?Parents must be supported to provide nurturing care to their children. Providing nurturing care does not only mean ensuring that they are healthy and well-nourished. It also means noticing, understanding, and responding to their needs—ensuring that they feel safe and out of harm's way, and providing them with simple and feasible early learning opportunities. This is the view of Kelly Gemmell from the Institute for Life Course Health Research in an opinion piece for the Weekend Argus in celebration of the Global Day of Parents on Sunday 1 June.
- Read the original article below or click here for the piece as published.
Kelly Gemmell*
From as early as conception, parents have profound influence over their children's development. Once a parent, this important responsibility never ends. Parenthood can be wonderful and rewarding but also challenging and fearsome.
Every year, on the 1st of June, we commemorate the Global Day of Parents to recognise and appreciate the vital role parents play in the lives of their children—and ultimately, in society. But why is the role of a parent so important? And what do South African parents need to fulfil it?
To develop to their full potential, all children need to be cared for and nurtured. Providing nurturing care does not only mean ensuring that they are healthy and well-nourished. It also means noticing, understanding, and responding to their needs—ensuring that they feel safe and out of harm's way, and providing them with simple and feasible early learning opportunities.
In the first years of life, parents and caregivers are the closest to the child and thus the best providers of this nurturing care. Nurturing care can be transformational, providing the environment necessary for optimal brain growth, including the formation of neural connections—the building blocks of learning and memory. Nurturing care provided by a loving and attentive parent enables a child to build relationships and develop a healthy sense of self-esteem.
In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), however, poverty and extreme adversities mean around 250 million (or around 40%) of children under five years are at risk of suboptimal development and stunted growth. We also know that in LMICs only 25% of children aged 3 and 4 years currently receive adequate nurturing care leaving them exposed to risks that jeopardise their healthy development.
Further, a child's need for nurturing care does not end when they reach the age of three years old. Attention should continue throughout middle childhood and into adolescence to consolidate gains made during earlier stages and address challenges encountered or associated with each period of development.
In South Africa, nearly 7 million children are under the age of 6. Of these children, 70% live in households with an income below R1,634 per person per month—the official “upper-bound" poverty line—and nearly 40% live in households that do not have enough income to provide for their basic nutritional needs.
Recently, the Thrive by Five Index reported that a staggering 57% of South African children attending an early learning programme fail to thrive by the age of five years old. This means they are not meeting age-appropriate milestones for their physical, cognitive, language or social and emotional development.
We know that massive inequalities persist in children's experiences of care in their first five years in South Africa, which leads to measurable disparities in their capabilities and potential. We know that most impoverished children face significant barriers to success before even entering school, impacting their long-term prospects and reinforcing cycles of poverty. When individual development and well-being is not promoted, lifelong and inter-generational benefits for families and communities could be lost, which in turn leads to a less productive and cohesive society.
Knowing about the importance of parenting and nurturing care is one thing. But being able to provide it, all of the time, is often unattainable and unrealistic. It is very difficult for many South African parents and families to provide adequate care for their young children when they are living in extreme poverty and face a daily struggle for survival. Many face unemployment and financial hardship, young parenthood, disability, family violence, race or ethnicity-based discrimination, substance abuse or maternal depression.
We know that these types of threats tend to cluster together, often in conjunction with insufficient service provision and social exclusion. Being exposed to one risk usually means being exposed to many.
While parents who understand the importance of parenting and child development are more likely to engage in nurturing, informed, and positive parenting practices, knowledge alone is not enough. Parents and caregivers are better able to provide the care that their children need when they are emotionally, financially and socially secure. They need to have the time and resources to look after themselves, and in so doing, be able to provide nurturing care for their children.
We know how to create the enabling environments parents need to provide nurturing care. Policies that encourage healthy environments and universal health coverage and international conventions concerned with peace, security and human rights have been ratified. Many individual countries' social protection systems protect families and individuals when they face economic and social adversity.
And workplace policies allow families time off work—or on-site facilities—to feed and care for young children. But much more must be done to ensure that children who are not receiving nurturing care—and their parents who are not able to provide it—are supported.
Country- and context-specific family-friendly policies, along with strong political will and the quality implementation of said policies, are needed. As it stands, South Africa's National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy (NIECD) Policy provides for an integrated and varied package of services needed during early childhood. The whole of the South African government and society must continue to work together towards creating a supportive and enabling environment to ensure that all children actually receive the full, and good quality, package of services as set out in the policy.
Even though we may not be able to imagine it right now, let's dream big and advocate for other huge wins for our country's parents and children. Wins such as sufficient paid leave for all our parents, mothers and fathers, working in both the formal and informal economies, so that they can meet the needs of their young children. Let's envision a society where mothers are supported to breastfeed exclusively—by improving work conditions, offering breastfeeding rooms, and investing in families so they can provide time and support to their young children.
Imagine a South Africa where parents could access quality and affordable childcare for their children to address their early learning needs as they develop and grow through their childhood.
It is a possibility. Let's make it happen.
*Kelly Gemmell is a researcher at the Institute for Life Course Health Research at Stellenbosch 中国体育彩票.
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