With increasing maternal labor force participation and the work requirements mandated by welfare reform, the need for child care for young children has grown in recent years. Currently, more than 60 percent of children in the United States under age 5 are in some type of nonparental child care on a regular basis (Johnson, 2005). Given that about one-quarter of children are in family child care at some point during their first five years of life, spending an average of 31 hours per week in family child care, including night and weekend hours (Johnson, 2005; Davis & Connelly, 2005), understanding the context of and outcomes for children in this type of child care setting is critical to guiding child care policy and practice (Hofferth, Shauman, Henke, & West, 1998; Sonenstein, Gates, Schmidt, & Bolshun, 2002). The definition of family child care and regulations also vary across state lines; a provider who is required to be licensed in one state may only have to register in another, or be legally license-exempt in yet another, presenting problems for researchers, policymakers, and parents trying to differentiate family child care from other types of home-based care. Furthermore, among regulated family child care providers, there is great diversity in their demographic characteristics, motivations for providing care, and the families they serve, making generalizing across the population difficult.

A substantial body of research has developed over the past two decades on the context of family child care and the characteristics of caregivers and families who provide and use family child care. The purpose of this review is to synthesize the growing number of studies concerning regulated family child care that have emerged in the last 20 years.