Trauma, Deprivation, and Dignity: How Do We Talk About Early Life Adversity?

This post is part of a series on contemporary questions in ECE globally. Read about the series as a whole and find other articles by clicking here.

When discussing best practices of educational and social-support services for children and their families, the chorus of voices rising from policymaking offices to foundations funding nonprofit work and the voices of advocates globally has recently centered dialogue around “trauma.” This dialogue has come out of positive movements toward broader cultural acknowledgement of mental health challenges and norming of mental health services, and has expanded far beyond just the lexicons of psychologists and therapists to being considered a “buzzword” by some estimations.  Adverse Childhood Experiences, (“ACEs,” originating from a Kaiser Permanente health-outcomes study in 1998) and “toxic stress” are often the more specific and empirically linked phrases used to convey this broader concept of trauma, capturing the long-term detrimental impacts of sustained early adversity and such “adverse experiences” as experiencing financial hardship, witnessing violence, being abused, or experiencing the loss or incarceration of a parent (Felitti et al., 1998). The now famous “ACEs study” and subsequent analyses indicated elevated rates of depression, obesity, and even early death among those who experienced this specific set of early life trauma.  Other studies have confirmed in global contexts the impacts of exposure to war-related conflict, separation from parents, and other early-life adversities.

“Trauma-informed care” (TIC), coined in 2001 in research by a pair of substance abuse and treatment researchers, has emerged as the favored model of serving those who have experienced these and other traumas. It is defined as “service delivery … influenced by an understanding of the impact of interpersonal violence and victimization on an individual’s life and development” and is has been invoked in settings ranging from medical centers and social service agencies to after-school programming and preschools (Elliot et al. 2005). This new vocabulary of adversity has swept dialogue variety of fields, but in particular those providing direct public services to young children and their families. Many leading developmental psychologists point to building nurturing parent-child relationships and bolstering other “protective factors” in the life of a young child as the most time-critical and effective means of preventing and mitigating the effects of such potentially harmful trauma, and as such, early childhood educational settings are more and more finding emphasis on these concepts in policy and practice.

This momentum would seem an indication of positive trends toward acknowledging the trauma experienced by startling numbers of children globally, and finding ways to serve families and children in a manner sensitive to the reality of such trauma. Further, research has indicated that the percentage of children who have experienced ACEs is significantly higher in lower socioeconomic brackets, and as this research has developed, critical attention has been shifted toward weaknesses in current systems of support for children in underresourced areas who might go without supports for the trauma they’ve experienced. However, underneath simple calls to “tackle” ACEs, there are echoes of a much more complex set of beliefs about trauma, poverty, deprivation, and their impacts. With race, geography, socioeconomic status and this modern conceptualization of trauma linked so frequently in this line of research, it is important to be aware of the risks of flawed thinking about each of these constructs, and how these flaws weaken approaches to serving communities.  While it is important to acknowledge ongoing and rigorous research in the field of trauma-informed care, it is equally important to explore this approach with a critical lens, gleaning lessons from the not-too-distant past.

In sociological and psychological research in the 1950’s and 1960’s, theoretical and empirical psychological work on poverty began to look beyond simplistic and outdated genetic theories surrounding poverty to emerging areas of thought surrounding language development, early childhood stimulation, and the role of environment on development. The now-famous Coleman Report underscored the importance of the family environment as being even more influential than school environments (though this has been since challenged and decontextualized by research from Heyneman and Loxley, among others). The dialogue shifted in global perspectives toward the role poverty and adversity played in early development and lifelong outcomes. As Barbara Beatty powerfully captures in her 2012 article “Debate over the Young Disadvantaged Child,” analyzing the American implications of this shift in research, this development “brought together streams of psychology research refuting genetic causes of mental retardation and school failure with concerns about mothering, language acquisition, and the cognitive development of black children from low-income families.” In doing so, a harmful and factually ill-founded concepts of human potential and development (that of inheritance, “mental weakness,” and eugenics-related concepts of “fit families”) began to be rejected and fade into the background, but in their place emerged models of deprivation.                  

One prominent researcher in this line of thought was Martin Deutsch, whose 1968 “Deprivation Index” identified six variables most indicative of school achievement: housing dilapidation, educational aspirational level of the parent for the child, number of children under 18 in the home, dinner conversation, total number of cultural experiences anticipated for the upcoming weekend, and kindergarten attendance. This deprivation-based research fueled a line of thinking that asked the fundamental question—what are families in poverty doing or not doing that keep their children from thriving?

With these critiques in mind, policy makers advocating for trauma-informed systems must play a critical role in not only avoiding these same mistakes as past lines of inquiry and research, but in acknowledging and addressing the societal and political injustices at the roots of adversity and trauma. As one critique powerfully described, “problems of trauma can be framed in ways that lead us to want to repair the world. Or, by contrast, they can be framed in ways that lead us away from considerations of moral responsibility and social action”. This framing requires a willingness to approach issues globally of class, race, educational quality, environmental justice, colonialism and more with honesty and courage to not just invoke trendy acronyms about trauma, but actually address its causes.

Further, it is essential to consider how the framing of the dialogue around ACEs and trauma is signaling messages of blame to parents and families of young children who are experiencing adversity (i.e. one ACE is the incarceration of a parent, but situated in a highly-debated and complex criminal justice system, assessing the cause of that adversity becomes infinitely complex). Additionally, individuals engaging with program development serving communities under a trauma-informed scope should examine their literature and messaging to incorporate resilience-building and a strengths-based approach. A recent Brookings article, “From Trauma-Informed to Asset-Informed Care in Early Childhood Settings” highlights this important distinction, as well as the risks that come from using terminology like “toxic stress” as we communicate the role that parents have in shaping the environments of their young children. An asset-informed approach, when executed effectively, would emphasize to parents their successes and strengths, capturing and encouraging the positive interactions and engagement that are already going on in families.

One such ongoing initiative in this space is the Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) project, led by the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, which provides feedback to parents and highlights positive, responsive interactions between parents and children to strengthen and encourage those skills. In one recent UNICEF report on the implementation of guidelines on the alternative (i.e. nonparental) care of children, a note was made that in child-headed families, an asset-informed approach should be taken. The report describes how “support for child- and youth-headed households needs to recognise young people’s agency and adopt a holistic approach to their lives that analyses the physical assets, material resources, human and social capital available to the household, as well as individual young people’s well-being, outlook and aspirations.” Asset-informed dialogue, rather than the language of toxicity, adversity, and life-long health outcomes, humanizes parents being served by public programs and takes steps toward de-pathologizing poverty and historically marginalized communities.

ECE globally will only be as effective as it is centered on an asset-informed, dignity-based and approach. The early childhood field can move towards this approach that centers human dignity as a core component of development (and even the end of development itself, as some writers have posed) rather than imposing ECE as an intervention in a “deficient” or “traumatized” community, exploring the needs and goals of a community in collaboration and supporting the early childhood needs of that community.

As ECE advocates, international organizations and national governments continue to acknowledge this dialogue of trauma that is taking shape, and build systems of care that are informed by this research, it is essential to see beyond the most popular terminology and latest buzzwords to the deeper implications of the approaches these organizations are taking. The body of literature and evidence-based practice serving young children and families will continue to grow, and with it, researchers, global ECE leaders and educators alike must develop the capacity to acknowledge and address underlying mentalities still plaguing approaches to working with families in poverty. In order to truly promote resilience and thriving for young children and their communities, chasing the latest trends in the vocabulary of public services must fall to the wayside, and in its place can then emerge deeper, complicated work to grapple with the systems and structures that have been at the root of early life adversity for so many young children globally.