When new parents, especially mothers, have a strong social network of friends to support them, their toddlers score better on cognitive tests than those with a smaller social network, researchers from the United States have found.

Bans on smoking inside aren’t doing as much to protect children as previously thought, researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre, and the University of Cincinnati have found, showing the lingering nicotine on the fingers of smokers is placing children at risk.

US-based researcher, Robert Carr, along with researchers from the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, has found that higher quality learning environments in the years before school are associated with ongoing high levels in children’s language and literacy skills, regardless of the quality of the school-based classrooms they went on to learn in.

A new study of 198 two and three year olds engaged in early learning in Canada has found that children who both bully and are themselves bullied are more likely to show signs of childhood depression, and are more likely to experience depression later in life.

Working women face a negative effect on their careers as they grow their families, while being seen as bringing skills to the workplace that can actually make them the best leaders, the US-based Bright Horizons’ fifth-annual Modern Family Index (MFI) has found.