As families face difficulty affording housing, food or health care, young children experience ripple effects, including emotional distress and developmental delays, according to new national research.
The latest findings from Stanford University’s RAPID survey in partnership with the University of Nebraska Medical Center show that children’s well-being is at risk. Four in 10 families are experiencing material hardship, according to the study, and over a third of kids aged 0 to 5 show frequently fussy or defiant behavior. Just under a quarter show anxious or fearful behavior.
“This is not a research study that happened three years ago where conditions were different. It’s real-time data. It’s common-sense language,” said Joan Lombardi, professor, chair of RAPID’s national advisory council and adviser to the Clinton and Obama administrations on early childhood policy. “We should be listening to what parents need and creating policy based on what they need. That sounds pretty basic, but we’ve gotten away from that.”
Such impacts during foundational years can impact children’s ability to learn long-term, with experts advocating for public preschool, affordable child care and economic relief for families, especially those who are low-income. The data compounds urgent fears about the impacts of the child care affordability crisis, as the Trump administration scales back early learning programs, including Head Start.
On top of caregivers’ economic uncertainty, providers are also feeling the heat of material hardship.
“The reality is that cuts to things like SNAP and Medicaid are going to hit the child care workforce because this workforce is eligible, unfortunately, to participate in those programs and does participate — because they are not earning livable wages,” said Alexandra Patterson, director of policy at Home Grown, a national collective of providers advocating for stronger systems.
Costs of Economic Strain
Researchers don’t yet know how children are impacted when all adult presences in their life are distressed, but the latest findings are clear and offer a glimpse.
“Economic strain matters for kids. It has a negative impact on their development,” said Abbie Raikes, professor at the University of Nebraska College of Public Health, whose research team created the Kidsights tool, a scientific measurement of kids’ cognitive, motor, language and social-emotional development from birth to age 5.
Gaps between kids whose families aren’t experiencing economic strain and those who are widen as kids get closer to school age. “It can sometimes be a difference of six months or nine months or even a year, depending on how we’re measuring it,” Raikes added.
Middle-class families are feeling the strain, too. Isabel Blair, who has been a provider for nearly 20 years, is seeing the ripple effect of family stressors on kids’ development in Michigan. Some children crave more direct care and conversation, which she suspects is due to changes in family time.
Stressed parents often rely on tablets, screens or independent play while they finish work at home. “Often those types of children struggle with social and emotional development because they need that attention,” Blair said. “So when they’re in child care and they don’t have access to those types of things that they have access to at home, they are seeking attention from the provider.”
Many of her families do not qualify for many public assistance programs, and child care providers in their suburb of Grand Rapids cost between $300 and $400 per week, depending on age. “It’s like paying a mortgage,” said Blair, who opened Mi Casa es Su Casa in Byron Center as she sought a high quality, affordable, bilingual environment for her own children to maintain connection to their Mexican roots.
Nationally, about four in five parents with young children report emotional distress, including anxiety, stress, depression and loneliness, according to the new Stanford data. When policies like the expanded child tax credit and expanded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infant and Children (WIC) food program were in place, families and children fared better.
Previous findings showed the majority of families are relying on a network of family, friends and neighbors to provide critical early child care. Trust, not expertise, was caregivers’ priority as they waded through options.
Research Debunks Myths
Experts urge policymakers to listen directly to parents, caregivers and providers when developing solutions. In New Jersey, where universal preschool has been established in some districts for decades, researchers at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) are working to spread critical insights to local policymakers about what’s at stake.
“The administrators that are responsible for overseeing disbursement of funds at the local levels, they’re not often aware of any of this research or information, which I think is hugely problematic,” said Alexandra Figueras-Daniel, bilingual early childhood specialist with NIEER at Rutgers University. ”I do my best to curate and draw their attention to things.”
Stanford’s latest research also offers the broader public an opportunity: to dispel harmful stereotypes about who is in need and why.
“Sometimes there’s a myth that people who are experiencing economic hardship aren’t working hard or they’re making bad decisions. There’s judgment of those families, and that is not at all what our data demonstrate,” said Raikes. “It is very hard to make ends meet in the world that we’re living in right now, and even though people are doing their best to raise their children with all of the things that they want to provide for them, there are still a lot of families who are struggling. That matters for child development.”
