14 ms·

Childhood Adversity Linked to Earlier Puberty, Premature Brain Development

120 points by conse_lad 7y ago

ganzuul 7y ago
Don't judge them too harshly. They may have done much better than what their parents managed in turn, and not too long ago food and shelter was all that people had time for. I don't think Western society is ready to bring up children without some kind of major problem for decades still. School kids right now commonly suffer from existential crisis due to climate change.
- tsss 7y ago
  They should judge them harshly. If you are unfit as a parent, then you shouldn't have children. It's that simple.
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    It's not like you can just tell if you're fit.
    - TomMarius 7y ago
      You can tell that you're fit after you've attended classes, had talks with parental psychologists etc. There are many ways to confirm, and in most nations these societal "tools" are completely free of charge. Can you tell if you can drive a car when you've never tried? Maybe you will sit into the car and it will just click. Maybe not - that's why you don't just go but first go to a driver school to learn. And even the notion that driving is more complex than parenting seems absurd, so going to a parenting school should absolutely be required.
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        > You can tell that you're fit after you've attended classes, had talks with parental psychologists etc. There are many ways to confirm, and in most nations these societal "tools" are completely free of charge. A couple classes don't say much. Talking with a psychologist for an extended period might work, but that's quite a leap to expect; currently an analysis like that is relevant to almost nobody. > Can you tell if you can drive a car when you've never tried? Maybe you will sit into the car and it will just click. Maybe not - that's why you don't just go but first go to a driver school to learn. Learning a straightforward skill is not at all like testing if you're fit to handle an extremely difficult long-term stressful trial. The equivalent is more like saying "I could learn to drive a car within five years." Which, you'll notice, is not even a challenge for 99% of people. The general population does not need to preemptively check if they're fit to be a car driver, the answer is just 'yes'. You can take classes on how to raise a child before/after they're born. That's the easy part! It doesn't tell you if you're "fit" or not.
        TomMarius 7y ago
        > A couple classes don't say much. Talking with a psychologist for an extended period might work, but that's quite a leap to expect; currently an analysis like that is relevant to almost nobody. Then we should find out if it is worth it and if so, start doing it ASAP. Children are not something new parents should be experimenting on. Early child development is so important and yet is treated as if it was nothing, we still don't even have a school class focusing on parenting.
  - draw_down 7y ago
    The world is a simple place, when this is your way of thinking.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  > School kids right now commonly suffer from existential crisis due to climate change. Wait, what? You can’t just drop that one in there at the end without some follow up! I know Climate Change is the current boogeyman that’s causing all sorts of bad things, but now it’s causing mental health problems? Is there anything Climate Change can’t do?
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    It's not a "boogeyman". The boogeyman isn't real. Climate change is. We are currently on track to destroy this world within the lifetimes of people who are already born.
    - sockpuppet999 7y ago
      When you say "we" are on track to destroy this world .it seems to me that you are denying the geological record that shows climate change is a given.our weather systems and our planets atmospheric chemistry has never been stable. I'm not going to drop links attempting to argue my point as you seem to have made up your mind. I will say I'm concerned about the planets rapidly changing atmospheric chemistry but, according to the " accepted " geological record it has changed so many times in 4.6 billion years that for me to take the current " Sky is falling because we broke it" talking points is just a non starter. I really appreciate the ppl doing modern science in this area but it, to me is just pointing out obvious things. Our species has the privelige of harnessing these natural resources provided to us. and yes there are negative effects of using these resources, Along with a lot of positive ones( like being able to discuss this issue with ppl all over the planet in real time) The world will not be destroyed only changed- and change is the only thing that remains constant
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        The planet will be fine in the long run. The current ecosystem, and its ability to sustain as many people as it is currently, will not be. Yes, the Earth has changed a lot over the past 4.6 billion years, including many instances in which the majority of extant species suffered huge die-offs and went extinct. We are currently causing this to happen again, which will be bad for us as well for most other species. Why would we do so when we could instead not do so? Unlike the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and previous catastrophes of the past, this one is of our own making, and is within our power to prevent. Why would you be so blase about allowing it to happen when we could NOT have it happen? We'll all be far worse off for it having happened.
- dang 7y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067793 and marked it off-topic.
nashashmi 7y ago
