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Latino immigrant parents’ financial stress,
depression, and academic involvement predicting child academic success

Keywords: Academic success, Latino achievement gap, gender, culture

The topic of this journal is a study conducted with latino immigrant third and fourth grade students and their math scores and language skills. The study suggest that the pressures of being a child or immigrants can impact a child's academic success with factors like financial struggles, trauma and stress passed from parents to children, and language barriers. Scores can be compared to other racial groups of students when considering the differences between their achievement gaps.

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Attia, Gabis, Foss-Feig, & Roth-Hanania (2020) Motor Delay - An early and more common "red flag" in girls rather than boys with ASD

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Research Topic: Autism more common in Boys than Girls

Keywords: Autism, ASD, Motor Delay, Girls, Gender

This topic is interesting because I currently work with children diagnosed with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and wondered why autism is more common in boys than girls. This is important to me because as a future BCBA (Board Certified Behavior Analyst) I would need to be able to answer the question when working with families why Autism is more common in boys. To include, when working with families I would need to be able to understand the research and data behind children diagnosed with Autism.

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How Authoritarian Parenting Styles Can Affect A Child's Mental Health

Keywords: Parenting, Mental Health, Cognitive Development

The way parents or guardians treat their children can have an impact on their cognitive development. This can affect the way children socialize, communicate, and even view themselves. Through this topic, we are able to understand the correlation between parenting styles and how these can affect mental health of children.

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Mental Health: Are college students at higher risk for mental health problems than young adults in college?

Keywords: college students, mental health, higher risk.

The topic I chose is college students being at a higher risk for mental health issues especially during COVID. This is a topic that interests me especially because a lot of us are still taking classes online. It's a topic that affects us directly. A lot of us don't know how to handle our mental health and with some of the stats provided in this article we can see how school can really affect us mentally compared to people who don't go to school especially during the tough times.

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Accessible healthcare for transgender and non-conforming youth.

Keywords: Transgender, Healthcare, Accessibility, and Youth.

I believe studies such as these are important because there is little to no information representing transgender and GNC individuals at all, let alone in healthcare settings. This study critically analyzes the various obstacles this marginalized community faces working with caregivers/medical providers due to their gender identity.  By conducting interviews with transgender and GNC youth about previous personal experiences in healthcare, it is evident that there are limited providers that are knowledgable about how to respect and care for gender diverse youth.

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Youth and Caregiver Perspectives on Barriers to Gender-Affirming Health Care for Transgender Youth

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LGBTQ+ Bullying and Bullying Policies

The article provides an analysis on school climates regarding LGBTQ+ bullying and the implementation (or lack thereof) of policies to protect LGBTQ+ students. Although this is a Canadian-based study, I believe that it can provide a good framework for the kind of research I am looking for. As an LGBTQ+ person myself, it is important to me that I understand the issues facing the community and working to better educate myself and others around me.

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This article reviews Canadian administrative law regarding homophobic bullying and school board decision making. Depending on the provincial legislation, school boards either have a mandatory or a discretionary duty to provide queer students with a safe learning environment. However, Canadian case law has arguably limited that discretion. Recent school climate studies from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom reveal unsettling statistics of homophobic bullying and the related negative consequences to queer students' mental and physical health. Fortunately, the evidence also shows that queer students benefit from attending schools with inclusive curricula and supportive policies, such as permitting students to form gay-straight alliances. Given the developing state of the law on this issue, human rights advocates should gather strong evidence to hold school boards to their duty and challenge homophobic policies and attitudes.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Anderson
James Anderson, MA, JD, is a lawyer practicing in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His research interests include the intersection of human rights for sexual minorities and health among men who have sex with men.

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Providing a Safe Learning Environment for Queer Students in Canadian Schools: A Legal Analysis of Homophobic Bullying

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This article reviews Canadian administrative law regarding homophobic bullying and school board decision making. Depending on the provincial legislation, school boards either have a mandatory or a discretionary duty to provide queer students with a safe learning environment. However, Canadian case law has arguably limited that discretion.

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The effect of parental substance abuse on adolescents

This article examined the relationship between parental substance abuse and children's poor health. Children who have substance abusing parents are at a considerable risk for poor health and behavioral outcomes. This topic is important because children at a young age face trauma and stress that they carry as they grow up. I would like to learn more about this topic and how I could help in these situations.

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I searched  "decline in youth sports". I've seen first hand how the pandemic affected participation in youth sports at my work as a Pe Teacher. I have also seen a decline in sportsmanship as well. This scholarly journal  resinated with me  because it spoke about how covid 19 affected youth sports not only at a local level but globally. It also spoke about the importance of youth sports and how to prevent the decline from getting worse. That being said I believe there are other reasons that youth sports have seen a decline in participation. This is why I would like to go further in my research.

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Research Topic: Budgeting in Education
How does school district budgeting affect education?

Keywords: Budget, Funding School, District , Education

This topic is of interest in me because as a future teacher I will like to know how does this affect my future students. This is also important to me because as a future parents it will be nice to discover how my child's learning is affected depending on school budgeting or to find out if this is a factor at all.

