Like all futures, the futures of young children and their families are inherently uncertain.

The possibilities explored in this forecast are by no means a given; they provide a glimpse into the kinds of developments that could unfold over the next decade based on trends and issues that are emerging today. Our collective actions will influence what actually comes to pass. Organizations that aim to support young children and their families can play an active role in responding to the changes on the horizon and in helping young children and their families flourish.

With that in mind, the recommendations that follow can help you and your organization examine what the emerging issues and future possibilities described in this forecast might mean for your organizational vision, strategy and current and future programs. Considering these recommendations, along with the related processing questions, can provide a starting point for exploring how you might begin to help shape dignified and equitable futures for young children and their families.

Recognize the Value of the Caring Adult

Across all the domains explored in this forecast, secure relationships between young children and caring adults stand out as being essential. The importance of a caring adult – whether that is a parent, another family member, a neighbor, a teacher or someone else – in a young child’s life is impossible to overestimate. In the future, caring adults will continue to bear responsibility for meeting children’s timeless needs for love, safety and stability. Indeed, as children’s circumstances and experiences shift, parents and other caregivers will be the primary mediators, buffers, supporters and cultivators of children’s inner worlds, helping them cope with the anxiety and stress that can arise when the external environment is changing. For instance, as job security and stability decrease for the majority of working-age adults, early childhood systems will need to adapt accordingly – not only to support employment but also to foster the resilience of young children and their families. Even in the face of sweeping changes, finding ways to support the adults who hold important places in children’s lives will be one of the most important mechanisms for helping young children flourish.

How might you and your organization best support secure relationships between children and caring adults? 

What broader supports might be needed to ensure that every young child has secure relationships with caring adults?

Place Stability at the Center of Efforts to Improve Family Life 

The ten-year horizon is full of changes and uncertainties that have the potential to disrupt family life as we know it today. Whatever family, housing, employment and other support structures look like in ten years, young children and their families will still need safe housing, nutritious food, high-quality medical care and learning opportunities, and strong social and emotional supports.⁴⁷ Because the transition to a new reality can often shake individuals’ and society’s foundations, prioritizing stability will have a compound effect on the lived experiences of young children and their families. The narrative of innovation is often one of disruption; many new ideas, products and services are likely to fragment people’s experiences instead of making them more coherent. In the case of young children and their families, the aim of innovation should be equitably and universally distributed stability. Thus, organizations and individuals seeking to ensure flourishing futures for young children and their families must build actionable initiatives that strive to solidify buffer structures and to establish resilient and reliable systems in service of all.

How might you and your organization create more stability for young children and their families?

How might you and your organization assist young children and their families in proactively responding to issues and opportunities emerging in their broader environment? 

Engage in Inclusive and Responsive Design

The ways in which society supports and interacts with young children and their families are inevitably rooted in assumptions, which are the deeply held beliefs that ground our decisions and actions. In promoting young children’s and families’ well-being, organizations and individuals make many assumptions about what they need; those assumptions inform programs, policies, products and services. In particular, relatively vulnerable groups such as low-income families, families of color and those who receive public assistance or benefit from philanthropic efforts are often excluded from the decision-making processes that affect them. This exclusion can lead to a mismatch between needs and solutions and can risk stigmatizing instead of dignifying people. As we look ahead to navigating a changing landscape, organizations and individuals seeking to assist young children and their families in creating flourishing futures for themselves and others will need to challenge their deepest assumptions, develop equitable participation channels and establish empathetic practices based on the fundamental values of dignity and respect for all.

What assumptions might you and your organization need to challenge to ensure flourishing futures for young children and families? In turn, what assumptions seem essential to retain?

In what ways might you and your organization involve more people in your decision-making processes and extend your use of empathetic practices?

Challenge the Over-Optimization of Childhood

Every aspect of a child’s development – physical, emotional and intellectual – unfolds in messy and often mysterious ways. The process of growing up is antithetical to the current data-, technology-, and outcomes-driven environment. However, in an attempt to improve the lives of children and families, many interventions are organized in ways that attempt to optimize children’s experiences to achieve certain outcomes. In these cases, each stage of childhood is treated as preparation for the next; each moment, as being in service of a goal. In a society that supported young children’s flourishing and whose systems ensured that every child’s needs were met, children could play, learn, interact and live simply because they deserved joy and the opportunity to grow. Too often, those activities are treated only as opportunities to mold productive members of society. As anxiety about the future deepens and as uncertainty increases, so too will the temptation to curate children’s lives. Those who care about children’s well-being and dignity will need to work against those forces’ taking over and reducing childhood to a phase of life that is valued only for what it later serves.

How might your organization deepen its respect for childhood as a phase of life with inherent value?

In what ways might the narratives of childhood be reframed to be more supportive of every child? 

Work beyond Early Childhood Frontiers

While the five domains explored in this forecast should be focal points for efforts to ensure flourishing futures, the boundaries between them are often porous. For instance, when early learning experiences move away from focusing on academic rigor, they tend to be explained in terms of caregiving approaches. In turn, as pediatric health tracking devices come to incorporate more and more alerts, children could lose a certain amount of autonomy to define their own experiences and to keep them private. Moving forward, both the profound interdependency among the domains and the complexity of the overall ecosystem surrounding young children and their families will likely increase. As a result, organizations and individuals aiming to improve young children’s outcomes will need to engage in issues beyond their traditional spheres of influence. This involvement will require deep collaboration across and beyond their sectors and a willingness to break out of comfortable siloes. Systemic solutions involving multiple approaches, perspectives and organizations will thrive over narrow solutions that tend to overlook unintended consequences and ripple effects.

How might you and your organization establish strategic partnerships with stakeholders beyond your traditional scope of influence?

With what issues that are not currently treated as young children’s and families’ issues might you or your organization engage? 

Identify Ethical Approaches to Technology

The lived experiences of young children and their families will be heavily influenced by technology. Indeed, this forecast highlights ways in which technological solutions could perform a variety of tasks. In the face of such possibilities, organizations aiming to support young children and their families have the responsibility to ensure that emerging technologies and the data generated by them are used ethically and in service of young children’s development, family life and human relationships. While the current debates around technology access and screen time are important, stakeholders need to look more deeply at how technology might be affecting, or even replacing, some of the vital relationships among children and between children and adults. They also need to consider the ways in which abundant data collection uniquely affects children. Organizations and individuals seeking to improve outcomes for young children can spark conversations around what types of technological experiences might support early development and relationships and what types of practices might be established to ensure that technology and data promote equity instead of perpetuating existing biases.

How might you and your organization promote nourishing interactions among technology, young children and families?

How might you and your organization help ensure that technology use supports every young child and their family in leading a life of dignity? 

Aim for Abundant and Equitable Flourishing

How people choose to raise and care for their children is highly personal. However, in an interconnected society, individual decisions have the power to affect the lives and outcomes of others. Too often, health care, high-quality education, self-determination and other social assets are treated as scarce resources that must be protected by those who have them. For a parent making a choice about where to send a child to school or for an organization deciding whether to collaborate with a potential partner, success can seem like a zero-sum equation. Future uncertainty, combined with the instinct to care for our loved ones, even at the expense of others, is heightening that impression. But true equity is not possible if the basic rights that every child and family deserve are treated as individual assets instead of as elements of the common good. Deep change in the lives of young children and their families, particularly those who have limited resources and or who face systemic barriers, will only occur when mindsets about what people deserve shift when individuals recognize their own roles in supporting other people’s futures.

How might you and your organization help contribute to a mindset shift about the importance of fostering abundant and equitable flourishing for all?

How might you and your organization extend your understanding of your role in supporting the common good?