There is something funny about the way this article portrays early brain development. Ask families with relatives in lean world countries who visit those countries often and they will tell you that those kids mature far more quickly than the kids here. And they see it as a positive impact. And lament how children in America do not mature as quickly. Foreign kids who come here to study do better than the kids who are from here. Yet adversity in the article is portrayed negatively. And further, faster brain development is portrayed negatively. Then early puberty is portrayed negatively. And it is all tied together with the statement that there is more depression, anxiety and psychosis. Mind you but those traumatic experiences become so when you are taken from a world of high stress where everyone grows up like you do to a world more relaxed where people are different from you. Think PTSD soldiers finding it difficult to live at home. But ok to live back in war country. Think martial arts training you to be defensive and then going back to a world with only peace. It is not the high stress that causes the trauma but rather how different life becomes when you change gears back to peace. I will always remember the quote from the Walking Dead. Until war is over, we are just walking dead.
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  > Yet adversity in the article is portrayed negatively. Well, there is "adversity", and there is the sexual abuse and other trauma that the article is talking about.
  - nashashmi 7y ago
    I don't find that in the article. It keeps mentioning poverty and socioeconomic conditions and refugee situations.
    - sn9 7y ago
      >Growing up in poverty and experiencing traumatic events like a bad accident or sexual assault can impact brain development and behavior in children and young adults. It's literally the first line.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
kuzehanka 7y ago
Why is it 'premature' brain development? This seems to have picked a particular lens to interpret the results. I grew up in a European country and moved to a developed western nation at age 10. The first few years of school were a really jarring experience because the kids in my class were infantile and mentally under-developed compared to where I came from. This was also reflected in a huge gap in curriculum, we were covering skills that were taught 2-3 years earlier where I came from. Parents in western nations infantalise their children and prevent them from developing autonomy/responsibility for far too long. It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home. A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  >it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home W-what? I remember babysitting my 6 year old brother since the age of 8 while my parents were working.
- Sharlin 7y ago
  > It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home. That certainly sounds ridiculous, speaking as someone born and raised in a developed western nation.
  - kuzehanka 7y ago
    "If a person who has the lawful care or charge of a child under 12 years, leaves the child for an unreasonable time without making reasonable provision for the supervision and care of the child commits a misdemeanour. Maximum penalty – 3 years imprisonment." Legislation: Queensland Criminal Code Act 1899 (QLD) - Section 364A
    - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nabla9 7y ago
Childhood adversity and abuse has been linked to decreased trust, low impulse control, violence, learning problems, promiscuous sexual behaviour etc. before. One way to look at this is damage caused by stress and stress hormones. Some of the traits above may be evolutionary adaption strategy. Growing in chronic stress environment requires different traits. The limbic system may have plan B when it's flooded with stress hormones constantly. Long term thinking and planning is less valuable when the life expectancy is low.
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  "One way to look at this is damage caused by stress and stress hormones" Another way is simply learning by example. "Daddy said don't ever trust nobody, they always tryin' to get ya" (and maybe it's true in some communities) ... well it makes sense. Or else "My father always said to just trust people, and they'll trust you back" - which also may be true for other communities. The variables: physical/genetic, family experience, and community experience I think all add up. I don't have the ref by I remember reading that poor kids who simply moved to a 'better neighbourhood' did a lot better in life, normalizing for everything else.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - nabla9 7y ago
    Learning is not just mental process that changes the arrangement of neurons. It can cause epigenetic changes. Inflammation persisting up to adulthood might be learned from example. They may be mitotically and/or meiotically heritable at least to some degree. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dvdy.24211 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dvdy.24211
    - scotty79 7y ago
      During brain development synaptic pruning takes place. Huge part of child's brain just dies out. If the child has this process accelerated due to hardships, or is in the environment not stimulating enough to help brain to decide which neurons to kill ... it's just horrible to think about.
nudq 7y ago
> The racially and economically diverse cohort We already know that the races differ in speed of maturation and various measures of adversity. Was race controlled for? (Paper is paywalled for me.)
Questionmarkme 7y ago
