Abstract
Awareness about early life adversity and how it affects children’s well-being has been around for more than two decades but attention to the theme has been growing. Research has progressively been focusing on how the early years of life influence the development and well-being of children, as well later stages in life. The research fields that have dealt with this topic are varied, ranging from psychology, to biology, the neurosciences, and even economics, among others. Within these, adversity has been widely understood as negative life events or circumstances experienced during childhood, which include neglect, abuse, and victimization, but also economic hardship. Conclusions are diverse and dispersed. Focusing on research from the late 2000s onwards, this chapter aims to provide an overview of the number of papers published on the subject, but also to identify the major fields of research engaged in studying childhood adversity, and review and bring together the main findings of the different research fields on the effects of childhood adversity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The ACE study is conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with the Kaiser Permanente’s Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego. Further information on this study and related journal articles can be found at https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/acestudy/index.html
- 2.
Well-being and child well-being are complex terms, but it is not the purpose of this research work to discuss the several meanings and definitions that can be found in literature. For a discussion on the complexity of the concepts see, for example, Ben-Arieh et al. (2014).
- 3.
For a discussion on the several meanings of adversity see, for example, Daniel (2010).
- 4.
The list of ACEs includes 10 items, organized around three themes: abuse, specifically, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse; household challenges: mother treated violently, substance abuse in the household, mental illness in the household, parental separation or divorce, incarcerated household member; and neglect: emotional neglect and physical neglect. See also footnote 1.
- 5.
- 6.
Health Sciences include the Scopus subject areas: “medicine”, “neuroscience”, “pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics”, “immunology and microbiology”, “dentistry”, “health professions” and “nursing”; Natural and Life Sciences include the Scopus subject areas: “biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology”, “chemistry”, “physics and astronomy”, “environmental sciences” and “agricultural and biological sciences”; Other Social Sciences include the Scopus subject areas: “social sciences”, “arts and humanities”, “business, management and accounting”; Other Sciences include the Scopus subject areas: “engineering” and “computer science”; Psychology was kept as an individual research area because, within the social sciences, it has distinguished itself as a relevant field of research; Economics corresponds to the subject area classified in Scopus as “economics, econometrics and finance” and was isolated as an area of research because, traditionally, it has not been preoccupied with child well-being, but interest on the topic has started to grow and it is interesting to observe how it is addressed by this research field; finally, articles classified as Multidisciplinary were kept as such. Since one article can be classified in more than one subject area, the first classification offered by Scopus was used to assign an article to a specific research area.
- 7.
It could be thought that the disproportionate number of publications in the Health Sciences domain would be the result of the number of subject fields that were aggregated into this domain (see footnote 6), however, the main driver within this domain is the field of Medicine, representing more than 94% of the domain’s list of articles (1464 papers out of the 1556).
- 8.
As mentioned in the Introduction, one of the main goals of this chapter is to analyse conclusions from research about the effects of adversity in childhood; this means that, even though some articles go beyond that goal, in our analysis, the highlighted conclusions are the ones related to the effects of the specific childhood adversities under analysis in each article, leaving outside of this review other kinds of conclusions that the selected articles make.
- 9.
Some of the reviewed articles introduce control variables and mediator variables in their analysis. Table 2.2 only highlights the ones that can be classified as “childhood adversity” as defined in the Introduction section.
- 10.
See footnote 8.
References
Aimie-Salleh, N., Malarvili, M. B., & Whittaker, A. C. (2019). Fusion of heart rate variability and salivary cortisol for stress response identification based on adverse childhood experience. Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, 57(6), 1229–1245.
Andersen, J. P., & Blosnich, J. (2013). Disparities in adverse childhood experiences among sexual minority and heterosexual adults: Results from a multi-state probability-based sample. PLoS One, 8(1), e54691.
