Why We Invested
If we want to create a world where every child has what they need to thrive, we must consider children in every collective decision we make, from funding to policy to program design. We must work together to prioritize what’s good for children across a wide range of policy sectors—and bring science together with diverse sources of knowledge, community expertise, and lived experience of caregivers raising young children. To this end, the Center on the Developing Child works to bring key science concepts to policymakers, advocates, community leaders and others—both within the traditional bounds of the early childhood ecosystem and beyond—whose work and decision-making are critical for supporting healthy development during pregnancy and the earliest years.
What We've Learned
Building upon nearly two decades of work led by Founding Director Dr. Jack Shonkoff, the Center on the Developing Child has been instrumental in making science related to early childhood development both accessible and actionable, informing new policy and practice approaches in the early childhood ecosystem. In order to change the status quo, we need to expand our understanding of development beyond the importance of responsive relationships to include a more holistic picture of how a wide range of conditions in the places where children live, learn, play, and grow shape their developing brains and other biological systems. The Center’s focus on the experiences and exposures that directly and indirectly shape the caregiving environment for a lifetime of outcomes underscores how breaking down systemic barriers to opportunity will enable all learners and their families to reach their full potential.
We are absolutely convinced that none of the problems related to poverty, discrimination, violence, or maltreatment are unsolvable. Once you understand the science and how not inevitable most of the problems are in the world—and how preventable many of them are—it’s just impossible to walk away