The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the variations of state government regulations on family daycare homes is influenced by internal factors such as state political, economic, and social environments. To test the hypotheses based on internal determinant model empirically, state level data available from 1983 to 2005 are collected and from this, a model is estimated by time series cross sectional analysis with panel corrected standard errors. The empirical results show that state governments tailor their regulations on family daycare homes to the needs of employed mothers, and to the changing conditions of stale politics and economics.
