Household Chaos and Children's Cognitive and Socio-Emotional Development in Early Childhood: Does Childcare Play a Buffering Role?

Abstract

Evidence suggests that household chaos is associated with less optimal child outcomes. Yet, there is an increasing indication that children's experiences in childcare may buffer them against the detrimental effects of such environments. Our study aims were to test: (1) whether children's experiences in childcare mitigated relations between household chaos and children's cognitive and social development, and (2) whether these (conditional) chaos effects were mediated by links between chaos and executive functioning. Using data from The Family Life Project (n = 1,235)-a population-based sample of families from low-income, rural contexts-our findings indicated that household disorganization in early childhood was predictive of worse cognitive and social outcomes at approximately age five. However, these relations were substantially attenuated for children attending greater childcare hours. Subsequent models indicated that the conditional associations between household disorganization and less optimal outcomes at age five were mediated by conditional links between disorganization and less optimal executive functioning.

Keywords: Childcare; Cognitive Development; Executive Function; Household Chaos; Social Development.

Figure 1

Exemplar path diagram displaying the indirect pathway linking household disorganization—conditional on childcare hours—with the distal age-five outcome, via 48-month executive functioning. The bold pathway represents the indirect relation of interest. The respective pathways linking household disorganization with executive functioning and the distal outcome are made conditional by re-centering childcare hours at the 25^th and 75^th percentiles (in separate models).

Figure 2

Fitted relation between childcare hours and 48-month executive functioning, conditional on high (mean+1) and low (mean−1) levels of cumulative household disorganization (2 –36 months; n = 1,235).

Figure 3

Fitted relation between childcare hours and age-five receptive vocabulary functioning, conditional on high (mean+1) and low (mean−1) levels of cumulative household disorganization (2 –36 months; n = 1,235).

Figure 4

Fitted relation between childcare hours and age-five social problems, conditional on high (mean+1) and low (mean−1) levels of cumulative household disorganization (2 –36 months; n = 1,235). Note: The y axis equals 2 standard deviations in each figure.