Theme:
Parenting and Caregiving
About the Issue
Early childhood is a critical period not only for brain growth, but also for building the social and emotional foundations that help children thrive. Safe, stable, and nurturing relationships with caregivers serve as powerful protection against adverse childhood experiences, such as violence, neglect, or family stress. These early adversities can disrupt brain development and are linked to long-term physical and mental health challenges. But the presence of a caring adult who provides love, safety, and support can buffer these effects—and even help children heal from early trauma.
One of the most effective ways caregivers can nurture brain development is through play. Playful parenting fosters positive interactions, encourages communication, and helps children learn about their world. It also builds strong emotional bonds, supports responsive caregiving, and promotes lifelong learning. In fact, playful interactions with parents supports all five components of nurturing care and contributes to holistic development.
Research from diverse countries shows that when caregivers engage in quality play and everyday moments of connection—talking, singing, storytelling, or simply being present—it improves children’s learning and well-being well into adulthood. Play not only sparks joy and creativity, but also helps reduce stress and build strong neural pathways in the brain.
In 2022, ECDAN collaborated with partners to establish the Global Initiative to Support Parents to work with governments, civil society partners, researchers, and donors to promote universal support for parents and caregivers.
This thematic page provides resources on parenting—including playful parenting—for policymakers, donors, implementing agencies, and advocates looking to scale parenting support initiatives.
Why it Matters
Parents and caregivers shape children’s brains and well-being from the start. With the right support, they help children thrive—building resilience, health, and lifelong learning, even in challenging circumstances.
Resources
- Responsive caregiving refers to the ability of the parent/caregiver to notice, understand, and respond to their child’s signals in a timely and appropriate manner. It build secure attachment which creates a foundation of trust for all other social relationships.
- Responsive caregiving is considered the foundational component because responsive caregivers are better able to support the other four
components of nurturing care: good health, adequate nutrition, early learning, and safety and security. - Serve and return interactions refer to the positive, sensitive, and responsive interactions between children and their parents and caregivers. This back and forth, following the child’s initiation and interest helps to shape the architecture of the brain and supports the development a child’s communication and social skills.
- Fathers and men play a critical role in shaping children’s development and should be encouraged to provide nurturing care for children. Their involvement provides multiple benefits for women, children, and the men themselves.
- Play is a biological imperative for every child. It is how children learn and explore the world around them and contributes to all areas of a child’s development. Playing together also creates strong bonds between children and caregivers and supports positive mental health of both adults and children.
- Parenting programs intentionally provide parents with skill building sessions that help to grow their confidence, increase their knowledge, and change their practices (for example related to managing behavior, supporting learning, resolving conflict, etc.). These programs have been shown to dramatically reduce violence and neglect of children.
- Play is not one-size-fits-all—beliefs and practices around play vary widely across cultural contexts. To be meaningful and effective, parenting programs must be responsive to these beliefs and ground play activities in existing practices.
- Universal parenting programs are needed that reach all families while targeted interventions are needed for families that require additional support. Both types of interventions are needed.
- Evidence-based parenting interventions should be made readily available to all parents and caregivers in group-based or individualized delivery mechanisms. They can be delivered through a variety of providers, such as health, education, or social service workers supported by government or nongovernmental agencies.
- Frontline parenting support providers are deeply motivated, but their ability to deliver high-quality services hinges on robust support. Volunteers—often lacking formal training—require intensive coaching, mentoring, and supervision to match the quality of professional staff. Ongoing training, peer learning, and structured supervision are critical to close this gap and maximize the impact of parenting sessions.
- Parenting support interventions need to be complemented by family-friendly policies that ensure parents and caregivers have the time, resources, support, and services that they need to offer children nurturing care.
UNICEF has recommended ten ways that workplaces can become more family-friendly.
- Guarantee that women are not discriminated against based on pregnancy, motherhood, or family responsibilities.
- Establish a minimum of six months paid parental leave to ensure that parents can spend quality time with their children when they need it the most.
- Enable breastfeeding at work through paid breastfeeding breaks, adequate lactation facilities, and a supportive breastfeeding environment in the workplace.
- Support access to affordable and quality childcare to ensure that children offered nurturing care to develop and thrive while their parents are at work.
- Grant flexible working time arrangements through work from home policies and other measures.
- Beyond legal compliance, promote decent working conditions such as wages that reflect the cost of living for families.
- Address the specific challenges faces by migrant and seasonal workers, such as supporting workers to move with their families and supporting their ability to access basic services.
- Encourage practices that support good parenting behaviors, such as trainings and awareness campaigns.
- Promote family-friendly policies with suppliers and other business partners.
- Raise awareness among consumers and clients of the importance of early childhood development through social media and other channels.
Children’s survival and healthy development depends on caregivers and caregiving systems. Supporting caregiver well-being is essential because when caregivers receive support and are better able to care for themselves then they are better able to care for their children. Recognizing a growing body of evidence that suggests that preventive support for caregivers’ mental health is key to promoting optimal child development especially in resource-constrained settings where caregivers face multiple stressors with limited support, UNICEF in collaboration with the University of the Witwatersrand and WHO developed the Caring for the Caregiver (CFC) package. CFC aims to build front-line workers’ capacity to provide adequate counselling and parenting support services that improve caregivers’ emotional well-being and their social support to enable nurturing care for improved child development outcomes.
Important elements that the package incorporates include:
- Training for front-line workers to enhance their capacity to provide adequate counselling and parenting support services that improve caregivers’ emotional well-being and their social support.
- A family centered approach to respond to the most common emotional and social caregiving challenges
- Activities that aim to increase caregivers’ confidence, strengthen their stress management and self-care skills, and identify sources of support.
- A gender-inclusive approach that recognizes how both men and women caregivers can strengthen partnership, family relationships, and access to caregiving resources.
- Special attention to adolescent parents who are even more likely to experience social isolation and other unique challenges.
Implementers of parenting support programs are encouraged to include these elements and intentionally build the capacities of caregivers and communities to mitigate the effects of multiple adversities linked to poverty, poor health, structural and gender inequities with women bearing a disproportionate burden of caregiving responsibilities, often in isolation, with little access to resources. Mobilizing community resources and strengthening relationship-based support systems is not treatment for mental health problems like anxiety and depression. However, it can buffer the effects of high adversity by offering emotional and practical support. This can decrease vulnerability to mental health problems which limits capacity for responsive caregiving with negative effects on child development.