Resources for Early Childhood Development

The Raising of America

EPISODE 1: THE SIGNATURE HOUR. The science is clear: when parents are stressed, babies pay the price. That is why improving conditions for families with young children is one of the best investments any nation can make.

Are We Crazy About Our Kids?

Economists are clear: investing in high-quality early care and education is good for our kids and communities, and even pays for itself many times over. So, why aren’t we investing?

Once Upon a Time

Imagine how things would be different today if high-quality childcare and pre-K was affordable and available to every family who wanted it. It almost happened.

Wounded Places

What happens to children and neighborhoods shaken by trauma and toxic stress? What does it take to heal?

The Child Olympics

The U.S. may still win the most gold medals in the Olympics every four years, but we are losing the child Olympics every day.

The Family Leave Shuffle

Paid leave is the rule, not the exception, in every other rich and middle income nation. How is it that in the wealthiest nation on earth we ask so many parents to make a trade-off: you can take time to recover from childbirth, bond with and nurture your new baby, but you’ll have to forfeit your pay?

Who's Paid What?

Since helping our babies and young children thrive is one of the most vital jobs in any nation, the people who do this work in the U.S. must be paid well, right?

Can I Borrow a Diaper?

Food banks to feed the hungry have become as much a part of our economic landscape as tax breaks for billionaire hedge fund managers. Neither seems to provoke much surprise, alarm or anger anymore. But diaper banks?

Drip, Drip, Drip: Stress Gets Under Their Skin

That parents are increasingly stressed is no surprise. But how might that stress drip down on their babies?

What’s the Amygdala-PFC Connection?

The Wisconsin team found weaker connections in the neural circuits connecting the amygdala with the prefrontal cortex in teenage girls whose parents reported higher stress when the girls were infants. It was as if the threat signals from the amygdala weren’t getting through and couldn’t be assessed properly by the prefrontal cortex.

Stress: The Good, the Bad and the Toxic

Not all stress is the same. There's good stress (for developing), bad stress (from which we can recover), and toxic stress (which is the worst in the long run).

High/Scope Perry Preschool Study

The High/Scope Perry Preschool study examined the short- and long-term effects of a high-quality preschool education program for young children living in poverty, collecting data on the students through age 40. The program operated from 1962 to 1967 in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

The New Achievement Gap

Income inequality is not the only gap that has been growing dramatically in the United States over the past forty years. The gap in educational achievement between the rich and everybody else has widened greatly as well.

Trailer - Wounded Places

Wounded Places chronicles the stories of children shaken by violence and adversity and asks not “What's wrong with you?” but “What happened to you?"

Trailer - Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time allows us to imagine how things might be different if all of America’s children had access to high-quality early care and education—in fact, we almost did.

Speed Bumps or Off the Tracks?

Life is full of unexpected demands - the car breaks down, the kids get sick. For some families, these are merely speed bumps. But for other families, they can be thrown completely off the tracks.

Snap, Snap Synapse

Brains are built. Our early relationships and environments, our history, literally get under the skin and shape the architecture of our developing brain.

Building a Nest in the Middle of a Desert

In a pioneering experiment, McGill University’s Michael Meaney showed that newborn rat pups which were licked and groomed by their mothers after birth grew up to be relatively calm and inquisitive. But pups of low-licking and grooming mothers grew up to be on a flight-or-flight stress trigger. Does this apply to humans as well?

Adversity in Your Environment

When the ACE survey included questions about racism, safety and violence, researchers discovered that 37% of Philadelphians reported four or more ACEs.

Was Perry Preschool Worth It?

The students attending this high-quality early ed program were followed for 50 years. What did we learn?

Billions for Corporations...or Childcare?

Families are expected to do it alone. Yet other sectors of our society receive billions in state support.

Utah Invests in Preschool

A Salt Lake City school district is closing the achievement gap and radically cutting special ed costs by investing early in high-quality preschool.

Suspended from Kindergarten?

In 2012, in Connecticut alone, almost 2,000 children 6 years and under—overwhelmingly black and Latino—were suspended from kindergarten and preschool.