This is very culturally specific. Childhood itself is a social construct, some cultures treat childhood very differently with various outcomes. It seems that this is one interpretation of the study results and by no means applicable to children globally. Psychology parades as a science of humanity, but in reality results are often strictly limited to the sample or population of interest. 'abnormal' development in place A may be normal in place B. Or normal under circumstance X. Researchers do their best to make sense of their data within their own cultural framework of thinking and experience. It makes sense for difficult experience to mature the brain, that's how our neural networks strengthen. It makes sense to develop in response to adversity in order to overcome it again in the future. I would suspect the links to mental health conditions are due to another culturally constructed aspect of Western society. I.e. Mental unwellness is as much to do with how people respond to us as it is to do with any difference in brain function. The social world shapes our brain. If I withdraw from society for a while that may change some of my brain function but when I stop withdrawing and someone treats me a certain way that has another influence on my brain function. This latter influence may well be more influential that the effect of my original withdrawal. Therefore it's often difficult to firmly state that a difference in brain structure or function is due to X, when X is intrinsically related to Y, Z (and the whole alphabet). We know that adversity is linked to mental health and therefore it must be related to brain changes. What we don't know is how exactly.if this is a beneficial evolutionary response - probably - that is almost inappropriate to a western society then it's not the evolutionary response that is problematic, it's the societal response to it.
themgt 7y ago
My layman's impression from paying some attention to psych/neuroscience is that there's an increased amount of scrutiny/skepticism towards this type of study which (afaict) fails to take into account potential genetic confounding while the authors describe the discovered correlations in causal terms. We can be nearly certain that SES and TES are significantly heritable. Without accounting for that innate heritability, how can they say to what degree the outcomes are the result of circumstances/events?
- RubberbandSoul 7y ago
  I think they usually use twin studies to try to compensate for heritability but I couldn't find any mention of it in the article.
  - sambe 7y ago
    I think they usually _don’t_ use twin studies because they are harder/more expensive. In this case they used the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort: https://www.med.upenn.edu/bbl/philadelphianeurodevelopmentalcohort.html https://www.med.upenn.edu/bbl/philadelphianeurodevelopmental... I don’t see any mention of twins here or on JAMA, although I can’t access the full text currently.
- ordu 7y ago
  This article even worse then just correlational research. It doesn't say anything new what you couldn't guess in advance. When speaking about psychological research describing correlations and saying nothing new, it is a sign of zero scientific value of the article. Not really zero, because a confirmation of the common tribal knowledge have its value, but not much. There are questions I'd like to ask and to know answers. For example, how the parenting style affects post-effects of adversities in a childhood. Is it possible to overcome negative impact with a parenting style? Maybe it is possible to get all the good effects (like faster development of a child) while avoiding bad ones? Is there a link between parenting style and adversities? If it is a causal link than what direction it have? How the direction of a link affects development of a child? Did adversities led child to feel himself not like his peers and if they did, what the impact it had? Maybe if we gather children with a similar issues and show them that they are not alone it would help? Or maybe it is better to keep child in a diverse environment? Does the answer depends on a kind of adversity? These questions are the first that came to my mind. I could pose a few more if I thought a little longer. But the article doesn't try to answer these question, it just states the stupid correlation which anyone know without any article.
posbehsf 7y ago
It took me into my late 20s to realize that I had a traumatic childhood. The thing is I did not grow up in a poor or abusive household. I grew up in an upper middle class family that looked extremely normal, and for a long time believed it myself, until I started wondering why I had since jr high felt acutely depressed, empty, and unable to hold on to meaningful relationships. Only a few years ago did I realize that both my parents were emotionally neglectful and did not validate my emotions at all growing up, and did not act or behave in a way that seemed like they were even aware that emotional care and validation of their child is at the core of good parenting, and not just feeding them and putting a roof over their head. It explained a lot about how I act today, and why I became very independent at an early age. I continue to struggle with feelings of emptiness, depersonalization, emotional numbness. It sucks to feel like you cannot escape your childhood even as a grown adult.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- overton 7y ago
  I relate to this story personally. Wish you the best, and here are some resources that have helped me: - after many failed attempts doing CBT and mindfulness based therapy, doing psychodynamic psychotherapy with a therapist who takes relationships and trauma seriously - "Complex PTSD: From surviving to Thriving" (Pete Walker) - "The Tao of Fully Feeling" (Pete Walker) - "Treating Adult Survivors of Emotional Abuse and Neglect" (Hopper/Grossman/Spinazzola/Zucker) - "Adult children of emotionally immature parents" (Gibson)
  - eee_honda 7y ago