Ben-Arieh, A., Casas, F., Frones, I., & Korbin, J. (2014). Multifaceted concept of child well-being. In A. Ben-Arieh, F. Casas, I. Frones, & J. E. Korbin (Eds.), Handbook of child well-being – Theories, methods and policies in global perspective (pp. 1–27). Springer.
Britto, P. R., Engle, P. L., & Super, C. M. (2013a). Early childhood development – Translating research to global policy. In P. R. Britto, P. L. Engle, & C. M. Super (Eds.), Handbook of early childhood development research and its impact on global policy (pp. 3–23). Oxford University Press.
Britto, P. R., Engle, P. L., & Super, C. M. (Eds.). (2013b). Handbook of early childhood development research and its impact on global policy. Oxford University Press.
Brown, M. J., Thacker, L. R., & Cohen, S. A. (2013). Association between adverse childhood experiences and diagnosis of cancer. PLoS One, 8(6), e65524.
Conti, G., & Heckman, J. (2014). The economics of child well-being. In A. Ben-Arieh, F. Casas, I. Frones, & J. E. Korbin (Eds.), Handbook of child well-being – Theories, methods and policies in global perspective (pp. 363–401). Springer.
Cornia, G., Jolly, R., & Stewart, F. (2020). COVID-19 and children, in the North and in the South. Innocenti Discussion Paper 2020-02. Florence: UNICEF Office of Research.
Cunha, F., & Heckman, J. (2009). The economics and psychology of inequality and human development. Journal of the European Economic Association, 7(2–3), 320–364.
Daniel, B. (2010). Concepts of adversity, risk, vulnerability and resilience: A discussion in the context of the ‘child protection system’. Social Policy and Society, 9(2), 231–241.
Ferraro, K. F., Schafer, M. H., & Wilkinson, L. R. (2016). Childhood disadvantage and health problems in middle and later life: Early imprints on physical health? American Sociological Review, 81(1), 107–133.
Fletcher, J. M., & Schurer, S. (2017). Origins of adulthood personality: The role of adverse childhood experiences. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, 17(2), 20150212.
Fore, H. H. (2020). A wake-up call: COVID-19 and its impact on children’s health and well-being. The Lancet Global Health, 8(7), e861–e862.
Germine, L., Dunn, E. C., McLaughlin, K. A., & Smoller, J. W. (2015). Childhood adversity is associated with adult theory of mind and social affiliation, but not face processing. PLoS One, 10(6), e0129612.
Heckman, J. (2006). Skill formation and the economics of investing in disadvantaged children. Science, 312, 1900–1902.
Henke, A., & Hsu, L. (2018). The impacts of education, adverse childhood experience, and nativity on intimate partner violence. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 39(2), 310–322.
Holzmann, R., & Jorgensen, S. (2001). Social risk management: A new conceptual framework for social protection, and beyond. International Tax and Public Finance, 8, 529–556.
Hughes, K., Bellis, M. A., Hardcastle, K. A., Sethi, D., Butchart, A., Mikton, C., Jones, L., & Dunne, M. P. (2017). The effect of multiple adverse childhood experiences on health: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Public Health, 2(8), e356–e366.
Kim, P., Evans, G. W., Angstadt, M., Ho, S. S., Sripada, C. S., Swain, J. E., Liberzon, I., & Phan, K. L. (2013). Effects of childhood poverty and chronic stress on emotion regulatory brain function in adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(46), 18442–18447.
Lo, S., Das, P., & Horton, H. (2016). Early childhood development: The Foundation of sustainable development. The Lancet Series on Advancing Early Childhood Development: from Science to Scale, 389, 9–11.
Lumley, M. N., & Harkness, K. L. (2007). Specificity in the relations among childhood adversity, early maladaptive schemas, and symptom profiles in adolescent depression. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 31(5), 639–657.
McEwen, B. S. (2012). Brain on stress: How the social environment gets under the skin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(Suppl.2), 17180–17185.
