Childcare subsidy receipt and reduced emotional neglect: Examining parents' enhanced self-efficacy as a mediator

Background: Each year 1.5 million children receive childcare subsidized under the Child Care and Development Fund, which supports working parents with low income in affording childcare; such policies hold promise for reducing child neglect.

Objective: The current study sought to examine how receiving childcare subsidies might reduce emotional neglect by supporting working parents' self-efficacy.

Participants and setting: Data came from the Future of Families and Child Well-being Study (FFCWS) which oversampled births to unmarried mothers in large U.S. cities. The current study focused on the third wave of the study, when focal children were age three, and when many parents were using childcare.

Methods: The associations between childcare subsidy receipt, parent self-efficacy, and emotional neglect were analyzed with path modeling using a structural equation modeling framework. Furthermore, we estimated the indirect effect of subsidy receipt on emotional neglect via parent self-efficacy.

Results: Receipt of the childcare subsidy was significantly associated with decreased emotional neglect (b = -1.24, p = .045) and increased parent self-efficacy (b = .16, p = .004). Self-efficacy was significantly associated with decreased emotional neglect (b = -1.27, p < .001). The path model results showed a significant mediating effect of self-efficacy on the link between receipt of the childcare subsidy and emotional neglect (b = -.20, p = .01).

Conclusions: The present study highlights the potential for increasing access to affordable, high-quality childcare to improve parent and child well-being. Subsidies that increase access to high-quality childcare can benefit both mothers and children.