South Carolina's daycare regulations are supposed to be updated every three years. But they haven't been changed since 1993.

So the state Department of Social Services is proposing some updated regulations that state lawmakers are considering now. The legislature would have to approve the changes.

The proposal would lower the number of children that each adult could care for, implementing the changes over four years. For example, right now one adult can care for ten children who are two to three years old. Under the proposal, that would drop to nine children in the second year of the new regulations, eight the next year and seven the final year.

"And that has shown to be the number one indicator of quality, when you read all of the research," says Susan Graham, director of the USC/Gateway Child Development and Research Center. "And it also makes a lot of common sense, because if there's a lower number of children per teacher, you're going to get more individualized attention."

Another change would be to limit class sizes for the first time. Right now, the only limit for the size of a daycare class is space. Regulations do require a certain amount of space along with the correct student/teacher ratio. But, theoretically, you could have a space the size of a gymnasium full of children and adults under the current regulations. That would be very noisy and not conducive to learning, says Nancy Freeman with the Early Childhood program at USC's College of Education.

Why the change? "The current regulations were adopted in 1993, so they're long overdue in the legislative process," says Freeman. "We've learned a lot about early care in education in the last 12 years. There's a lot more knowledge of the characteristics of quality child care."

But some daycare center owners say if the regulations are approved, they'll have to hire more people and pass that cost along to parents.

Freeman says other states that have adopted similar regulations did not see a significant increase in costs, though. And since these new rules would be phased in over four years, she says parents should see little or no cost increase based on the regulations.