Pre-schoolers cognitive abilities not affected by parent work, child-care use.

OTTAWA -- Is a parent's work, and the use of substitute child-care associated with a lower level of development of the skills that pre-school children need to start school? A Statistics Canada study, Parental work, child-care use and young children's cognitive outcomes, shows that, for most pre-school children, the full-time work of their parents and the time children spend in substitute child-care have little or no association with lower levels of development of the skills needed to start school.

However, two groups of pre-school children appear to have better school readiness scores when

* there is a parent who works part-time hours, or who does not work outside the home,

* mothers have above-average parenting skills and levels of education,

* fathers possess above-average education and if their fathers worked part-time.

A combination of quantity and quality of the time spent in parent-child interaction appears to be related to whether preschool children are intellectually prepared to start school.

In particular, the study points to reading as an important parent-child activity that is associated with higher school readiness scores among some preschool children. Pre-school children who read, or are read to, on a daily basis, exhibit higher levels of skill development than children who do not read, or are not read to, every day. Children who read, or are read to, several times each day exhibit even higher levels of school readiness.

Although the relationship is not strong, hours in substitute care are positively associated with better school readiness scores for pre-school children from higher income families.

Family income is also associated with higher school readiness scores, independent of the number of hours that children spend in child-care, likely because children in higher income families have access to greater resources, such as educational books and toys, as well as to a healthy and pleasant living environment.

The study also found that children of working single parents tend to spend more hours in substitute child-care than the children of dual-parent families. The most obvious explanation is that without a spouse in the home to assist in caring for the children, these parents are more likely to rely on substitute care.

The analysis was conducted at the British Columbia Inter-university Research Data Centre, at the University of British Columbia. Results are based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth.

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