By Bess Pierre, PPS/Child Policy Research Certificate student '25
In an event titled "The Next Generation: Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood and Emerging Directions,” the Center for Child and Family Policy welcomed Dr. Joan Lombardi, director of the Early Opportunities Initiative and adjunct professor and senior advisor at the Stanford University Center for Early Childhood, Graduate School of Education. Lombardi's talk was as a part of the Sulzberger Distinguished Lecture Series, made possible through an endowment from the Arthur Sulzberger Family.
With an overarching message of needing to advocate for all children, Lombardi identified seven core issues affecting children globally: poverty/inequality, climate, urbanization, conflict, displacement, technology, and the precarity of childcare. Of these, I was most interested by her comments on the role of technology in childrens’ lives. Lombardi emphasized that children in developed countries are using technology more frequently and at an increasingly younger age. To illustrate this phenomena, Lombardi evoked an image of a family at a restaurant with a toddler engrossed by an iPad, rather than present in the environment. This trend, in addition to being unprecedented, has the potential to interfere with essential parent-child interactions and disrupt young children’s development. Highlighting technology as a a new and unknown dimension of a child’s life, was a reminder that children’s lives are now exposed to constantly evolving technology at a rate and pace that is unprecedented.
Lombardi also elaborated on critical impact of a more obvious issue in early childhood: the shortage of child care. I was especially excited to hear Lombardi’s thoughts on this policy problem, as it is one that I have taken a special interest in at Duke. To explain the root of the issue, Lombardi described the “child care policy gap,” where between the end of parental leave and the beginning of early elementary school, families with young children are left to fend for themselves. Ultimately, in much of the world there is a lack of both public and private action to combat this gap, leaving families in a childcare landscape that is under-resourced and costly. Further, Lombardi also described how childcare centers themselves are in an undesirable position, caught between needing to raise tuition to pay teachers more while also not wanting to impose even higher costs on families.
To respond effectively to these seven core issues, Lombardi recommends a community-driven movement to provide so-called domains of nurturing care. , She advocates these domains of nurturing care be developed locally to provide responsive systems of comprehensive services that scaffold family wellbeing through a diverse range of programs. Modeled after Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory, the various institutions and systems in a child’s community would provide resources that are responsive to the specific challenges they experience. Lombardi explained that this model is essential to tackling the core issues she outlined because there is no single solution to address the global community’s current shortcomings in early childhood. A community-driven, equity-focused approach to solutions is necessary.
While I found this recommendation to address the range of issues to be deeply optimistic in the current policy landscape, Lombardi’s current work with the RAPID Survey Project is a step toward identifying early childhood policy priorities for communities. Started in the Stanford Center on Early Childhood in 2020, the RAPID initiative collects both national and placed-based data on the experiences, wellbeing, and needs of young children and the adults who care for them. The project is unique because it provides results and recommendations in real time, allowing policy makers, institutions, and communities to respond in a timely fashion.
I walked away from Lombardi’s presentation reminded that the issues most pressing in early childhood are the same issues all of us face, regardless of age or geography. In the face of political and financial uncertainty, it is critical that individuals and institutions find ways to mobilize resources that enable us to move toward addressing these issues together in our local communities, rather than denying their existence. Lombardi and others in the child policy world are working towards this goal no matter what the future holds.
Bess Pierre is a senior majoring in Public Policy with a minor in German and a Child Policy Research certificate. She is interested in improving child welfare and education systems through program evaluation and evidence-based implementation.