    Would also recommend Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk's lengthy tome, "The Body Keeps The Score". Been recommended on HN several times before (including once by me, I think). Haven't checked out some of these other titles (only know of pete walker, loving "From Surviving To Thriving"), thanks. Do you know about EMDR? Worth looking into, IMO.
- hoorayimhelping 7y ago
Mary-Jane 7y ago
"The study suggests that it makes sense for parents and anyone involved in raising a child to try and shield or protect the child from exposure to adversity." I'm sorry, this is just silly. Prior to the industrial revolution, low SES and high TES were normal; life was hardship and adversity. Think about that: humans have been around for about 200,000 years - that's a lot of generations of f'ed up kids. How did we ever survive?
- TelmoMenezes 7y ago
  > life was hardship and adversity Life was certainly hard in ways that it is not now, but it was definitely hard in the precise ways that we evolved to cope with. You had to worry a lot about obtaining food and shelter, and protecting yourself from predators and enemy tribes. You also had vast amounts of time for playing, contemplating, dancing, cooking, having sex, drinking some of the weird concoctions made by the local shaman that made you see things differently. All of this. I am not sure I would be able to forego antibiotics, anesthesia and modern medicine in general, but for those not assuming this, I wonder how nice or lives of 24/7 stress and isolation would look like to our more primitive ancestors. Our lives are potentially longer, but are they more worth living? I'm not pretending to have an answer, but I do think the question is valid.
- Hendrikto 7y ago
  > The study suggests that it makes sense for parents and anyone involved in raising a child to try and shield or protect the child from exposure to adversity. I have repeatedly witnessed parents doing this, and their children inevitable became incapable entitled brats.
  - scotty79 7y ago
    But when they turn out 30 they might just figure out how to make the cancer medicine you'll need by then. The goal of raising children is not having good children but having good adults.
- martindbp 7y ago
  Could be that there is a kind of developmental switch. If life is tough as a child, it makes sense to speed up development to improve odds of survival. If you find yourself in a safe, loving and caring place, then you have the option of spending more time and energy developing the brain. > life was hardship and adversity Not necessarily. Many argue that hunters and gatherers lived a much better life than during most of recorded history. There is plenty of evidence for this. It's entirely possible that a child would find itself in a small, well functioning group of people, without any major adversity during childhood.
mellowdream 7y ago
Early puberty is linked to shorter adult height. A vicious cycle of poor genetic profiles eliminating themselves via offspring from the gene pool after natural selection?
- kwcts 7y ago
  Shorter adult height is a death sentence for a man in the modern times. So yes.
new2628 7y ago
I don't know how to put it politely, but you may be creating a problem out of nothing. If you didn't know you had a traumatic childhood, then most likely you didn't have one. No families are perfect and most parents try to do best they can, occasionally failing. Growing up is not without problems, and things turn out mostly OK most of the time. Not knowing your specifics it sounds like you try to find someone to blame and try to find some exotic condition you can identify with. " did not validate my emotions at all growing up " -- what about giving life to you and feeding you though? What does "validating emotions" even mean. I encourage you to let this resentment go and move on with life.
- muterad_murilax 7y ago
  "What does 'validating emotions' even mean?" To an empathic person, that should be pretty obvious...
- 0815test 7y ago
  > What does "validating emotions" even mean. It's a bit of a misnomer for the process of explicitly acknowledging the emotions that someone else might be feeling, trying to understand the causes of that inner feeling, and prioritizing that acknowledgement and understanding over any subsequent claims as to whether that emotion is unjustified. Saying things like "You're wrong to feel X, because Y!" is corrosive to trust; it leaves our counterparty in doubt as to whether we even care in the least that they felt X in the first place, or might care in the future about any similar situation. "Validating" X means explicitly giving up that option of attacking their feelings in such strong terms - as such, it's a subtle part of day-to-day diplomacy, especially among people who don't trust each other all that much! And the good part is that, once one has achieved that validation, talking effectively about Y only becomes all-the-easier! Added - do you think that children always trust their parents to pursue something close to their best interest, and to never victimize them? Parent-on-child abuse of various sorts is a thing, too. And the parent-child relationship doesn't even start off with that kind of trust. Many kids routinely engage in what we would regard as e.g. pathological lying and gaslighting, if adults did the same thing; we only get to think of such behavior as humorous because they aren't very good at it. They do generally grow out of such things as their moral development leads them to internalize the notions of affective empathy and, yes, trust.
armenarmen 7y ago
Is this linked to relative poverty? Being the poor kid in a rich neighborhood/country? Or real "there isn't enough food today" style poverty
scotty79 7y ago
I have a sad feeling that what we called adult brain is just hollowed out, scarred husk of desirable human brain and people who really develop our technology (and in result society) are mostly individuals that by some genetic and environmental accident managed to retain bits of their child brains.

