What Science Is Telling Us
How Neurobiology and Developmental Psychology are Changing the Way Policymakers and Communities Think About the Developing Child
Northwestern University professor Greg Duncan, the Council’s only economist, adds a unique perspective to the group’s work. His extensive research on poor families leads him and his Council colleagues to “a shared belief that poverty has a very real impact on kids’ life chances.” And while the precise magnitude of these effects is debatable, “it’s certainly the case that children below the poverty line face double the risk of all sorts of bad things” as they grow up, he notes.
The big challenge, Duncan says, is to tease out the variables that can lead to negative outcomes for poor children. Specifically, science now tells us that poverty per se may not be as big a problem as the conditions faced by many poor kids—like poor nutrition, limited educational opportunities, unstable family circumstances, and possibly lower cognitive skills of low-income parents that are the result of the difficulties they themselves faced in their own childhood years. To the extent that income itself does matter, “its effects are selective in terms of when in childhood it matters most. Income in the first five years of life has a much more discernable impact on how kids do,” Duncan concludes.
Betsy Lozoff, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at the University of Michigan, also studies the impact of poverty on the health and brain development of young children. Over the years, her research on poor children in Chile, Costa Rica, India, and inner-city Detroit, has focused on social and environmental exposures that influence development—especially iron deficiency anemia, the most common nutrient disorder in the world. The results tell us that there are long-lasting—and possibly irreversible—developmental problems facing children who had iron deficiency as infants. For example, in follow-up studies with children as old as 14 years, those with early anemia continue to test lower and show more anxiety and less interaction.
Closing the Gap Between What We Know and What We Do
While their academic perspectives vary widely, the Council members come together in their shared commitment to a common goal: To ensure that their own research and that of their respective fields will be used to inform better public policies. “It’s not good enough to describe the fundamentals of brain development and leave it at that,” says Pat Levitt, speaking for many of them. “We must translate the science into what it means practically for the public—and how it will really influence our children’s and grandchildren’s lives.”
Toward that end, the Council members offer numerous ways in which their research—and the science of early childhood development writ large—should be used to shape better policymaking.
• Preparing youngsters for school. Everything we know from science tells us how important children’s relationships are to preparing them for school and promoting their innate ability to listen, learn, and interact with other children appropriately. “So a lot of this knowledge is directly relevant to shifting the public discourse on school readiness away from letters and numbers—and toward recognizing that education is a matter of the heart as much as the mind, especially when it comes to young children,” observes Ross Thompson, echoing many of his fellow Council members.
Similarly, new research on early temperament is revealing more than we ever expected about the way children with very different temperamental profiles learn. It is now clear that all children are alike in needing to develop emotionally, as well as intellectually, in order to thrive in school. Much of this expanding knowledge base suggests that our nation’s current emphasis on cognitive skills—like narrowly-defined standards for teaching “ABC’s,” phonics, and numeracy to the youngest schoolchildren—may be at odds with the science. “The problem is, if you take a child whose temperament leaves him too shy or too impulsive to participate, and if you ignore his emotional well-being and social behavior, how is that child ever going to be able to learn?,” asks Nathan Fox.
A wiser and ultimately more effective approach would consider the wide variability in personalities among young children, and focus more on building their social and emotional competence—teaching things like empathy and conflict resolution, for example—in order to help them get ready to succeed in the classroom, he says.
• Providing the best forms of child care. As referenced throughout this article, the science of early development shows over and over that loving, nurturing, and stable relationships with adults matter more than almost anything. Given the recent dramatic transformations in family life in our society, child care is the context in which an important part of early development takes place—starting in infancy and continuing through the early school years—for the great majority of American children. The research literature offers much to inform public policies in this area and, despite ongoing debates about the benefits and risks of early child care, the science itself is clear.
“If the child is the engine, then the care that a qualified and stable staff provide is the fuel that drives successful early childhood development,” notes Deborah Phillips. We know this from extensive studies linking the performance of preschoolers in child care programs to the training and education levels of their caregivers; young children taught by college-educated teachers with training in a child-related field outperform others. The research also shows that “children whose teachers provide a rich language environment, ask open-ended questions, and explore the children’s ideas with them score higher on tests of both verbal and general ability,” she says. To Phillips, the policy implications are clear: The nation should invest in better-skilled, higher-paid child care providers to help raise and teach our next generation.
If quality relationships matter, so do steady ones. “Our work says that when young children make affiliative bonds, it’s best to keep them as stable as possible,” notes Judy Cameron, drawing from extensive research on young monkeys as well as humans. That suggests it is best to keep children with a consistent caregiver or single facility to the extent that it is possible. And there are concrete steps that society could take now to align our social policies with the science on this issue. By one estimate, the turnover rate for child care providers nationally is 30 percent; another survey found that fully two-thirds of child care teachers had left their jobs within four years. Changing this pattern would require better salaries for caregivers—and more. Council members conclude that a cultural shift that places higher value on the work done by child care providers is needed, as well.
• Considering the wellbeing of children under welfare reform. In recent years, much has been made of the nation’s vow to “end welfare as we know it.” Indeed, welfare rolls have been reduced dramatically as millions of disadvantaged mothers have been directed into the labor force. While it’s hard to argue with that success, social scientists like Greg Duncan pose an important question: “Shouldn’t our nation’s public policy be based as much on children’s developmental needs as on a mandate for maternal employment?”
For information about commonly used terms in Council publications, see Definitions.