The greatest gift a parent can give to their child in the early years is not money or things, but time. In our culture of endless deadlines and rising costs, many mothers and fathers feel forced to trade presence for provision.

Developmental experts say that the first thousand days, from pregnancy to age two, are a once-in-a-lifetime window for building brain architecture. The United Nations Children's Fund calls this: “a unique period of opportunity when the foundations for optimum health and development across the lifespan are established.” When parents are available, babies learn to trust, regulate emotion, and explore the world with confidence. Those early gains compound for decades.

Economists have joined the chorus. Nobel laureate James Heckman has shown that early investment in children yields the highest returns of any social spending, with studies suggesting that when parents prioritise spending time with their children, they are set up for successful careers. In plain terms, every extra hour of bedtime stories, unhurried meals, and comfort during tears is not only forming character but also fuelling tomorrow’s workforce.

South African researcher Linda Richter has warned that children with weak starts face: “differences…established early, [that] widen quickly and become harder to bridge as time progresses.”

No school or programme can fully repair the absence of a caregiver’s presence in those fragile first years. The cost of that neglect is felt in classrooms where children arrive already behind, and in workplaces where the next generation lacks resilience.