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.<p>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.
There is something funny about the way this article portrays early brain development.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>It is not the high stress that causes the trauma but rather how different life becomes when you change gears back to peace.<p>I will always remember the quote from the Walking Dead. Until war is over, we are just walking dead.
"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."<p>I'm sorry, this is just silly. Prior to the industrial revolution, low SES and high TES were normal; <i>life</i> 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?
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.<p>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).<p>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.
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.<p>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?
Childhood adversity and abuse has been linked to decreased trust, low impulse control, violence, learning problems, promiscuous sexual behaviour etc. before.<p>One way to look at this is damage caused by stress and stress hormones.<p>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.
Why is it 'premature' brain development? This seems to have picked a particular lens to interpret the results.<p>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.<p>A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.
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?
Is this linked to relative poverty? Being the poor kid in a rich neighborhood/country?<p>Or real "there isn't enough food today" style poverty
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.
> The racially and economically diverse cohort<p>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.)
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.<p>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.
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.