Kin Care of Preschool Children: The Interaction of Race and Marital Status

Irene Padavic, Florida State University
Karin Brewster, Florida State University

While overall trends in child care arrangements in recent decades are well-documented, remarkably little is known about race-specific patterns of child care use. This study examines race-specific trends in one type of non-parental child care arrangement: care provided by relatives. Our hypotheses, which are informed by ethnographic and quantitative studies of child care, concern the relative roles of macro-level forces and cultural preferences in shaping the child care choices of white and African-American families. We test these hypotheses using pooled cross sections from the 1977 and 1982 Current Population Surveys (CPS) and from the 1984 through 1994 Survey of Income Program Participants (SIPP). Preliminary analyses show evidence of racial convergence in employed mothers’ reliance on relatives for child care. This convergence is driven largely by a substantial decrease in relative-care among married blacks, although a small upswing among white single women also plays a role.