Abstract
The period from pregnancy to age 3 is when children are most susceptible to environmental influences. The period lays the foundation for health, well-being, learning, and productivity throughout a person’s whole life and has an impact on the health and well-being of the next generation. The biggest threats are extreme poverty, insecurity, gender inequities, violence, environmental toxins, and poor mental health. All of these things affect parental health.
Children’s early development requires nurturing care – defined as health, nutrition, security and safety, responsive caregiving, and early learning – provided by parent and child interactions and supported by an environment that enables these interactions. Early childhood development programs vary in coordination and quality, with inadequate and inequitable access, especially for children younger than 3 years. To provide it, parents and their families – in all their diversity and all their forms, biological and social – need information, resources, and services.
Effective and sustainable interventions to improve developmental outcomes need to promote nurturing care and protection, be implemented as packages that target multiple risks, be applied at developmentally appropriate times during the life course, be of high quality, and build on existing delivery platforms to enhance feasibility of scaling-up and sustainability.
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Yamashita, H., Yamane, K., Katsuki, D., Yoshida, K. (2020). Parental Health and Early Child Development. In: Taylor, E., Verhulst, F., Wong, J., Yoshida, K., Nikapota, A. (eds) Mental Health and Illness of Children and Adolescents. Mental Health and Illness Worldwide. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0753-8_27-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0753-8_27-1
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