Length of day-care attendance and attachment behavior in eighteen-month-old infants.
Differences in the attachment behavior of 18-month-old full-time, part-time, and non-day-care infants from intact middle-class homes were compared. Mothers of the day-care infants had made arrangements to return to work before their infants' birth, and all the infants had been placed in day-care homes before 9 months of age. The study involved 2 sessions: a home observation and the strange-situation procedure in a laboratory setting. The home-observation and rating scale scores of maternal behaviors directed at the child yielded few group differences. More full-time day-care children (but not part-time children) were found to display avoidance of the mother during the final reunion episode of the strange-situation procedure than did non-day-care children. The length of the daily separation appears to be an important determinant of day-care effects on infant-mother attachment.
D000786:Anger; D002656:Child Day Care Centers; D002657:Child Development; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D013997:Time Factors