The science of love ❤️

2. The connection between love and learning: an interview with Isabelle Hau

As executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning at Stanford University, Isabelle Hau uses the latest advances in brain and learning sciences, data, and technology to develop more effective and equitable solutions for challenges faced by learners. Below is a condensed version of our interview. The full-length discussion is available here.

Can you speak about why you include “love” in the title of your book and why you see it as such an important cornerstone for early education?

Love is more than a feeling or an emotion. It’s an essential active force that shapes how we connect. Love is tied to the deep responsive relationships that fuel the brain, development, resilience, and lifelong well-being. We are born with billions of neurons, so I call all of us billionaires. But unlike animal species that can walk or feed themselves when they are born, we can’t. This means that, in the very early years of life, we need to have those neurons connect to help us learn these skills. This synaptic connection happens with relationships. This is how these neural pathways support learning, problem solving, emotional regulation, and resilience in young children from the start and then throughout life.

What is relational deprivation and how does it affect young children’s development?

In the science of relationships there’s research showing that greater parental nurturing in the early years has large positive effects on the brain, including on the size of the hippocampus, which is crucial for learning and other cognitive functions. The opposite is also true: When children are deprived of nurturing, loving relationships, negative effects on the brain occur.

In our society, what are some factors influencing the prevalence of relational deprivation?

I have concerns about what’s happening societally as the circles of relationships are contracting. For example, the number of single-child families has doubled over the past 30 years so there is less opportunity for a young child to have siblings. More than half of grandparents now have at least one grandchild that lives 200 miles away. Networks around young children tend to be smaller than they once were.

Parents experience societal stress — whether financial, as the cost of raising a child goes up, or the stress of work and how work permeates our personal lives through technology. These factors are hard to control at a family level but harm the quality of those relationships.

And there’s technology, which can be a force for good, but can also be a source of interference in relationships. On average in the U.S., people check their devices 205 times a day. Each time, there’s an opportunity for breaking a beautiful relationship with a young child. That’s deeply concerning not only because children may imitate our addictive phone behavior, but also because of the message we’re sharing with a young child that this device is more important than they are.

Despite the importance of early relationships, they’re often seen as “soft” measures of success. What can be done to shift that conversation so the value of early relationships is put on par with such “tangible” measurements as math or reading scores?

All of us know the concept of IQ. And over the past 20 plus years, there has been a rise, especially in the workplace, of the concept called emotional intelligence — EQ — which has nicely translated in education settings into social-emotional learning.

I’d  love to see a third concept introduced called relational intelligence, or RQ. There’s a chief economist at LinkedIn who has been vocal that he sees the future of our economy to be a relational one. There’s already discourse in the workplace about the need for collaboration skills and teamwork on a global basis. If we believe our future is relational economies — especially with artificial intelligence rising — we can connect it to the early childhood discussion expressing that relational intelligence will matter most in our future.

Studies show that mothers who had babies during the COVID pandemic had harder times with maternal-child bonding. How can we support mothers and fathers in these kinds of high-stress situations?

Research by Columbia University neuroscientist and pediatrician Dani Dumitriu tracked the emotional connection between moms and their infants during the early days of COVID. The data was sobering: Only 20% of infants and moms had a strong emotional connection.

But what troubled me more was that only 40% of infants and moms had a strong emotional connection before COVID.

In terms of interventions, the first one I’d mention is paid parental leave, as the U.S. is the only country among industrial nations not to have a national policy. Parental leave is a deeply researched area that shows it’s beneficial for the child, it reduces stress for the parent, and it has value for the workplace because companies with leave have greater retention of their workforce. Only 11 states have a paid parental leave program.

Ideally, we also need to provide more supports for parents through parental groups. I’m a huge fan of what the group healthcare model Centering does in this regard, where cohorts of parents get together both in the prenatal and postnatal periods. Parents learn from and support each other. Mental health is another big area where we need to support mothers, especially given the rates of postpartum depression.

Beyond relational intelligence, what should we be thinking about in early education settings?

We need to think more about play because play drives better relationships among little ones and adults too. States are starting to look at play as a priority, but only 40% are focused on play beyond the early settings. Free play has a lot of meaningful benefits but, by over-scheduling our kids, by eliminating recess, and overly focusing on academic activities in the early years, we’re eliminating those spaces for the brain and for normal development to occur.

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