Responding adequately to parental priorities for child care is important for shaping children's early experiences and development, and for facilitating parenting at the nexus of work and caregiving roles. Although much research on child care choice has relied on variable-centered approaches that treat parental priorities as distinct and isolated,…

Many extant studies on the use of non-parental child care are based on data from the youngest child in the household. To date, it has not been addressed whether this approach introduces bias. We present reasons why child care arrangements for youngest children may differ from those of same-age older children and examine whether the use of child…