Infant Child Care and Attachment: Key Research Findings

Introduction: Infant Daycare and Developmental Concerns

There is much concern about how infant child care will affect a child's emotional attachment to his parents and shape his future behavioral profile. These concerns bear particular relevance at a time when the traditional family unit has evolved to include the likelihood of two working parents. Increasing numbers of infants are enrolled in some form of daycare at earlier and earlier stages in their lives, prompting renewed examination of the possible impact on both the child's parental attachment and future socialization. Recent debate has focused on the possibility that children enrolled in out-of-home child care as infants are at risk for later social and emotional difficulties (Belsky, 1988; Clarke-Stewart, 1988).

In assessing the role of infant child care on attachment and on the child's behavioral outcomes, a series of variables make the exact effects difficult to predict with any initial certainty. These mitigating factors include the extent of non-maternal care, its quality, and the nature of the family's own caregiving. This suggests that the role of infant daycare will be difficult to assess in isolation. A more inclusive investigation of the multiple factors at work in a single child's care experience offers a clearer picture of the types of predictions we can make about projected socio-emotional development.

Defining Attachment and Its Developmental Role

Exploration of the impact of infant daycare on attachment requires a clear definition of attachment as it relates to the relationship between infant and parent. What is the biological or evolutionary purpose of the attachment phenomenon? It has been suggested that one of the characteristic behavioral systems that define us as human beings is that concerned with survival — specifically, the reproduction, care, and protection of our young. Attachment theory holds that this bonding behavior exists in biological support of the protection and survival of infants.

Attachment manifests in a variety of observable behaviors, including: exploratory behavior, crying, absence of crying, protest, proximity to the mother, avoidance of the mother, distress during brief everyday separations, and fear when encountering a stranger (Ainsworth, viii).

What, then, is the basis for studies examining the impact of infant daycare on socialization or emotional development? Educators, child psychologists, parents, and child development researchers are concerned with the potentially negative impact of maternal employment on infant attachment. This focus draws attention away from the daycare environment itself, and rests instead on the child's experience of an unavailable maternal figure. Studies of the effects of maternal employment form the primary research base for the assertion that "infant child care constitutes risk for children" (Howes, 1989).

A child's attachment to its caregivers is assessed in terms of security. According to William Blatz's Security Theory (1996), a secure attachment to caregivers engenders confidence in a child, facilitating and promoting exploration of the world around him, and ensures that in the event of anxiety or discomfort, the child will return to the security provided by those caregivers. Insecurity in this attachment often results in the infant's reluctance to explore at all: the child is not confident that its caregivers will be consistently available when needed (Ainsworth, ix).

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