Reference no: EM132254394
Socialization and Child Care Programs
Child care has become a major issue in American society, particularly over the past 15 years. Part of the issue is political: should there be a national child care policy (over and above the Family Leave Act) which provides sufficient resources to ensure affordable, available, high quality non-parental child care programs?
Opponents to such policies argue that child care remains the primary responsibility of the parents and therefore government should not play a significant role in supporting child care programs. Supporters of a national day care policy argue that the government must take steps to ensure adequate child care programs.
Your Challenge
Underlying the political questions, however, are sociological ones. What is the impact of the child being socialized in non-parental child care settings? Is it different than being socialized in the home?
If so, are the differences beneficial or detrimental to the development of the child? Many social scientists feel that to answer questions such as these we must examine the structural factors of child care settings that shape the socialization process and its impact on children.
According to Browne-Miller in a classic study, these include such things as: the ratio of care givers to children, the personalities of the care givers, the demographics of the care giving population (for example, age, gender, race), the overall philosophy of the child-care team, the use of unstructured versus structured time, the attention given to discipline and rules, the personal and emotional involvement of the care givers, and the overall environment in which the care takes place, to name but a few.
Paper Option #2 gives you the opportunity to observe first-hand the inner workings of a day care center, and draw sociological insights about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of its structure.
Instructions
1. Identify a child care center nearby in which you will be able to observe and interview individuals. Do NOT contact CSUSM's very own Center for Children and Families (CCF)! They have placed restrictions on the number of student requests for observation and as of several years ago will not accept S-317 students. Hey they are VERY good and VERY popular! But they don't have the means whereby to accept any more student requests. Please honor my request to you!
2. In your field notes, make a list of the structural factors you wish to examine. Include the above items suggested by Browne-Miller and any additional ones you think might have an impact on the way in which children are socialized. You may get some additional ideas from re-reading Chapter 5 in the Berns text and/or class discussions on this topic.
3. Ask the director of the child care center you identified for permission to observe at the center for the purposes of a sociology assignment. Feel free to show the director a copy of this assignment and/or have him/her contact me. Assure the director that the information you collect is solely for the purposes of this assignment and will be held in strict confidence. Rules of confidentiality are crucial here!
4. Conduct observations of the child care center for at least five hours. Record your observations in the form of field notes. You may want to break your observations up into two separate visits. After your initial visit, think about whether or not you obtaining the data you want. If not, figure out what you need to do to obtain the "correct" data. Feel free to talk to me for guidance on this issue. Reflect on what you observed so far. Develop some tentative insights and conclusions about the variables identified by Browne-Miller and whether an "effective" child care setting has been achieved. This will make your second visit much more productive.
5. In addition to your observations, interview the director (or available administrator) and a care giver who works there. Use these interviews to find out the answers to any questions that you were unable to obtain from your observations and/or to verify some of your observations.
6. OK! The pressure is now on! Based on your observations and interviews, is the child care center you observed creating a positive environment for childhood socialization? Why or why not? If not, what would you change and why? There are no correct answers to these questions, but you will be graded in large part on your ability to defend your arguments.