Lecture 1 | Early Adversity
Early experience assumption
“One’s family is like the chicken pox. You get this disease in childhood, and it leaves scars the
rest of your life.” (Sartre)
“One needs a long life to fully recover from the consequences of one’s upbringing.”
(Greshoff)
Critical/sensitive periods
Damage done that can’t be repaired.
Timing is important, but it isn’t everything. Chronicity of stress is most important!
What do we see in less extreme family situations? Is this a generalizable picture?
Worldwide child abuse
One out of three to six children report physical, sexual abuse or emotional neglect before
18th birthday. Or youths deal with harmful and dysfunction upbringing (insensitive, cold,
harsh) parenting.
1 or 2 children per class…
Persistent psychopathology, per child, costs society about €280.000
Effective interventions may yield enormous benefit not only for families and children,
but also society
Think about cost reduction, but also increase in safety, lower crime rates, sustainable
health care systems
Two dimensions: warmth/control
Difficult how warmth and how controlling you have to be. To be warm and
controlling in a matter and intensity that is fitting the developmental state and meets
the competences and emotional needs of the child
Both warmth/control that are too high or too low are ineffective, or even
dysfunctional
What is “too low” of “too high”? This is determined by the needs of youth. Needs
based on competencies (skills), temperament-personality.
Important (risky) family factors
Marital discord
o Fights, conflicts between parents
o Divorce maybe more in which way the divorce develops. So, in what
extend the divorce gets conflicts etc.
1
, Attachment
o Insecure/disorganized
Parenting
o (too) authoritarian
o (too) permissive – neglecting
o (too) inconsistent in disciplining
Attachment styles: classifications
Secure: upset by leaving of mother, positive behavior in reunion, average contact
seeking behavior
Avoidant: not really upset by leaving of mother, apparent avoiding of close contact
in reunion
Ambivalent: very upset by leaving of mother, hard to sooth, seeks contact but also
manifests negative affect/holding off contact
‘Sensitivity hypothesis’
Q: Why differences in attachment between youths?
A: Because of sensitivity diff’s in upbringers
If parents are not there for children in sensitive behaviors, children show self-
soothing behaviors.
Sensitivity parents attachment child
o One of the predictors, yes, but not all. Research shows contradictory findings
Critique on the sensitivity hypothesis
Not only parent-effect, but child-effect also
o Sensitivity parent attachment youth sensitivity parent
Parenting is embedded in broader context
Support grandparents, poverty, negative life events play a role as well and has an
influence on the sensitivity of the parents
‘Competence hypothesis’
Q: What does it matter to be insecurely attached?
A: Insecure attachment leads to social-emotional difficulties, low-quality intimate
relationships, crime, psychopathology!
Half of the people change attachment styles over time, because of what happened in
their lives
Contradictory findings in research
The baboeschka theory
Cognitive representations formed during early family interactions form basis of future
intimate interactions peers, through internalized cognitive schemas.
2
,New information (through interactions with friends or partners) is assimilated to these
existing cognitive schemas.
Internal working models
Cognitive-affective schemas of intimacy in relation to others
Steers behavior in future relationships and perceptions/expectations of the intimate
other
o “When I’m sad, I will be comforted”
o “it’s the best to avoid conflict”
o “I need more commitment in a relation than my partner”
Development in (trans)action
Crucial to move beyond thinking about “risk factors in families”. We have to be able to see
the full etiological complexity that leads up to risky development.
What are cumulative effects in pathological development?
Likelihood increases
Snapshot Approach
Comparing pictures from childhood to adolescence. Hard to learn something about how
people developed.
Solna: birth clinic Stockholm, Sweden
212 respondents, followed up from childhood (0-10), to adolescence (15-18), young
adulthood (21-25) and mid-adulthood (37)
Multi-informant: observations children, interviews and questionnaires parents
Result: no direct linkages with early parent-child interactions and emotional
problems
Timing isn’t everything
3
, Cumulative effects
No direct linkages with early parent-child interactions and emotional problems
No direct effect parent-child bond
Timing of (family)risk factors important, but again: mostly the length/chronicity of
stress counts!
“Multifinality”
o Non-specific risk; multiple pathological outcomes
o Pathology not only definable in terms of DSM classifications
Concluding
Pathological patterns in family system
o Precipitating and maintaining
o On micro (within dyads) and macro levels
Impact of early family adversity
o In transaction: cumulative effects
o In systematic perspective: patterns instead of less-more
4