120 points by conse_lad 7y ago

Don't judge them too harshly. They may have done much better than what their parents managed in turn, and not too long ago food and shelter was all that people had time for. I don't think Western society is ready to bring up children without some kind of major problem for decades still. School kids right now commonly suffer from existential crisis due to climate change.

tsss 7y ago
They should judge them harshly. If you are unfit as a parent, then you shouldn't have children. It's that simple.
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  It's not like you can just tell if you're fit.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    You can tell that you're fit after you've attended classes, had talks with parental psychologists etc. There are many ways to confirm, and in most nations these societal "tools" are completely free of charge. Can you tell if you can drive a car when you've never tried? Maybe you will sit into the car and it will just click. Maybe not - that's why you don't just go but first go to a driver school to learn. And even the notion that driving is more complex than parenting seems absurd, so going to a parenting school should absolutely be required.
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      > You can tell that you're fit after you've attended classes, had talks with parental psychologists etc. There are many ways to confirm, and in most nations these societal "tools" are completely free of charge. A couple classes don't say much. Talking with a psychologist for an extended period might work, but that's quite a leap to expect; currently an analysis like that is relevant to almost nobody. > Can you tell if you can drive a car when you've never tried? Maybe you will sit into the car and it will just click. Maybe not - that's why you don't just go but first go to a driver school to learn. Learning a straightforward skill is not at all like testing if you're fit to handle an extremely difficult long-term stressful trial. The equivalent is more like saying "I could learn to drive a car within five years." Which, you'll notice, is not even a challenge for 99% of people. The general population does not need to preemptively check if they're fit to be a car driver, the answer is just 'yes'. You can take classes on how to raise a child before/after they're born. That's the easy part! It doesn't tell you if you're "fit" or not.
      - TomMarius 7y ago
        > A couple classes don't say much. Talking with a psychologist for an extended period might work, but that's quite a leap to expect; currently an analysis like that is relevant to almost nobody. Then we should find out if it is worth it and if so, start doing it ASAP. Children are not something new parents should be experimenting on. Early child development is so important and yet is treated as if it was nothing, we still don't even have a school class focusing on parenting.
- draw_down 7y ago
  The world is a simple place, when this is your way of thinking.
ryandrake 7y ago
> School kids right now commonly suffer from existential crisis due to climate change. Wait, what? You can’t just drop that one in there at the end without some follow up! I know Climate Change is the current boogeyman that’s causing all sorts of bad things, but now it’s causing mental health problems? Is there anything Climate Change can’t do?
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  It's not a "boogeyman". The boogeyman isn't real. Climate change is. We are currently on track to destroy this world within the lifetimes of people who are already born.
  - sockpuppet999 7y ago
    When you say "we" are on track to destroy this world .it seems to me that you are denying the geological record that shows climate change is a given.our weather systems and our planets atmospheric chemistry has never been stable. I'm not going to drop links attempting to argue my point as you seem to have made up your mind. I will say I'm concerned about the planets rapidly changing atmospheric chemistry but, according to the " accepted " geological record it has changed so many times in 4.6 billion years that for me to take the current " Sky is falling because we broke it" talking points is just a non starter. I really appreciate the ppl doing modern science in this area but it, to me is just pointing out obvious things. Our species has the privelige of harnessing these natural resources provided to us. and yes there are negative effects of using these resources, Along with a lot of positive ones( like being able to discuss this issue with ppl all over the planet in real time) The world will not be destroyed only changed- and change is the only thing that remains constant
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      The planet will be fine in the long run. The current ecosystem, and its ability to sustain as many people as it is currently, will not be. Yes, the Earth has changed a lot over the past 4.6 billion years, including many instances in which the majority of extant species suffered huge die-offs and went extinct. We are currently causing this to happen again, which will be bad for us as well for most other species. Why would we do so when we could instead not do so? Unlike the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and previous catastrophes of the past, this one is of our own making, and is within our power to prevent. Why would you be so blase about allowing it to happen when we could NOT have it happen? We'll all be far worse off for it having happened.
dang 7y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067793 and marked it off-topic.

