Excerpt
An important question in the field of early childhood education and care involves the effect of attending childcare on the socio-emotional development of children. Put simply, is childcare good or bad for children’s socio-emotional development? This question became highly relevant after the growth of childcare in various western societies, including the United States (US) and Europe.
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Context matters in childcare research. Based on US studies, childcare seemed to cast a dark shadow far into the future of young children. The robust outcomes of the European study of Barry and colleagues provide a convincing case that attending center-based childcare has a positive impact on children’s emotional development. Seen from this perspective, this study is a ray of sun for European stakeholders, acknowledging the diversity of early childhood education and care systems in Europe.5 A possible explanation for the contrast between the negative conclusions from previous US studies versus the positive findings from Barry and colleagues4 may be, according to the authors, the regulation of structural quality characteristics which govern center-based childcare in various European countries. The fact is that meta-analytic evidence supports the vital role of structural quality characteristics like staff qualification and child-to-staff ratios,6 which predict both process quality and child outcomes and which are regulated in European childcare systems.