Family Childcare Providers' Personal Stress, Stress from Work-to-Family Conflict, and Their Relationship with Children

Introduction: Early childhood educators’ psychological wellbeing is significantly related with the tone of their relationship with children (e.g., closeness and conflict; Whitaker et al., 2015), which has critical implications for young children’s school-readiness (Pianta et al., 2005). Family childcare providers, who work with young children alone at their own homes and thus lack supervision and social support, may experience high levels of personal stress as well as stress from work-to-family conflict (Atkinson 1992; Layzer & Goodson, 2006). There is a critical gap in understanding how family childcare providers’ stress related with their unique work setting might be associated with their relationship with children. Thus, this exploratory study examined the relationship between family childcare providers’ perceived stress, stress from work-to-family conflict, and relationship with children.

Methods: Data came from 582 licensed small family childcare providers, who reported to be living with at least one family member, in 40 states in the US. Most of them were female and were on average 48.60 years old (SD = 11.75). Providers reported their personal stress on the short-form of Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen & Williamson, 1988), stress from work-to-family conflict on six items that were created for this study (α = .81), and their relationship with children in their care using a modified version of Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (Whitaker et al., 2015). Covariates included providers’ race, income, number of family members living in the household, number of own children in their care, having a second job, educational background, years of experience, disciplinary efficacy (Bandura, 1997), and depressive symptoms (CES-D; Radloff, 1977).

Results: Results from path analysis revealed that both perceived personal stress and stress from work-to-family conflict were significantly related with higher levels of conflict (β = .26, p < .001, β =.14, p < .01) but not significantly related with closeness. The model fit indicated a good model fit: x² = 1.24, df = 1, p > .05; CFI = .999, RMSEA = .02, SRMR = .00.

Conclusions: Results of this study highlight the importance of increasing the awareness of the negative associations between family childcare providers’ personal stress, stress from work-to-family conflict, and relationship with children. Family childcare providers may need more support to manage the levels of stress and reduce the conflicts in their relationship with children.