Family care arrangement and early child development: Evidence from a population-based birth cohort study in Taiwan

Children¡¦s circumstances during a period of rapid demographic and social changes have drawn increasing policy attention. Care arrangement is one of the prior issues, particularly for its consequences on early child development. However, the preponderance of research has focused on child care effects while family-based care remains the major arrangement before preschool. This study aimed to examine the disparities in early child development by types of family-based care arrangement. Our analysis was based on longitudinal data of the Taiwan Birth Cohort Pilot Study (TBCPS). TBCPS comprised a nationally representative sample of 2,048 babies born in 2003, and 1,008 who completed three waves of surveys (6, 18 and 36 months; response rate 75.3%) and had never used child care were included. We differentiated three types of family care arrangement: exclusive parental care, shared care by at least one parent and relatives, and non-parental care. Child¡¦s developmental status at 36-month old with regard to motor, cognitive and social skills were the main outcome measures. Our results showed that overall, children with shared care had the highest scores on all three areas of developmental skills, followed by those with exclusive parental care, while those receiving non-parental care performed least well. Further using multiple linear regressions where subject¡¦s sex and status of low birthweight were controlled, only children with non-parental care performed significantly poorer in social skills than those with shared care (F=3.68, p=0.02). It is well recognized that children using child care generally have better developmental outcomes than their non-user counterparts. Nonetheless, our study reveals that there also exist disparities among children exclusively relying on family care arrangements. Given that care arrangement in early childhood is strongly socioeconimically-determined, further research and policy should be geared to the needs and supports for care arrangement decisions to in turn secure healthy development..