nashashmi 7y ago

There is something funny about the way this article portrays early brain development. Ask families with relatives in lean world countries who visit those countries often and they will tell you that those kids mature far more quickly than the kids here. And they see it as a positive impact. And lament how children in America do not mature as quickly. Foreign kids who come here to study do better than the kids who are from here. Yet adversity in the article is portrayed negatively. And further, faster brain development is portrayed negatively. Then early puberty is portrayed negatively. And it is all tied together with the statement that there is more depression, anxiety and psychosis. Mind you but those traumatic experiences become so when you are taken from a world of high stress where everyone grows up like you do to a world more relaxed where people are different from you. Think PTSD soldiers finding it difficult to live at home. But ok to live back in war country. Think martial arts training you to be defensive and then going back to a world with only peace. It is not the high stress that causes the trauma but rather how different life becomes when you change gears back to peace. I will always remember the quote from the Walking Dead. Until war is over, we are just walking dead.

vanderZwan 7y ago
> Yet adversity in the article is portrayed negatively. Well, there is "adversity", and there is the sexual abuse and other trauma that the article is talking about.
- nashashmi 7y ago
  I don't find that in the article. It keeps mentioning poverty and socioeconomic conditions and refugee situations.
  - sn9 7y ago
    >Growing up in poverty and experiencing traumatic events like a bad accident or sexual assault can impact brain development and behavior in children and young adults. It's literally the first line.
CydeWeys 7y ago

kuzehanka 7y ago

Why is it 'premature' brain development? This seems to have picked a particular lens to interpret the results. I grew up in a European country and moved to a developed western nation at age 10. The first few years of school were a really jarring experience because the kids in my class were infantile and mentally under-developed compared to where I came from. This was also reflected in a huge gap in curriculum, we were covering skills that were taught 2-3 years earlier where I came from. Parents in western nations infantalise their children and prevent them from developing autonomy/responsibility for far too long. It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home. A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
>it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home W-what? I remember babysitting my 6 year old brother since the age of 8 while my parents were working.
Sharlin 7y ago
> It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home. That certainly sounds ridiculous, speaking as someone born and raised in a developed western nation.
- kuzehanka 7y ago
  "If a person who has the lawful care or charge of a child under 12 years, leaves the child for an unreasonable time without making reasonable provision for the supervision and care of the child commits a misdemeanour. Maximum penalty – 3 years imprisonment." Legislation: Queensland Criminal Code Act 1899 (QLD) - Section 364A
  - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nabla9 7y ago

Childhood adversity and abuse has been linked to decreased trust, low impulse control, violence, learning problems, promiscuous sexual behaviour etc. before. One way to look at this is damage caused by stress and stress hormones. Some of the traits above may be evolutionary adaption strategy. Growing in chronic stress environment requires different traits. The limbic system may have plan B when it's flooded with stress hormones constantly. Long term thinking and planning is less valuable when the life expectancy is low.

sonnyblarney 7y ago
"One way to look at this is damage caused by stress and stress hormones" Another way is simply learning by example. "Daddy said don't ever trust nobody, they always tryin' to get ya" (and maybe it's true in some communities) ... well it makes sense. Or else "My father always said to just trust people, and they'll trust you back" - which also may be true for other communities. The variables: physical/genetic, family experience, and community experience I think all add up. I don't have the ref by I remember reading that poor kids who simply moved to a 'better neighbourhood' did a lot better in life, normalizing for everything else.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nabla9 7y ago
  Learning is not just mental process that changes the arrangement of neurons. It can cause epigenetic changes. Inflammation persisting up to adulthood might be learned from example. They may be mitotically and/or meiotically heritable at least to some degree. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dvdy.24211 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dvdy.24211
  - scotty79 7y ago
    During brain development synaptic pruning takes place. Huge part of child's brain just dies out. If the child has this process accelerated due to hardships, or is in the environment not stimulating enough to help brain to decide which neurons to kill ... it's just horrible to think about.

nudq 7y ago

> The racially and economically diverse cohort We already know that the races differ in speed of maturation and various measures of adversity. Was race controlled for? (Paper is paywalled for me.)

