ABSTRACT
Neither child care work nor parenting as basic child development activities have so far been either defined in the dictionaries or explicitly researched in the behavioral sciences, although economically, socially, and culturally these activities encompass the largest occupation in the world. The child care worker, including the group living counselor, residential worker, cottage or house-parent, is the primary nurturing agent in twenty-four hour group living, as the parent is in family living. Child care work includes four dimensions: nurturing care and management of children's recurring everyday requirements; therapeutic care and extraordinary management of specific requirements of children in socially engineered living situation; leadership and management of the living group; and partnership in the implementation of the total organizational program. Despite the important part the child care worker plays in residential care, in most programs he is apt to be one of the lower status positions educationally, socially, geographically within the institution, and economically.
