Slower Childhoods May Be More Conducive To Healthier Adulthoods

What does it mean to be a good parent? Is it ensuring that your child hits developmental milestones early? Excels in school? Learns to be independent at a young age? A recent Wall Street Journal article found that none of these things may be ideal for preparing your child for adulthood. 

The effects of stress on children

In the late 1990’s the Kaiser Permanente Medical group researched the long term impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, on children. ACEs include physical or emotional neglect or abuse, poverty, divorce, violence, and addiction or mental illness in the home. 

The first thing that the study discovered was that ACEs are much more common than we might think, often, but not exclusively, impacting lower-income children. About 60% of children in the U.S. experience at least one adverse event, and about one in 10 experience four or more. 

The study also found that ACEs have a major effect on adult life, both on our mental and physical health. Children with more ACEs are at an increased risk for anxiety, depression, and addiction as adults. They also have a higher risk of cancer and heart disease.

ACEs can even affect how quickly children’s bodies develop. Kids with stressful lives tend to reach puberty earlier and may get their adult teeth earlier than their peers.

How does childhood stress impact brain development? 

When children are young, their brains are very open to new experiences and better at learning. As they grow, their brains become more efficient, but less flexible… meaning not as good at exploring or learning new things. Poverty, stress and other adverse experiences seem to make children’s brains grow up too quickly so that they don’t have as long to reap the benefits of the flexible stage of brain development.

What does this study’s results indicate about parenting styles? 

This study suggests that, rather than pushing children to be independent from an early age, a slower, longer, more nurturing childhood may actually be the best way to prepare them for adulthood.  But, why would that be? isn’t being independent an advantage?

A recent paper by Willem Frankenhuis and Daniel Nettle in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, looks at the issue from the biological concept of “life history.” An animal’s life history includes how long it lives, how much it invests in its young, and how long it takes those young to mature.  Even as different species have different life histories, individual animals also develop their own varied life history… meaning that some will mature quickly and others develop more slowly. Early experiences have a profound effect on these individual life histories. 

When resources are scarce and the environment is stressful, it sends the brain cues to expect life to be short and harsh, a situation in which it may be better for juveniles to quickly learn a few survival techniques. But, when young creatures of different species are given a rich, supportive world, they view life as a place with much to learn and time and resources to learn it, an environment in which keeping an open mind and flexible brain is more valuable. 

What this means in practical terms for parenting is that if you believe that their adult environment will be rich and varied, it may be more beneficial to give your children space to learn and explore rather than encouraging them to push forward towards early independence. 

What this means for policy

Unfortunately, as much as we all want our children to have access to a safe, prosperous adulthood, the reality is that many families just don’t have the resources to ensure that kind of future for their children. Policies work best when they focus on improving early childhood supports. Child tax credits, parental leave, and high-quality preschool are all ways to extend childhood and help ensure a new generation of thriving adults. 

Raduca Kaplan