Questionmarkme 7y ago

This is very culturally specific. Childhood itself is a social construct, some cultures treat childhood very differently with various outcomes. It seems that this is one interpretation of the study results and by no means applicable to children globally. Psychology parades as a science of humanity, but in reality results are often strictly limited to the sample or population of interest. 'abnormal' development in place A may be normal in place B. Or normal under circumstance X. Researchers do their best to make sense of their data within their own cultural framework of thinking and experience. It makes sense for difficult experience to mature the brain, that's how our neural networks strengthen. It makes sense to develop in response to adversity in order to overcome it again in the future. I would suspect the links to mental health conditions are due to another culturally constructed aspect of Western society. I.e. Mental unwellness is as much to do with how people respond to us as it is to do with any difference in brain function. The social world shapes our brain. If I withdraw from society for a while that may change some of my brain function but when I stop withdrawing and someone treats me a certain way that has another influence on my brain function. This latter influence may well be more influential that the effect of my original withdrawal. Therefore it's often difficult to firmly state that a difference in brain structure or function is due to X, when X is intrinsically related to Y, Z (and the whole alphabet). We know that adversity is linked to mental health and therefore it must be related to brain changes. What we don't know is how exactly.if this is a beneficial evolutionary response - probably - that is almost inappropriate to a western society then it's not the evolutionary response that is problematic, it's the societal response to it.

themgt 7y ago

My layman's impression from paying some attention to psych/neuroscience is that there's an increased amount of scrutiny/skepticism towards this type of study which (afaict) fails to take into account potential genetic confounding while the authors describe the discovered correlations in causal terms. We can be nearly certain that SES and TES are significantly heritable. Without accounting for that innate heritability, how can they say to what degree the outcomes are the result of circumstances/events?

RubberbandSoul 7y ago
I think they usually use twin studies to try to compensate for heritability but I couldn't find any mention of it in the article.
- sambe 7y ago
  I think they usually _don’t_ use twin studies because they are harder/more expensive. In this case they used the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort: https://www.med.upenn.edu/bbl/philadelphianeurodevelopmentalcohort.html https://www.med.upenn.edu/bbl/philadelphianeurodevelopmental... I don’t see any mention of twins here or on JAMA, although I can’t access the full text currently.
ordu 7y ago
This article even worse then just correlational research. It doesn't say anything new what you couldn't guess in advance. When speaking about psychological research describing correlations and saying nothing new, it is a sign of zero scientific value of the article. Not really zero, because a confirmation of the common tribal knowledge have its value, but not much. There are questions I'd like to ask and to know answers. For example, how the parenting style affects post-effects of adversities in a childhood. Is it possible to overcome negative impact with a parenting style? Maybe it is possible to get all the good effects (like faster development of a child) while avoiding bad ones? Is there a link between parenting style and adversities? If it is a causal link than what direction it have? How the direction of a link affects development of a child? Did adversities led child to feel himself not like his peers and if they did, what the impact it had? Maybe if we gather children with a similar issues and show them that they are not alone it would help? Or maybe it is better to keep child in a diverse environment? Does the answer depends on a kind of adversity? These questions are the first that came to my mind. I could pose a few more if I thought a little longer. But the article doesn't try to answer these question, it just states the stupid correlation which anyone know without any article.

posbehsf 7y ago

It took me into my late 20s to realize that I had a traumatic childhood. The thing is I did not grow up in a poor or abusive household. I grew up in an upper middle class family that looked extremely normal, and for a long time believed it myself, until I started wondering why I had since jr high felt acutely depressed, empty, and unable to hold on to meaningful relationships. Only a few years ago did I realize that both my parents were emotionally neglectful and did not validate my emotions at all growing up, and did not act or behave in a way that seemed like they were even aware that emotional care and validation of their child is at the core of good parenting, and not just feeding them and putting a roof over their head. It explained a lot about how I act today, and why I became very independent at an early age. I continue to struggle with feelings of emptiness, depersonalization, emotional numbness. It sucks to feel like you cannot escape your childhood even as a grown adult.

deleted 7y ago
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overton 7y ago
I relate to this story personally. Wish you the best, and here are some resources that have helped me: - after many failed attempts doing CBT and mindfulness based therapy, doing psychodynamic psychotherapy with a therapist who takes relationships and trauma seriously - "Complex PTSD: From surviving to Thriving" (Pete Walker) - "The Tao of Fully Feeling" (Pete Walker) - "Treating Adult Survivors of Emotional Abuse and Neglect" (Hopper/Grossman/Spinazzola/Zucker) - "Adult children of emotionally immature parents" (Gibson)
- eee_honda 7y ago
  Would also recommend Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk's lengthy tome, "The Body Keeps The Score". Been recommended on HN several times before (including once by me, I think). Haven't checked out some of these other titles (only know of pete walker, loving "From Surviving To Thriving"), thanks. Do you know about EMDR? Worth looking into, IMO.
hoorayimhelping 7y ago

Mary-Jane 7y ago

"The study suggests that it makes sense for parents and anyone involved in raising a child to try and shield or protect the child from exposure to adversity." I'm sorry, this is just silly. Prior to the industrial revolution, low SES and high TES were normal; life was hardship and adversity. Think about that: humans have been around for about 200,000 years - that's a lot of generations of f'ed up kids. How did we ever survive?

