General mood of professional caregivers in child care centers and the quality of caregiver–child interactions

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Abstract

The present study is the first to relate professional caregivers’ general mood to the observed quality of their interactions with the children in their care. A total of 238 female caregivers from 133 child care groups in 64 centers completed the General mood scale of Bar-On’s Emotional Quotient Inventory (1997) and was observed while playing with small groups of children. Factor analysis on the General mood scale yielded five general mood factors, one negative and four positive. Two positive mood factors in particular, i.e., positivity and optimism, were found to contribute positively to the quality of professional caregivers’ behavior toward the children and, through their caregiving behavior, to the children’s well-being.

Introduction

Many children spend a considerable part of their early lives in professional child care. There is increasing evidence that the quality of professional caregiving, just like the quality of parenting, affects children’s well-being and development (Lamb & Ahnert, 2006) and just as for parenting, research shows large variation between professional caregivers in the quality of the care they provide to the children (Vandell & Wolfe, 2000). The question remains what causes these differences in the quality of caregiving behavior. Research on the determinants of caregiving shows that mood plays an important role in how caregivers behave towards the children in their care. This has been found for depressive mood in particular. Both for parents and professional caregivers a negative relation between quality of care and depressive mood has been found (Goodman and Gotlib, 1999, Hamre and Pianta, 2004, Murray et al., 1996, Van Doesum et al., 2005, Zahn-Waxler et al., 2002). Given this negative relation, one might expect an opposite, that is positive, relation to exist between quality of care and happiness or positive mood. Little is known about this relation, however. Only for parents has such a relation been suggested in earlier studies (Ackerman et al., 1999, Belsky et al., 1995). The present study is the first to examine professional caregivers’ positive mood in relation to the quality of the care they provide to children in child care centers.

Studies concerning the relation between depressive mood and the quality of care provided to children have been done mostly among parents. Parental depressive mood generally shows a negative relation with the quality of parenting behavior (Belsky and Barends, 2002, Van Doesum et al., 2005, Zahn-Waxler et al., 2002). Depressed mothers, as compared to non-depressed mothers, have been found to be more intrusive and to show more hostility towards their children. They also tend to speak less and to be less involved, less responsive, and less sensitive in the interaction with their children. The relation between the depressive mood of professional caregivers and their caregiving behavior has been examined in one study only. Hamre and Pianta (2004) examined the observed quality of caregiving for 1013 professional caregivers in relation to their self-reported depressive symptoms and found that caregivers reporting higher levels of depressive symptoms showed less sensitivity, greater withdrawal, and greater negativity towards the children in their care than those who reported lower levels of depressive symptoms.

Very little is known about the relation between positive mood and quality of caregiving, in parents and in professional caregivers alike. Some studies suggest that parents’ positive mood may play a critical role in framing positive and supporting parenting (Ackerman et al., 1999, Belsky et al., 1995). For professional caregivers, no study to date has considered the possible relation between quality of caregiving and positive mood. This lack of research is remarkable, because there is good reason to assume that a positive mood may enhance the quality of caregiving. It has been shown, for example, that positive affect broadens individuals’ attentional scope, promotes their creativity and flexibility in problem solving (Fredrickson, 1998, Fredrickson, 2001), helps to cope with stress (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000), contributes to the efficient regulation of negative emotions (Fredrickson, Mancuso, Branigan, & Tugade, 2000), and promotes psychological and social functioning in general (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005). An extensive body of research in social psychology has shown that positive mood fosters prosocial behavior in a variety of settings and increases the likelihood that individuals will help others who are in need (for a review see Isen, 1987). In a study of positive mood in salespeople at work it was found that individuals with positive moods were more likely to be helpful toward customers, regardless of whether the helpful behavior was part of their job responsibilities or was above and beyond the call of duty (George, 1991).

Based on the above, and given that providing help and care to groups of young children in child care centers is a relatively heavy job, requiring to divide one’s attention across multiple children and adequately and timely respond to their individual signals and needs, we expected positive mood to contribute positively to the quality of professional caregivers’ behavior toward the children in their care. In addition to the caregivers’ behavior toward the children, we also observed the children’s well-being while interacting with the caregiver. We expected caregivers’ positive mood to contribute positively to the quality of their caregiving behavior and, through their caregiving behavior, to the children’s well-being.

Section snippets

Participants

Using the address locator from a child care website and telephone books, all of the child care centers in the cities of Nijmegen and Arnhem and the surrounding areas (i.e., the middle-south of the Netherlands) were located. All of the 131 centers were sent a letter in which the purpose of the present study and procedures to be followed were explained together with an invitation to cooperate. Two weeks later the center directors were called and asked about their willingness to cooperate in the

Preliminary analyses

In Table 2, the descriptive statistics are presented for caregiver and child behavior. As can be seen, the mean scores are just above average and scores cover the full range (1–7) for all of the scales except for the caregiver’s negative regard.

Caregiver general mood and the quality of caregiver–child interactions

First, correlations were calculated between the general mood factors on the one hand, and caregiver behavior and child well-being on the other. The correlations are shown in Table 3. Of the five general mood factors, positivity and optimism showed the

Discussion

The present study was the first to examine the relation between professional caregivers’ general mood and the observed quality of the care they provide to the children in child care centers. Of the five general mood factors examined here, two in particular were related to the quality of caregiver behavior, namely positivity and optimism. More positively tuned caregivers behaved more supportive and more respectful toward the children. They also provided higher quality instructions and expressed

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a grant to the second and third authors from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, Grant 402-01-051). We are grateful to Thao Ha and Frankie Joosten for their assistance with the data collection. We also thank the child care centers and caregivers for their participation in this study.

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