"Bad" Kids or Injured Kids?

Children who experience violence, neglect, hunger, housing insecurity, abuse and other serious trauma in their early years may experience PTSD-like symptoms, which makes healthy learning and development all that more challenging.

Does Cash Help?

Professor Jane Costello of Duke University Medical School was conducting a study of rural children in the Great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina, a quarter of whom were Cherokee, when the tribe opened a casino. This allowed Professor Costello to conduct a natural experiment because soon casino profits started flowing to Cherokee families and cut the Cherokee poverty rate by half.

Why is Escaping Poverty an Individual Problem?

Ashley, a single mom in Maine dependent on meager public assistance, worries about the health and well-being of her two young girls.

Is This a Safe World?

Dr. Renee Boynton-Jarrett describes what a child feels: Is this a safe world? What will happen when I feel afraid? What will happen when I feel hungry?

Trauma Right Around the Corner

We know that people who’ve suffered trauma are often left not only with physical but also psychological injuries.

The Stressors Can Be Relentless on the Brain

Many children in our society feel like a truck is coming at them all day long, for more days than not, and this really takes a toll.

All You Heard Was Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow

Children don't need to be injured to be hurt. Chronic stress, adversity and trauma can hurt them just as much.

Violence is the Symptom of the Problem

Healing the hurt of young people begins with asking not, “What’s wrong with you?” but “What happened to you?”

Are Debtors' Prisons Back?

This New York Times article and this episode of comedian John Oliver’s TV show illustrate a municipal practice which combines the entanglements of Kafka with the debtors' prisons of Dickens.

Raising Children Out of Poverty

Which rich nations have the lowest child poverty rates? It depends on whether their governments are stepping in to help.

Where Did the Wealth Go?

Workers in America have been some of the most productive in the world over the past century. But those same workers may not be the ones benefiting from their hard work.

We're Number One!

Just a few decades ago, the U.S. was among the world’s leaders when it came to indicators of how well our children were doing. Today, we're Number One in a whole lot of other ways.

DNA Is Not Destiny

How do our social environments (nurturing, toxic, and in-between) alter the epigenetic ‘dimmer switches’ that turn our genes on and off—with enduring consequences?

9 Ways to Reduce Poverty

Proven programs like high-quality early care and ed and the nurse-family partnership can help buffer the effects of poverty. But if we really want to improve life prospects for poor kids we need to reduce the number of poor kids. Which means increasing their families’ incomes.

Time to Smell the Roses

Do You Have Paid Maternity Leave?

Every major economy on the planet assures paid maternity or family leave – except the U.S.

Security? I Don't Really Know What That Feels Like

It’s hard to try to make everything work. You feel pulled in all different directions.

700 New Synapses Every Single Second

More than 80 billion brain cells. That’s how many a baby is born with. But it’s the connections between cells that matter.

High-Quality Childcare is a Top Military Priority

The nation’s single largest employer provides government funded childcare. It’s high-quality and it’s affordable.

International Data Sounds a Warning

To imagine how the US will do tomorrow, we need only ask how its children are doing today. International data sounds a warning.

Would Early Life Stress Stay in Their Bodies?

How might child developmental paths be affected by the stressors parents face when their kids are babies? In Wisconsin, researchers followed 500 children for two decades to find out.

The Neighborhood Matters

Nobody does this alone. Nobody does this in isolation. The environment that the family lives in matters.

In Today's Day, We All Gotta Work

Is this what we’ve decided as society, that this degree of tension, these complex trade-offs are the norm, to be expected, just a part of raising a child?

America Would Explode in Creativity

The capacity of the brain and the human spirit to continue and thrive and develop is beyond what any of us could predict.

Government Funded Childcare During WWII

When women were suddenly propelled into the workforce during WWII, the government responded.

Reversing the Epigenetic Effects

Humans are resilient organisms and studies show that negative epigenetic effects need not be permanent.

Can Poverty Modify the Epigenome?

