New Paper: Changing Families, a Changing Planet, and Impacts on Young Children

In a new paper for Capita, Katie King, Director of Strategic Foresight Engagement at KnowledgeWorks and principal author of Foundations for Flourishing Futures: A Look Ahead for Young Children and Families, argues that young children’s connections to other people and to their hometowns, states, and countries are in flux due to shifting family structures and climate change.

Idea in Brief

• Children will live in and among many types of families. But the ways in which these shifts will affect how children understand the bounds of family, form relationships with adults within and beyond their families, and go on to eventually form their own families have yet to be seen. 

• Children need stable environments for healthy development and thriving. The negative effects associated with the trauma of natural disasters are clear, and the future will hold more of these types of events that will too often intersect with other challenges that already-marginalized yet resilient young children and families face.

• In the future, children will need to be able to find a home in new neighborhoods and alongside a variety of people. They also need leaders willing to anticipate the realities in which they will live and courageously create the conditions that will help them flourish.