Family Day Care

The child care debate of the 1970s has been caught in the crossfire of conflicting ideologies and social policy uncertainties. Family day care, a largely informal but widely used enterprise, has emerged from this debate as an indispensable component of child care arrangements. This article reviews the literature on this mode of child care. Characteristics of the unstructured nature of family day care, intended to replicate the climate of the "natural" home, are explored. The changes in this informal system, with its increasing need to conform to regulation because of public subsidies, are delineated. The turbulent history of family day care regulation, which now stimulates an interest in new regulatory strategies, is noted. Research efforts in family day care are reviewed and the conclusion is reached that the data fail to demonstrate with unequivocable clarity a reliable direction for social policy. Further research directions are recommended. For the next decade, in which child care arrangements will take on particular importance, both the public and private sectors should systematically explore this informal mode of child care and its place in a range of child care arrangements.