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The goal of the research reported in this article was to examine the process of forming attachment to caregivers in children new to childcare. We examined child and adult behaviors and the adult's perception of the child at entry, and the ethnic/racial match between the child and caregiver as predictors of attachment relationship quality measured six months later. Adult perceptions of the child did not predict attachment security. Children who did not share an ethnic heritage with their caregiver and had conflictual interactions with her at entry or at Time 2 had the lowest attachment security at Time 2. Children who shared an ethnic heritage with their caregivers and either did or did not engage in conflictual interaction and children who did not share an ethnic heritage and had low conflict at entry and at Time 2 were similar in security.Many children enroll in center-based childcare programs each year. For both the entering children and the caregiving adult, childcare entry necessitates forming new social relationships. In this article, we describe children and adult behaviors at childcare entry and relationship quality six months later. For many of these entering children, the adult who is to care for them has a different racial/ethnic heritage from that they have experienced at home. A central question for our analysis is whether the process of formation or the resulting quality of these relationships is different from children and caregivers who are matched in racial/ethnic heritage.We assume that these new relationships must be understood through their social and historical cultural context as well as through the relationship histories of the children entering childcare. This assumption places our analysis within a theoretical framework that integrates Rogoff's (2003) theory of human development as participation in cultural communities with Bowlby's (1969) attachment theory of relationship development. A cultural community is a grouping of people who share goals, beliefs, parenting practices and often a racial or ethnic identity (Rogoff, 2003). This integrative

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This study presents findings from an Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) initiative in Arizona called Smart Support. The IECMHC used an early childhood mental health consultation model as an early childhood education intervention to address the needs of preschoolers with challenging behaviors. Disparities in teacher‐child relationships and discipline are some of the most persistent racial disparities impacting young Black children. The goal of IECMHC is to facilitate teachers' skills to respond to challenging child behavior and to shift teachers' internal representations of young children. This study is one of the first to link a statewide IECMHC intervention to the analysis of racial and gender teacher‐child relational and discipline disparities. Multilevel growth analyses examined whether child scores at baseline and growth over time differed as a function of child race and gender. At baseline, Black children, compared to white peers, and Black boys, compared to white boys, had higher teacher‐child conflict scores. These scores decreased more strongly over the course of IECMHC such that Black children's outcomes surpassed those of white peers by the end of consultation. A trend was also seen for the reduction of Black boys' preschool expulsion risk, although this trend was only marginally significant.

New directions in child care research are compelling researchers to explore larger socialization perspectives. In one of these, ethnic and cultural matches between caregiver and child are used to explain important psychological and developmental processes in children of color (Guerra & Jagers, 1998; McLoyd, 1998; Phinney & Landin, 1998). This paper discusses three recent child care studies that have used teacher-child ethnicity as a proxy for cultural continuity. The first study identified teacher and program practices in child care programs designed to serve low-income children and families of color and used a teacher-child ethnic match to ground its examination of associations among teacher-articulated practices, quality, and observed child behaviors. The second study also used a teacher-child ethnic match to ground its examination of associations among teacher-articulated beliefs and practices about families and observed teaching practices in child care programs that served low-income children and families of color. The third study explored young children's processes of forming attachments with caregivers in child care when the child and caregiver did and did not share an ethnic cultural community. The findings in all three studies suggested that teachers' perceptions and practices, and children's experiences in child care, are rooted within ethnic communities.

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