Understanding How the Pandemic Affected our Babies’ Development
By Manuel Fierro, Associate Director of Early Childhood Policy; JunHee Doh, Senior Manager of Early Childhood Policy; and Karina Hernandez, Policy and Research Analyst
We have long known that babies need consistent, loving, supportive, and playful learning environments which are fundamental to a child’s healthy growth and development. Particularly in the first three years of life, their brains are being wired for physical, cognitive, social-emotional, and language skills through language-rich interactions and peer socialization. However, many babies were disconnected from much of this at the onset of the pandemic, particularly for babies furthest from opportunity whose families were at the frontlines of the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic placed heightened amounts of physical, psychological, emotional, and financial stress on us all, but low-income families of color were hit hardest. They disproportionately experienced job loss and housing and food insecurity. Families navigated mandates on masking, testing, and quarantine, and many low-income families lacked healthy environments to support their children’s learning. Many babies lost the opportunity to interact with their extended community. Family and friends were barred from hospitals and homes to meet newborns. Play dates became a thing of the past and many early childhood programs closed. Babies and toddlers lost their “village” when families stopped coming together in the wake of the pandemic.
Zulema, an undocumented parent from Boyle Heights and mother to five children, tried her best to create a vibrant play-based environment while awaiting her work permit. Because her older children attended a great early childhood program, she understood what kind of environment her toddler needed. However, due to the closures of so many programs, her toddler did not have the opportunity to interact with other children her age. Zulema worried that the lack of socialization was the reason for her toddler’s speech delay at four years old. Today, while Zulema’s family has secured more resources after obtaining her legal status, her daughter still struggles to articulate her needs verbally and gets support at a regional center. Zulema is uncertain how much of this derives from her daughter’s early experiences in the pandemic and is glad to have support to continue monitoring her daughter ’s growth and development.
Perla is a mother of three from East Los Angeles and understands the struggles low income communities of color faced during the pandemic. She dealt with low wages and long hours, and her two-year old was only able to briefly attend the Early Head Start program because it was one of the many programs that closed. While Perla felt fortunate that her mother was able to care for her toddler, she laments that her baby lost the language-rich environment that her other daughter benefitted from. She shared that as a working parent she didn’t have enough time to help her baby learn her “letters, learn to count, to sing and play.” She worried whether her toddler was getting enough support and socialization, which is critical at this age. Thankfully, her daughter is currently excelling in language arts in Spanish and English and has developed relationships with her classmates. Perla is relieved her daughter has been able to excel despite what she missed out on in the early stages of the pandemic and beams with pride for her daughter’s progress.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that babies born during the pandemic experienced less interactions with others and were more prone to outbursts, physical aggression, separation anxiety and other challenges in their socio-emotional development. Preliminary research suggests babies born during the first years of the pandemic scored lower on social and motor screening tests at six months compared to those born prior to the pandemic. Many of those babies are now toddlers and the journeys of Zulema and Perla’s children show us that more research is needed to get clarity on how young children have progressed throughout the stages of the pandemic and understand the full scope of impact.
As the severity of the pandemic has subsided and our communities have returned to a level of “normal”, COVID emergency mandates have been lifted. Unfortunately, the communities who experienced exacerbated inequities are still recovering. The latest national RAPID survey shows a “chain reaction to hardship” where families continue to experience high levels of distress as government pandemic relief halted, with young children struggling as a result.
As the pandemic progressed, state and local leaders provided resources and flexibility for families that reduced financial barriers for child care and offered resources to child care providers that were able to keep their doors open. But many families still lacked access because so many programs closed. In addition, leaders responded to children’s basic needs that kept food on the table, kept families housed, and created more access to medical and mental health services that supported the whole-child. It was the right call and made a huge difference for our babies, particularly low-income families of color. Now is the time to advance racial and economic justice by ensuring policies and investments intentionally support babies, within our early childhood system and across all issue areas impacting families. Supporting babies to thrive means supporting our families and communities to thrive.
Many thanks to those who supported the process to learn from the field and tell these stories: Vickie Ramos Harris, Isabel Gonzalez, Araceli Sandoval-Gonzalez, Ashley Portillo, Ernesto Saldaña, Maria Elena Meras, Patrick MacFarlane, and Kenneth Cole