Infant day care and the concept of developmental risk

This paper presents a discussion of the issue of infant day care as a risk condition for later developmental problems. It focuses on the appropriateness of using a risk factor conceptualization for describing research on infant day care and on important research questions that have largely been ignored in recent discussions of the effects of infant day care experience on development. A number of criteria for assigning risk factor status to associational findings are discussed, and it is suggested that this approach does not seem justified with regard to the current research on infant day care. Several studies that have examined infants' actual experiences in day care settings and compared these to home‐reared infants' experiences are discussed as an example of important research that broadens our approach to understanding this complex issue. It is suggested that the discussion of research in this area return to the traditional terminology of associational findings rather than the narrow conceptualization of risk conditions.