Music-Making as Public Health Infrastructure

The case for universal early childhood music access for children 0–7

Our thesis is that music-making is not enrichment: it is primary nourishment. In the first seven years of life—the window of greatest neural plasticity—active musical participation supports brain architecture in ways that no other intervention replicates. Independently of talent or performance, music-making supports child development.

The research is unambiguous: children who engage in music-making in early childhood develop measurably stronger cognitive, social, emotional, and linguistic foundations than those who do not.

One critical distinction: music as atmosphere—something played in the background—and music-making as participatory activity are two different things. The benefits described below are associated with active engagement: singing, moving, playing, and making sound in relationship with others.

How Music-Making Supports Early Childhood Development 0–7

• Neural development: Auditory cortex myelination—the maturation of the brain’s sound-processing pathways—continues until age four or five and remains highly plastic through age seven. Active musical engagement during this window accelerates this development and produces measurable structural differences in auditory brain architecture that persist into adulthood.
• Language acquisition: Music and language share neural architecture. Rhythm predicts phonological awareness; melody supports grammar development; melodic exposure in infancy predicts expressive vocabulary at eighteen months. Musical training measurably improves children’s ability to distinguish speech sounds—a foundational skill for speaking, reading and written communication.
• Emotional regulation: Infant-directed singing co-regulates the caregiver-child emotional system, reducing infant stress and building the neurological foundations for self-regulation. By the preschool years, children with consistent musical engagement show measurably greater capacity for emotional self-management and resilience.
• Social cognition and attachment: Rhythmic synchrony between caregiver and infant during music-making produces measurable coordination at physiological, hormonal, and neural levels. Infants as young as two months synchronize eye contact with the rhythmic beat of singing—a foundational mechanism for social communication. Shared musical engagement strengthens attachment bonding with an effect size comparable to other evidence-based early intervention programs.
• Executive function: Music training in early childhood strengthens connectivity between brain regions governing executive function—planning, decision-making, attention, and self-control. These gains transfer beyond music to academic and social contexts and are sustained into adulthood.

Who Is Most Exposed to the Deficit

The developmental benefits of early music-making are time-sensitive and universal. The deficit that follows their absence is not distributed equally.

• Low-income families: For-profit early childhood music programs price access at market rate, typically $20–40 per hour per child. Families navigating poverty, housing instability, or economic precarity are effectively excluded. The children who would benefit most are the children with the least access.
• Children in under-resourced schools: In BUSD, music is guaranteed from 3rd grade onward. For TK through 2nd grade, music programs “may look different at every school based on the school community’s arts priorities”—meaning PTA funding. Schools in lower-income neighborhoods have less of it. The gap in school-based music access compounds the gap in family access.
• Neurodivergent children: Standard early childhood programs—even well-intentioned ones—frequently carry implicit performance expectations that create barriers for children with sensory sensitivities, non-normative social engagement styles, or developmental differences. The deficit is not only economic–it is structural.
• Immigrant families outside their cultural communities: Musical tradition is a primary vehicle of intergenerational cultural transmission. Lullabies, songs, and participatory music-making carry language, memory, and relational identity across generations. Research on immigrant family acculturation consistently identifies the loss of community musical practice as a specific developmental and relational risk—weakening attachment, heritage language maintenance, and children’s sense of identity.
• Caregivers under stress: Music-making benefits caregivers as directly as it benefits children—reducing parental anxiety, increasing positive affect, and supporting the capacity for sensitive, attuned responsiveness. Caregivers navigating poverty, isolation, domestic stress, or the pressures of immigration are least likely to have access to the community musical environments that would support both them and their children.

The Infrastructure Conclusion

• Music-making in early childhood meets every criterion we use to justify public investment in other developmental supports: it is time-sensitive, with a developmental window that closes; it is inequitably distributed by income, school assignment, and cultural circumstance; and its absence produces measurable deficits with long-term developmental consequences.
• We fund public libraries because literacy matters and access should not depend on the ability to pay. We fund parks because children need to move and play in community. We fund early childhood health clinics because the first years of life are the years that shape everything that follows.
• The case for music-making as public health infrastructure is independent of music’s place in the arts. It is about human development, equity, and the cost of not giving children access to a fundamental need in the years when it matters most.

Sources

1. Skoe, E. & Kraus, N. (2013). Musical training heightens auditory brainstem function during sensitive periods in development. Frontiers in Psychology. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00622/full
2. Skoe, E. & Kraus, N. (2012). A little goes a long way: How the adult brain is shaped by musical training in childhood. Journal of Neuroscience. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/32/34/11507
3. Moore, J.K. & Linthicum, F.H. (2007). The human auditory system: A timeline of development. International Journal of Audiology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17828669/
4. USC Brain and Creativity Institute / Habibi, A. et al. (2016). Children’s brains develop faster with music training. USC Today. https://today.usc.edu/childrens-brains-develop-faster-with-music-training/

Language Acquisition

5. Politimou, N. et al. (2023). The association between music and language in children: A state-of-the-art review. Brain Sciences / PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10216937/
6. Lense, M. et al. (2022). Sensitivity to musical rhythm supports social development in infants. Vanderbilt University Medical Center. https://news.vumc.org/2022/11/03/study-finds-sensitivity-to-musical-rhythm-supports-social-development-in-infants/

Emotional Regulation and Attachment

7. Cirelli, L.K. et al. (2023). Early social communication through music: State of the art and future perspectives. PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10407289/
8. Paluck, C. et al. (2022). Systematic review of music interventions to support parent–child attachment. Journal of Music Therapy, Oxford Academic. https://academic.oup.com/jmt/article/59/4/430/7095549
9. Sena Moore, K. & Hanson-Abromeit, D. (2025). A theory of intervention model to define the essential characteristics of music to support emotion regulation development in early childhood. Frontiers in Neuroscience. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2025.1568789/full

Executive Function

10. How musical training affects cognitive development: Rhythm, reward and other modulating variables (2014). . PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3957486/

Immigrant Families and Cultural Transmission

11. Garrido, S. et al. (2021). The role of songs in intergenerational transmission. Carleton University. https://carleton.scholaris.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/a5a3b299-15ca-465c-93fb-80af7d936b2d/content
12. Benish-Weisman, M. et al. (2017). Youth as contested sites of culture: The intergenerational acculturation gap amongst new migrant communities. PLOS One. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0170700
13. Mchitarjan, I. et al. (2020). Intergenerational transmission of cultural socialization and effects on young children’s developmental competencies among Mexican-origin families. PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7009007/

BUSD Music Program Documentation

14. Berkeley Unified School District (2025). Music Department — program overview and grade-level commitments. BUSD VAPA. https://www.berkeleyschools.net/vapa/music/