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It turns out child care centers are not only early learning classrooms, but places that help parents make friends, get childrearing advice, network and maybe even deal with depression, a new study says.

University of Chicago researchers found mothers who had kids in child care centers had one more good friend than those who didn’t and those friend-making moms who were not battling poverty were also nearly 60 percent less likely to be depressed, according to research in the new book Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life. More importantly, parents build social capital at these centers, connecting with other moms and dads. This isn’t a big surprise to me, since I found everything from job leads and story ideas to nanny referrals and parenting advice at our child care center.

“The centers become locations where parents can build `social capital’ - the contacts they need to navigate through problems, such as concerns for a child’s development and finding good health care and schools,” a University of Chicago summary said. “Parents come to school to find someone to care for their children, and they end up learning ways of taking care of each other,” Mario Small, author of the book, added.

The study offers reasons why. For example, when a child care center maintains strict pickup and drop-off times, parents are more likely to create a strong network, according to the study, which used results from a survey of 200 centers in New York City and a study of 3,500 mothers in the largest U.S. cities.

Researchers also examined the role centers play as service brokers, helping connect parents with a wide variety of help, anything from Christmas gifts to health care support.

“The reason this happens is because of the professional ethos of the centers. Over and over I heard center directors say, ‘You can’t take care of the child without taking care of the family,’” Small said in the statement.

The best way to make those connections may be to get involved.

“What we found was that often the most useful friends, completely unexpected valuable contacts, come from people we meet when we have volunteered, in the case of these parents, who assisted in a field trip or helped raise $200 for the center,” Small concluded.