to child care for families in shelter has been documented, little is known about the factors that predict child care usage among families experiencing homelessness. This investigation utilized

This study utilized nationally representative data from Head Start programs (FACES 2014) to identify profiles of classrooms based on their practices and environments relevant to Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs). We then compared DLLs’ development across the identified classroom profiles over the preschool year. Finally, we explored whether the potential effect of classroom profiles on

One of the most intractable conflicts in the world is the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which has resulted in considerable losses, destructions, and sufferings for both societies. Such national conflicts had been found to relate to children's social perceptions and behaviors.

With past research largely focusing on overall time spent using screen media (including televisions), little is known about how the type and context of mobile screen use in early childhood is associated with children's behavior. The current study aimed to examine how the proportions of time spent on types of engagement (program viewing vs. interactive app use) and social contexts (solo vs. co-use)

Although caregiver-implemented interventions are effective in promoting the development of young children with delays and/or disabilities, there has been limited understanding of how caregivers perceive caregiver-implemented intervention and coaching practices. This study aimed to explore caregivers’ perceptions of their experiences as intervention agents for their young children with delays and/or

Emotion understanding is an important competency that children begin to develop during the first years of life and serves as an essential building block for lifelong learning. Emotion understanding is linked to developmental outcomes including academic, cognitive, and social-emotional skills. Not surprisingly, efficacious interventions to promote children's social emotional skills have been developed

During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents struggled with high levels of economic insecurity and mental health difficulties. Social cognitive theory suggests that receiving criticism from others contributes to psychological distress. This mixed-methods study explored longitudinal associations between receiving criticism about parenting choices and parental anxiety, depression, and financial worries during

The Missouri Parents as Teachers (PAT) Parent Education Program is a voluntary and universal home visiting program available to all Missouri families who are expecting a child or who have a child ages birth to kindergarten entry. Families participating in the Missouri PAT Parent Education Program receive a variety of family support services, including family personal visits with trained parent educators

Participation instability has been recognized as a major challenge in state child care subsidy programs and may undermine the benefits of these programs to the children and families they are intended to support. Payment rates – the maximum amounts that state subsidy programs will pay for child care in a given period – directly determine which providers are affordable to subsidized consumers and what

Teacher gesturing is an effective strategy for promoting vocabulary learning during book reading in early childhood settings. While studies find significant variation in teachers’ use of gesture, existing studies have not explored within-teacher and across-book differences in gesturing, reducing the ability to better understand how teachers and books drive gesturing to support language learning. To

Recently, cross-domain research has shown that some early cognitive precursors of language, reading, and mathematics overlap and predict one another. This study investigated how early cognitive predictors across domains could predict future academic skills across domains using data from 563 students in kindergarten to second grade (ages 5 to 8; 288 males; largely monolingual English). The roles of

The CLASS-PreK instrument is widely used to evaluate early childhood classrooms, but how classrooms using Montessori, the world's most common alternative education system, fare on CLASS is understudied. Because CLASS focuses largely on teacher-child interactions as the situs of learning, but in Montessori theory, child-environment interactions are considered more primary, Montessori classrooms may

This paper highlights the importance of examining individual, classroom, and school-level variables simultaneously in early childhood education research. While it is well known that Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) in school-based studies can be used to account for the clustering of students within classrooms or schools, less known is that HLM can use random effects to investigate how higher-level

Guided by uses and gratifications theory, the current project invited parents (N = 358) to submit YouTube videos (N = 973) recently viewed by their children aged 0 to 8. Parents rated each video for its perceived impact on their child, while coders evaluated each video for its content. Results indicated that in-depth educational lessons were rare in these videos, and potentially harmful depictions

Online parenting interventions hold promise for increasing access to behavioral support for families with low income and who reside in rural areas. The current study evaluates the efficacy of a mobile app-based parenting support program, the Family Check-Up Online (FCU-O) with telehealth coaching support, for parents of children 1.5-5 years old at risk of experiencing parenting challenges. We tested

The ability of public-school pre-K programs to promote the school readiness of children and provide a seamless transition to kindergarten is theorized to be dependent in part on children remaining in the same school. Research on school mobility in elementary and middle school shows that switching schools is associated with poorer academic outcomes. However, less is known about the transition between

Given the importance of early care and education (ECE) programs for children's development and parents’ labor force participation, it is critical to ensure communities — particularly those home to historically marginalized populations — have predictable and equitable access to programming and services. Yet, there are few useful data resources and thus relatively little research examining variation

Despite evidence of the benefits of early care and education (ECE) for child development and family employment, the supply of providers is scarce and variable; leading many families with young children to experience limited and inequitable access. To examine the multidetermined nature of access, this study leverages a multidimensional, family-centered definition and a nationally representative sample

Teacher–child relationships in young children's classrooms are foundational for children's learning. Teachers’ beliefs about race and the causes of racial inequity might be one set of beliefs that has implications for the practices they use to develop positive relationships with children. With a sample of 18 teachers and their 73 toddler and preschool children, we explored ways teachers’ beliefs about

Parenting has long been a topic of research based on its importance for family and child outcomes. Recent methodological advances in person-centered approaches suggest that our understanding of parenting could be further advanced by examining parenting typologies across various parenting behaviors longitudinally. Accordingly, the current study aims to examine latent transitions in parenting practice

This study is part of the ‘EarlyMath’ project, in which two teacher trainings, identical in terms of method and scope, but different in terms of focus and content, were developed to enhance global and math-specific teacher–toddler interactions in early childhood education and care (ECEC). We aimed to answer two questions: (1) Do teacher trainings improve global and math-specific interactions and (2)

High-quality childcare services are vital to children's development and family wellbeing but are not equitably accessed by all children. In the United States, programs supported by the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) have the potential to reduce these inequities. Economically eligible Black children use CCDF-supported services at higher rates than other children, but less is known about disparities

This study evaluated the effects of infant and early childhood mental health consultation dosage (IECMHC) on observations of classroom climate and teacher behavior management practices in seven schools from a charter school network. Classrooms were prioritized for consultation based on indicators collected during observations and either received no consultation, one cycle, or two or more cycles, each

Biases towards conflict out-groups pose significant barriers for conflict resolution. These biases can perpetuate social divisions, hinder positive intergroup relations, and impede long-term peacebuilding efforts. Therefore, intervening early, before biases are fully formed, is necessary. This article reviews existing knowledge and presents a research synthesis of effective educational interventions

Health inequities related to poor diet, food insecurity, and obesity negatively affect children from low-income minority families. The USDA administers Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs (FNAPs) in Early Care and Education settings (ECEs) to safeguard the health of vulnerable children. However, the extent to which FNAPs provide an equitable food environment in ECEs remains unclear.

Helping other people benefits children and is fundamental to a functioning society. A novel training, Raising Helpful Toddlers (RHT), focuses on beneficial Indigenous heritage parent socialization practices previously described. RHT participants were thirty U.S. toddler parents/caregivers, aged 28–46, 26/4 female/male ratio; 73.3 % White, 13.3 % Asian, 6.7 % African or Black/African American, 3.3 %