Maternal Employment, Community Contexts, and the Child‐Care Arrangements of Diverse Groups

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12501
• Author: Robert Crosnoe,Elizabeth Ackert,Robert Ressler,Arya Ansari
• Date: 01 October 2018
• Published date: 01 October 2018

E A  R R The University of Texas at Austin

A A University of Virginia∗

R C The University of Texas at Austin∗∗

Maternal Employment, Community Contexts, and

the Child-Care Arrangements of Diverse Groups

Integrating family and child data from the Early

Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort

with contextual data from the census, this

study examined associations among maternal

employment, aspects of communities related

to child-care supply and demand, and the early

care and education arrangements of 4 year olds

in Mexican-origin, Black, and White families.

Children with employed mothers were more

likely to be in informal care arrangements

than in early childhood education, regardless

of racial/ethnic background. For children in

Mexican-origin families, selection into informal

care over early childhood education was more

likely in zip codes with greater demand for care

as measured by higher female employment.

Utilization of parent care versus early childhood

education was also more likely for children

in Mexican-origin and Black families in zip

codes with higher female employment. Con-

straints associated with maternal employment

Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin,

305 E. 23rd St., Stop G1800, Austin, TX 78712-1699.

(ackert@prc.utexas.edu).

∗Center for Advanced Study of Teachingand Learning,

Curry School of Education, University of Virginia,405

Emmet Street South, Charlottesville, VA22904.

∗∗Population Research Center, The University of Texasat

Austin, 305 East 23rd Street, Stop G1800, Austin, TX

78712-1699.

Key Words: child-care arrangements, community, early

childhood, maternal employment, immigration/migrant fam-

ilies, race.

thus hindered children from enrolling in early

childhood education, and community contexts

posed challenges for some groups.

The link between maternal employment and

child well-being is often discussed in terms of

parenting and family time use (Bianchi, 2000;

Brooks-Gunn, Han, & Waldfogel, 2010), but

mothers’ participation in the paid labor force

also has implications for their children’s early

care arrangements, which, in turn, inuence

children’s school readiness (Clarke-Stewart &

Allhusen, 2005). Families with employed moth-

ers face a potential trade-off between concerns

over accessibility and affordability on the one

hand and learning opportunities for children

on the other. Indeed, families need child care

when mothers work for pay, but they must meet

this need while balancing issues of cost and

scheduling that could limit children’s exposure

to early childhood education, the sector of the

early child-care market that is most closely

associated with increased school readiness.

Child-care contexts within communities also

inuence families’ abilities to utilize early child-

hood education, with some communities being

better situated to support diverse types of fam-

ilies (Coley, Votruba-Drzal, Collins, & Miller,

2014; Crosnoe, Purtell, Davis-Kean, Ansari, &

Benner, 2016). Consequently, studying the links

between mothers’ employment and families’

use of informal versus formal child care in

different kinds of communities can inform our

1210 Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (October 2018): 1210–1224

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12501