Stress during transition from home to public childcare.

Autor(en)

Lieselotte Ahnert, Tina Eckstein-Madry, Wilfried Datler, Felix Deichmann, Bernhard Piskernik

Abstrakt

Four saliva probes were collected per day from 104 children (10 to 35 months old) transitioning from home (T0) to childcare across a four-month period (until T3), resulting in over one thousand cortisol values. Latent Profile Analysis classified three profiles within a regular spectrum of children’s cortisol rhythms and described a fourth hypocortisol stress profile. Further Latent Transition Analysis revealed that profiles frequently changed across the transition but stabilized at T3. Most importantly, regular profiles across transition most likely occurred with high AQS scores of mother-child and care provider–child attachment. A machine learning procedure (XGBoost) featured predictors for stress profiles at T3 (when the child ought to be adjusted and stress profiles should be rare) referring to characteristics of the children (e.g., gender, number of siblings, peer contact before entry), the mothers (their worries), the care providers (their work experience, engagement, attachment) and the groups in the childcare centers (e.g., size, age differences, illness frequency). As a result, experience with siblings and peers before entry facilitated the transition. However, most conditions not linearly affecting children’s cortisol revealed even opposite effects when analyzed at different times. For example, smaller group size and large age-differences at T1 helped the child to stabilize a Regular profile, perhaps due to better control over the situation and greater support from the older children in the group. At T3, however, Regular profiles were associated with larger group size and smaller age-differences which might be helpful for establishing close peer relationships to buffer stress.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Psychologie der Entwicklung und Bildung, Institut für Bildungswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Freie Universität Berlin (FU)

Journal

Applied Developmental Science

Band

27

Seiten

320-335

Anzahl der Seiten

16

ISSN

1088-8691

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2022.2070168

Publikationsdatum

05-2022

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

503031 Elementarpädagogik, 501005 Entwicklungspsychologie, 503009 Erwachsenenbildung

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Developmental and Educational Psychology, Life-span and Life-course Studies, Applied Psychology

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/48b26d89-222a-4305-afa1-ed44a284ef3b