How important are healthy relationships for children?
A psychologist and a developmental neuroscientist explore the impact of relationships on children’s development
Positive relationships with caregivers and friends support children’s development and mental health. Children build relationships in and outside of the family using skills they learn from other people. Scientists from two different disciplines draw from their research expertise to explain, from their perspectives, how healthy relationships are formed. What does a developmental psychologist have to say? And what is the perspective of a developmental neuroscientist?
A developmental psychologist’s perspective on the importance of healthy relationships for children – Laura Bechtiger
Development unfolds through complex links between biology, emotional and cognitive psychology, society, and the wider environment. The exact influence of each of these factors is not fully understood. However, decades of research have consistently shown that supportive relationships are a key pillar of child development. Supportive relationships contribute to children’s healthy development and have a positive effect on their physical health in adulthood. They can also help guard against mental health problems and substance use.
“Decades of research have consistently shown that supportive relationships are a key pillar of child development.”
Laura Bechtiger
Parental wellbeing and mental health
Parents who are sensitive to their children’s needs lay the foundation for children’s development and wellbeing, with longer-term consequences into adolescence and young adulthood. Parental wellbeing and mental health are associated with more supportive parent-child relationships: Parents who experience high levels of stress and depressive symptoms are less likely to be sensitive to their children’s needs, more likely to respond harshly when children misbehave, and more apt to struggle with the myriad tasks required of parents of young children. Reducing parental stress and depressive symptoms not only improves parents’ own wellbeing, but also leads to more supportive parenting behavior.
Peer relationships
As children enter school, relationships with peers become more important. By adolescence, friendships become key sources of emotional support. Adolescent friendships characterized by mutual trust and intimate self-disclosure teach children foundational socioemotional skills, such as recognizing others’ emotions. This further develops their ability to feel sympathy, take others’ perspectives, and resolve conflicts. The quality of adolescent friendships is associated with wellbeing in adulthood. For example, those who enjoy high-quality friendships in adolescence tend to have higher quality intimate and romantic relationships later on. They can also enjoy a higher level of wellbeing more generally, including mental and even physical health. However, the underlying developmental processes linking supportive friendships with adult mental and physical health have not been well studied. We don’t fully understand why supportive adolescent friendships are linked to adult health.
“The quality of adolescent friendships is associated with wellbeing in adulthood.”
Laura Bechtiger
Changing relationships
As children grow up, different relationships take on different levels of importance, although all types of positive relationships continue to be relevant throughout childhood and adolescence. Even as peer and friend relationships become central sources of adolescent wellbeing, a positive and supportive parent-child relationship remains important for adolescent development, wellbeing, and mental health. Of course, the features of friendships change from childhood to adolescence, as do the features of the parent-child relationship – being sensitive to a child’s needs means something different in infancy than in adolescence. Relationships and their dynamics are constantly changing depending on the needs of the individuals and external circumstances. There is no one right way to be a good parent or a good friend.
A developmental neuroscientist’s perspective on the importance of healthy relationships for children – Plamina Dimanova
We spend our lives interacting with others. Good relationships with family, friends, and peers are important for our mental health, especially during childhood. To build good relationships, we rely on a set of socioemotional skills to successfully communicate with different people and navigate diverse contexts. We use these socioemotional skills to recognize, understand, and express emotions, so that we can engage in social interactions appropriately and evoke desired reactions in others. Socioemotional skills start developing early in life, paralleling brain development.
The building blocks of mentalizing
Mentalizing – or an individual’s perspective-taking ability – is one socioemotional skill that starts developing at an early age. Yet, mastering it takes years. Mentalizing allows children an understanding of their own and others’ feelings, thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions. Mentalizing is a complex process, and most children gradually develop the various abilities that serve as building blocks of mentalizing. In infancy, for example, children learn to recognize faces, and to share attention by looking at an object at the same time as someone else. In early childhood, they acquire language and become better at remembering things. These skills and many others help them make increasingly complex inferences about others’ thoughts and feelings.
Neuroscientists are able to observe mentalizing-related brain activity in children as young as three years old. However, the network of brain areas involved in mentalizing becomes more specialized with age, building a scaffold for many social skills, such as social decision making, that develop later on.
Positive relationships with caregivers
Early positive interactions between a caregiver and a child help the child successfully navigate social contexts and build healthy social bonds. If early relationships are positive and adaptive, the child has a better chance of forming and maintaining friendships and developing good relations and partnerships later in life. For example, children who experience warm, supportive relationships with their parents are more likely to build high quality relationships with peers and romantic partners later in life.
“Children who experience warm, supportive relationships with their parents are more likely to build high quality relationships with peers and romantic partners later in life.”
Plamina Dimanova
Children with a stronger bond to their mothers are better able to regulate their emotions when they are in the mother’s presence. As they control their emotions, these children exhibit more mature brain activation in the amygdala, a region of the brain that is crucial in emotion processing. The parent-child relationship is particularly influential early in life, but remains important during the formative adolescent years. Parents and adolescents who feel more connected to each other are often similar in their response to stress. This can be observed in behavior and brain activation and is ultimately linked to better mental wellbeing.
Forming social bonds outside the family
As children grow up and expand their social networks, relationships beyond the immediate family become more important. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, young people who were able to meet up with their friends reported being in a better mood. When adolescents look at pictures of close friends, brain activity in the ventral striatum, a key region of the reward system, is stronger than when they look at pictures of people they dislike or feel neutral towards. In other words, adolescents feel rewarded when they see their friends. Strong bonds with, and strong social support from, peers may serve as a stress buffer during adolescence.
Strong and healthy social bonds with family members and friends, as well as a sense of close connection and support, are important for our wellbeing. To build these connections we rely on our socioemotional skills, which begin to develop early in life. Socioemotional skills are shaped by children’s and adolescents’ experiences and biologically embedded in the brain.
Footnotes
This article is part of a series on the science of growing up, in collaboration with the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development. BOLD asked the Center’s scientists to answer some big questions about how adults can help kids thrive.
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