This book reports on a study examining the relative effects of family and day care experiences on young children. The study explored the full range of children's experiences in a wide variety of settings and examined how those experiences are related to the children's development. Chapter 1 presents and compares different forms of contemporary day care and discusses their influences on child development. Chapter 2 presents the purpose and design of the study, while chapter 3 discusses the methods used for observing children's experiences in different settings, and the variables created to represent those experiences. Chapter 4 reviews the observed experiences and how they differed according to the setting. Chapter 5 discusses the links between the observations of children's experience at home and in day care. Chapter 6 presents the methods used for assessing children's abilities and behavior in the different domains. Chapters 7 through 12 treat the results of linking experience and development for each domain in turn: family predictors, day care predictors, social competence, sociability with mother, compliance, and peer relations. Chapter 13 presents the conclusions that are drawn from the study and makes some final comments. Contains over 250 references. (AA)