Giving Compass' Take:

• Linda Jacobson reports that a documentary entitled “No Small Matter” offers insights into the importance of early childhood for growth, and the barriers that prevent parents from giving their children the best possible experience. 

• How can funders help ensure that parents can provide what their children need to thrive? 

• Learn how child care can function as an economic driver. 

In connection with early-childhood advocacy campaigns linked to governor’s races, the producers of a new documentary film about young children’s learning and development will hold screening events in California and Ohio over a few weeks starting in September.

“No Small Matter” calls early-childhood a “a grown-up issue,” and recounts what researchers have learned about early brain development and the value of parent-child interaction from birth onward.

But the film also features the lives of children and families to show the increasing struggles some parents face in finding time to spend with their kids during their younger years.

“The good news is we know what kids need to thrive,” says the narrator. “The bad news: we’re making it harder and harder for parents to give it to them.”

The film, which runs a little over an hour, includes parents working multiple jobs to afford child care — and feeling bad that they have to leave their children — and a mother who benefits from a parent education program in Waco, Texas. It also covers challenges facing early-childhood educators, including a preschool teacher in the “yellow room” at a center in Highland Park, Illinois, who works a second job as a bartender and decides to return to school to finish a master’s degree.

Read the full article about early childhood by Linda Jacobson at Education Dive.