World Health Organization research shows that early childhood experiences have a profound impact on lifelong health, learning, and behavior. The early years lay the foundation for a person’s life. Childhood is a crucial period for personality formation, as children feel, learn, discover, imitate patterns, and absorb messages about the world, others, and —most importantly— themselves through their parents’ words, interactions, and behavior.
According to childhood and adolescent neuropsychologist Marcilei Marques Trovão Paula, the family structure is the child’s foundation of security, and parents are the child’s entire world until around the age of ten. She further argues that a child is born loving, compassionate, and completely dependent on parents and/or caregivers. This co-dependence in the parent-child relationship creates situations that can be either healthy or devastating: the deepest traumas often occur in childhood and echo throughout a person’s entire life.
When a child is supported, assisted in their needs, respected, and loved, development occurs in a “calm and natural” way; however, when the family environment is hostile, toxic, violent, and unsafe, the child enters a state of fight or flight in order to survive. “The impact of this can be catastrophic; a wounded child wounds,” Marcilei notes. This violation of expectations can have harmful consequences not only for the child, but also for the wounded adult they may become, and for society as a whole.
British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory studies early emotional bonds between a child and caregiver and how those relationships guide them through adulthood. Individuals exposed to neglect, abuse, or unstable caregiving environments are more likely to develop insecure attachment patterns and are prone to struggle with delinquency, reduced intelligence, increased aggression, depression and poor impulse control.
Marcilei portrays the child as a “product of their parents”. Thus, a family that enables academic opportunities and guarantees healthy development will obtain positive results that will benefit society as a whole. However, when the parents don’t fight for the child’s rights and neglect their needs, we as a community feel it too. Countries that prioritize children’s well-being and social support systems often experience higher levels of life satisfaction among citizens.
Finland, for example, has ranked as the world’s happiest country for multiple consecutive years based on factors such as social support, freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption. These findings suggest that long-term investment in human development contributes not only to individual well-being but also to societal stability and prosperity.
Marcilei mentions the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child”, which reinforces the idea that child protection and development don’t rely only on family dynamics but on a broader care network. We are all responsible, direct or indirectly, for all the children around us.
This is reinforced through public policies such as Brazil’s Child and Adolescent Statute (ECA), an initiative that recognizes children and adolescents as subjects of rights and establishes the principle of full protection, ensuring access to healthcare, education, nutrition, housing and safety while safeguarding them from neglect, abuse and exploitation.
In conclusion, tomorrow’s citizen is today’s child. For this reason, early childhood represents a decisive period whose effects echo throughout life, shaping how individuals perceive themselves, others, and the world around them. Investing in effective public policies in the present is therefore not only necessary, but urgent.
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The article above was edited by Julia Galoro.
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