A Guide to Stability
Developmental Environments
Beginning before birth, children’s health and development are shaped by their developmental environment—the full range of experiences and exposures they encounter in the places where they live, grow, play, and learn. Promoting stability across this web of interconnected influences can be a powerful tool for supporting early development and lifelong health. When the expected patterns in a young child’s life are frequently disrupted—through changes in housing, income, caregiving, or community conditions—it can negatively affect developing brain architecture and other biological systems.
While any family can experience instability, longstanding inequities have created an unfair distribution of both adversity and opportunity across communities, increasing the likelihood that some children face ongoing disruption. Evidence shows that when children encounter instability, stabilizing their situations leads to improvements in behavior, as well as in cognitive and emotional development. To help our children and communities thrive now and across generations, it is essential that we make policy decisions that preserve and enhance stability for children and their caregivers.
Explore the resources in this guide to learn how stability shapes early childhood development and to find strategies to create, maintain, and restore stable developmental environments for children and their caregivers.
