Maternal versus nonmaternal care and seven domains of children's development

Osnat Erel*, Yael Oberman, Nurit Yirmiya

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

A series of meta-analyses was conducted on findings from 59 studies to examine the linkage between maternal versus nonmaternal care, 7 indices of child behavior, and 10 potential moderators. Results indicate that children receiving nonmaternal care do not differ from children receiving maternal care on any of the 7 indices. Year of publication and psychometrics of outcome index were found to moderate the linkage between maternal versus nonmaternal care and attachment classification and between maternal versus nonmaternal care and child adjustment, respectively. Examination of the simultaneous impact of extent of care and age of entry on attachment behaviors revealed the moderating impact of the latter. Although it cannot be concluded that nonmaternal care has no impact on children, most of the analyses suggest that in and of itself, or in interaction with one factor at a time, nonmaternal care does not affect child development.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)727-747
Number of pages21
JournalPsychological Bulletin
Volume126
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2000

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