If social conditions can “get under the skin” and modify our biology, are less-affluent children being primed for more problems in life?

Building a Nest in the Middle of a Desert

Rat mothers like to build nests for their pups with soft materials. But these moms have only been given hard, scratchy, inferior building supplies.

Our Experiences Go Deeper Than We Thought

We’ve long known that early life can last a lifetime. Now new science shows how our experiences can become imprinted in our biology, altering gene expression.

The Child Olympics (PDF)

This PDF takes you through the screens of the Child Olympics activity. We see that the United States performed poorly in the latest Child Olympics - in infant mortality, child poverty, preschool enrollment and high school graduation.

Where Did the Wealth Go? (PDF)

From 1948 to 1979, wages in America matched its explosive growth in productivity. But since then, productivity has risen dramatically and wages have barely moved at all.

The Family Income Gap

Family income earned by the top 5% and the bottom 20% grew in tandem from the 1940s to the 1970s. But since then, income for the top 5% has grown and grown and grown while income for the bottom 20% has stagnated.

The Income-Achievement Gaps

The gap in achievement scores between rich kids and poor kids has grown just as fast as the income gap.

Babies in Finland Sleep in Boxes?

Can We See Toxic Stress in the Brain?

Which neuron is damaged by toxic stress? For neuroscientists, the answer is clear.

The Amygdala-Prefrontal Cortex Connection is Crucial

Scientists detected changes in the brain architecture of 18 year-olds whose parents had reported being under chronic stress when those same adolescents were babies.

The Squeeze on Parents

Parents and caregivers are left to fend for themselves in a society that’s unresponsive to family needs.

Reducing Child Poverty - Before and After

Many nations use government assistance and tax programs to raise children and families out of poverty. To see how much these transfers and taxes matter, compare the child poverty rates BEFORE and AFTER government benefits. Which countries end up with the lowest percentage of their children living in poverty? And which the highest?

Trailer - Are We Crazy About Our Kids?

Economists rarely turn their attention to the world of early childhood and preschool. But with a wealth of scientific research pointing to the importance of a child’s earliest years, several economists are worried about our investments in early childhood.

Trailer - The Raising of America (11 min)

The Raising of America reframes the way we look at early child health and development. This ambitious documentary series and multimedia initiative by the producers of UNNATURAL CAUSES: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? explores how a strong start for all our kids leads not only to better individual life course outcomes (learning, earning and physical and mental health) but also to a healthier, safer, better educated and more prosperous and equitable America.

We're Number One!

Just a few decades ago, the U.S. was among the world’s leaders when it came to indicators of how well our children were doing. Today, we’re Number One in a whole lot of other ways.

Zip code or genetic code?

Segregating America's Neighborhoods

Discussion Guide - Wounded Places

Discussion Guide for Wounded Places (Episode 4)

Discussion Guide - The Raising of America Signature Hour

Discussion Guide for The Raising of America Signature Hour (Episode 1)

Discussion Guide - Once Upon a Time

Discussion Guide for Once Upon a Time (Episode 2)

Discussion Guide - Are We Crazy About Our Kids?

Discussion Guide for Are We Crazy About Our Kids? (Episode 3)

Do These Numbers Add Up? Early Childhood in America

How are we doing in caring for our children? Are we setting our children—and our nation—up for success?

Change the Conversation

Trailer - The Raising of America (30 sec)

This is the 30-second trailer that you can embed on your website for The Raising of America: Early Childhood and the Future of Our Nation, the 5-part documentary series that seeks to reframe the way Americans look at early childhood health and development.

The Veto That Killed Childcare

Working behind the scenes, Pres. Nixon and his young White House speech writer, Patrick Buchanan, shocked Congress when they invoked ‘family values’ for the first time to undercut families.

When Congress Passed Childcare for All

Then Senator (and former VP) Walter Mondale describes how a bi-partisan Congress assured high-quality childcare and other services from birth to age five for every family that wanted it back in 1971.

China Invests Billions in Early Ed

Nations around the world are investing heavily in early care and ed - and don’t understand why the U.S. isn’t.