McLaughlin, K. A., Sheridan, M. A., & Lambert, H. K. (2014). Childhood adversity and neural development: Deprivation and threat as distinct dimensions of early experience. Neuroscience & Behavioral Reviews, 47, 578–591.
McLaughlin, K. A., Breslau, J., Green, J. G., Lakoma, M. D., Sampson, N. A., Zaslavsky, A. M., & Kessler, R. C. (2011). Childhood socio-economic status and the onset, persistence, and severity of DSM-IV mental disorders in a US national sample. Social Science and Medicine, 73(7), 1088–1096.
McLaughlin, K. A., & Sheridan, M. A. (2016). Beyond cumulative risk: A dimensional approach to childhood adversity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(4), 239–245.
Metzler, M., Merrick, M. T., Klevens, J., Ports, K. A., & Ford, D. C. (2017). Adverse childhood experiences and life opportunities: Shifting the narrative. Children and Youth Services Review, 72, 141–149.
Schurer, S., Trajkovski, K., & Hariharan, T. (2019). Understanding the mechanisms through which adverse childhood experiences affect lifetime economic outcomes. Labour Economics, 61, 101743.
Shonkoff, J. P., & Richter, L. (2013). The powerful reach of early childhood development – A science-based foundation for sound investment. In P. R. Britto, P. L. Engle, & C. M. Super (Eds.), Handbook of early childhood development research and its impact on global policy (pp. 24–34). Oxford University Press.
Shonkoff, J. P., Garner, A. S., Siegel, B. S., Dobbins, M. I., Earls, M. F., McGuinn, L., Pascoe, J., Wood, D. L., High, P. C., Donoghue, E., Fussell, J. J., Gleason, M. M., Jaudes, P. K., Jones, V. F., Rubin, D. M., Schulte, E. E., Macias, M. M., Bridgemohan, C., Fussell, J., … Wegner, L. M. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232–e246.
Taylor-Robinson, D. C., Straatmann, V. S., & Whitehead, M. (2018). Adverse childhood experiences or adverse childhood socioeconomic conditions? Lancet Public Health, 3, e262–e263.
Tomer, J. F. (2014). Adverse childhood experiences, poverty, and inequality: Toward an understanding of the connections and the cures. World Economic Review, 3, 20–36.
Turner, R. J., Thomas, C. S., & Brown, T. H. (2016). Childhood adversity and adult health: Evaluating intervening mechanisms. Social Science and Medicine, 156, 114–124.
Tyrka, A. R., Price, L. H., Marsit, C., Walters, O. C., & Carpenter, L. L. (2012). Childhood adversity and epigenetic modulation of the leukocyte glucocorticoid receptor: Preliminary findings in healthy adults. PLoS One, 7(1), e30148.
United Nations. (2020). Policy Brief: The impact of COVID-19 on children. https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/policy_brief_on_covid_impact_on_children_16_april_2020.pdf.
Varese, F., Smeets, F., Drukker, M., Lieverse, R., Lataster, T., Viechtbauer, W., Read, J., Van Os, J., & Bentall, R. P. (2012). Childhood adversities increase the risk of psychosis: A meta-analysis of patient-control, prospective-and cross-sectional cohort studies. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 38(4), 661–671.
Walsh, D., McCartney, G., Smith, M., & Armour, G. (2019). Relationship between childhood socioeconomic position and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): A systematic review. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 73, 1087–1093.
World Bank. (2005). The OVC toolkit in SSA – A toolkit on how to support orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (English). Washington, DC: World Bank.
Young, M. E. (2002). Chapter 1: Introduction and overview. In M. E. Young (Ed.), From early child development to human development – Investing in our children’s future (pp. 1–19). The World Bank.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fernandes, L. (2022). Adversity and Child Well-Being: Exploring Recent Research from Different Fields. In: Tiliouine, H., Benatuil, D., Lau, M.K.W. (eds) Handbook of Children’s Risk, Vulnerability and Quality of Life. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01783-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01783-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-01782-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-01783-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)