Race/ethnicity and the start of child care: A multi-level analysis of factors influencing first child care experiences

Early childhood education and care experiences play an important role in children's development and school readiness with, in general, sustained exposure to high quality, center-based care leading to positive outcomes. Hispanic parents have been shown to be less likely than others to place their children in center-based care, particularly when children are very young—a pattern that contrasts African American parents’ tendency for earlier use of center-based care. This paper examines child care choice from a contextual perspective. Using a multi-level modeling approach, we consider ethnicity and race, at the individual and neighborhood levels, in relation to the age at which children first participate in non-parental care and the type of care they first experience. Using data from the ECLS-K, the 1990 Census and other contextual sources, we demonstrate that Hispanic parents’ later use of care is explainable by economic and work participation factors at the family level, while neighborhood proportion of Hispanic individuals is associated with delayed entry into child care. In contrast, the observed early use of care among African American families persists after accounting for economic and work factors, and appears independent of differences in neighborhood context. Limitations and implications for policy and practice are discussed.