FACTORS AFFECTING TURNOVER AMONG FAMILY CHILD-CARE PROVIDERS - A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY

The high turnover rates evident among family child care providers unde rmine the quality of care provided to children. In this study, we foll owed 57 family child care providers longitudinally to identify precurs ors of turnover. Job stress, education, and training directly affected turnover. Providers most likely to leave the profession were more edu cated, less trained, and reported higher levels of stress. Training an d the presence of the provider's own young children indirectly affecte d turnover through their relationship to job stress. Providers who car ed for their own preschool children experienced higher levels of job s tress. In contrast, training was associated with lower job stress, but only for less educated providers. The presence of the provider's own young children and training also were associated with greater job sati sfaction, but job satisfaction was unrelated to turnover. Finally, the re was a curvilinear relationship between job tenure and job stress an d, to a lesser extent, turnover. Providers who had been caring for chi ldren between 2 and 8 years reported the highest levels of job stress and turnover, although turnover rates were also high during the first 2 years of beginning family child care.