TelmoMenezes 7y ago
> life was hardship and adversity Life was certainly hard in ways that it is not now, but it was definitely hard in the precise ways that we evolved to cope with. You had to worry a lot about obtaining food and shelter, and protecting yourself from predators and enemy tribes. You also had vast amounts of time for playing, contemplating, dancing, cooking, having sex, drinking some of the weird concoctions made by the local shaman that made you see things differently. All of this. I am not sure I would be able to forego antibiotics, anesthesia and modern medicine in general, but for those not assuming this, I wonder how nice or lives of 24/7 stress and isolation would look like to our more primitive ancestors. Our lives are potentially longer, but are they more worth living? I'm not pretending to have an answer, but I do think the question is valid.
Hendrikto 7y ago
> The study suggests that it makes sense for parents and anyone involved in raising a child to try and shield or protect the child from exposure to adversity. I have repeatedly witnessed parents doing this, and their children inevitable became incapable entitled brats.
- scotty79 7y ago
  But when they turn out 30 they might just figure out how to make the cancer medicine you'll need by then. The goal of raising children is not having good children but having good adults.
martindbp 7y ago
Could be that there is a kind of developmental switch. If life is tough as a child, it makes sense to speed up development to improve odds of survival. If you find yourself in a safe, loving and caring place, then you have the option of spending more time and energy developing the brain. > life was hardship and adversity Not necessarily. Many argue that hunters and gatherers lived a much better life than during most of recorded history. There is plenty of evidence for this. It's entirely possible that a child would find itself in a small, well functioning group of people, without any major adversity during childhood.

mellowdream 7y ago

Early puberty is linked to shorter adult height. A vicious cycle of poor genetic profiles eliminating themselves via offspring from the gene pool after natural selection?

kwcts 7y ago
Shorter adult height is a death sentence for a man in the modern times. So yes.

new2628 7y ago

I don't know how to put it politely, but you may be creating a problem out of nothing. If you didn't know you had a traumatic childhood, then most likely you didn't have one. No families are perfect and most parents try to do best they can, occasionally failing. Growing up is not without problems, and things turn out mostly OK most of the time. Not knowing your specifics it sounds like you try to find someone to blame and try to find some exotic condition you can identify with. " did not validate my emotions at all growing up " -- what about giving life to you and feeding you though? What does "validating emotions" even mean. I encourage you to let this resentment go and move on with life.

muterad_murilax 7y ago
"What does 'validating emotions' even mean?" To an empathic person, that should be pretty obvious...
0815test 7y ago
> What does "validating emotions" even mean. It's a bit of a misnomer for the process of explicitly acknowledging the emotions that someone else might be feeling, trying to understand the causes of that inner feeling, and prioritizing that acknowledgement and understanding over any subsequent claims as to whether that emotion is unjustified. Saying things like "You're wrong to feel X, because Y!" is corrosive to trust; it leaves our counterparty in doubt as to whether we even care in the least that they felt X in the first place, or might care in the future about any similar situation. "Validating" X means explicitly giving up that option of attacking their feelings in such strong terms - as such, it's a subtle part of day-to-day diplomacy, especially among people who don't trust each other all that much! And the good part is that, once one has achieved that validation, talking effectively about Y only becomes all-the-easier! Added - do you think that children always trust their parents to pursue something close to their best interest, and to never victimize them? Parent-on-child abuse of various sorts is a thing, too. And the parent-child relationship doesn't even start off with that kind of trust. Many kids routinely engage in what we would regard as e.g. pathological lying and gaslighting, if adults did the same thing; we only get to think of such behavior as humorous because they aren't very good at it. They do generally grow out of such things as their moral development leads them to internalize the notions of affective empathy and, yes, trust.

armenarmen 7y ago

Is this linked to relative poverty? Being the poor kid in a rich neighborhood/country? Or real "there isn't enough food today" style poverty

scotty79 7y ago

I have a sad feeling that what we called adult brain is just hollowed out, scarred husk of desirable human brain and people who really develop our technology (and in result society) are mostly individuals that by some genetic and environmental accident managed to retain bits of their child brains.