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https://www.proquest.com/docview/2287049604?parentSessionId=ltT16%2BEwCqfiQlnUV3V4Z1lu%2FB6mu93Q9N21Nl4Id%2BI%3D&pq-origsite=primo&accountid=13802

Research topic: Income Inequality on Asian Groups

Income inequality on Asian is an important topic for CAD. The families depend on the families's income to survive in America. Even when parents are working a 9-5 jobs, sometimes it is not enough to support the family. It is important to be aware of these inequality to try to solve the problems. This topic also interest me because I am Asian. And I can relate to the topic.

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Research topic: Bilingualism
What are positives and negatives of Bilingualism and does this affect academic performance?
Keywords: neuroprotection, bilingual, bilingualism, languages, positives, negatives

This topic is important as today in schools many students speak more than one language. When parents are too busy the child is unable to strengthen or support the communication given a second language. Most schools only focus on English and this makes many students forget the second language. These languages are an identity to the child and with the support there are benefits in learning a second language. In this article I learned how being bilingual can improve memory and delay dementia. When compared to others who aren’t the years of dementia there is about a four year difference. The results of being bilingual showed the improvement of memory and specifically, episodic memory. Language can bring awareness to identity and culture to everyone around you.

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My study is on affordable quality child care and its benefits in low-income families.

Keywords: Affordable. Child Care, Low-Income

Affordable child care is an important topic for CAD and ECE students/workers to address. The need for child care is increasing as many parents are transitioning back into pre-COVID office/in-person work. Many parents work 9-5 jobs and perhaps even more than one job in order to afford rent and pay the bills. Typical child care costs more than $1000. When families are living paycheck to paycheck that is a ridiculously high price.

If parents can not afford care, they can not work and if they can not work, they can not pay rent or bills. This creates and continues a cycle of poverty.

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Key words I used for my during my search are intergenerational cultural dissonance, children, families and development. This topic is of interest to me because being a product of immigrant parents myself, cultural differences were very prominent throughout my development. Family conflict due to differing values and beliefs played a huge role in my development. It would be interesting to learn more about the consequences of this type of development.

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My study is on Parental Involvement effect on school readiness for children in early school age.

Keywords: Families, Children, abilities and aptitudes.

The topic I choose was based off of what I have seen first had at the school/schools I have worked at. I have noticed a positive correlation among the families that are involved in their child's education and would like to further study if that improves a child's readiness.

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The Effects of Parental Influences and School Readiness of the Child

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The specialty literature affirms that school readiness plays a very important role for the subsequent academic success of the child. NEPG proposes an …

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keywords: early childhood trauma and health outcomes
The topic I am interested in studying relates to the long-term health effects of early childhood trauma and stress on the developing child into their adulthood. This topic also relates to the manifestation of behavior from children that leads to building their personalities and certain characteristics that could be linked to childhood amnesia.

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Global web login for San Francisco State University

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My study is about what long term effects poverty has on children under the age of 5 years old.

Keywords: Poverty, children and effects. I picked this topic to look up because I feel like this topic is something that people may find hard to talk about as we do not want to label people or children as poor. But knowing if a child is born into poverty and seeing what effects it has on them we can provide early interventions, access to programs to get out of this and so that it does not continue for future generations.

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How do transnational families affect the well-being of their members?
keywords: transnational family, psychology, assessment
Coming from a transnational family myself, it was interesting to see how these families stayed connected despite the distance. I grew up in the early to mid-2000s when international means of communication were little to few and expensive to access. In contrast to my experience, this article explores the ways in which modern technology enables families to stay connected and maintain healthy relations. However, while families are now finding resilient ways to confront the difficulties posed by immigration, computer-mediated communications can be a source of both compelling opportunities and changing family dynamics/intimacy.

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Finding solutions for children and families who are facing problems.

Keywords: children and families, problem, solution

(By clicking the link above, you may have to log in to your SFSU account to view and read my article.)

The topic I chose is problems that children and families face and how we, as educators, can help to try and find a solution or change. Every family has stressors that they deal with on a day-to-day basis. When children and families have a support system, it may affect them positively in many ways. There are so many different issues that children face at school as well as at home that they need help with.

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SF State Global Login - San Francisco State University

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Global web login for San Francisco State University

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Providing access to Early Childhood Education and Care.

Keywords: universal, early education, care.

This topic is essential because Early Childhood Education is not available for all families. This creates a disadvantage for children in poverty and low-income families as their families are not able to afford the cost of high quality early care and education. The article touches points on the importance of having early care and one reason is all families need care for their children. If every family had access to high quality care for their children it would increase the child's development and allow for their families to have lower stress levels about affording early care.

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Executive Summary

Most families need childcare. Childcare is expensive and licensed center-based care is unaffordable for families of poor to modest means. There is broad public support for more government spending on childcare as long as that spending does not result in another unfunded entitlement that worsens the deficit. Claims that more spending on childcare will pay back the taxpayer in the long run based on better child development or increased workplace productivity are shaky. Political appetite for more spending on childcare will be greater if a childcare subsidy can be paid for as we go with an offset elsewhere in the federal budget. The federal deduction for charitable contributions is a possible target for such an offset.

The plan for increased childhood subsidies outlined in this paper would cost $42 billion and would provide a substantial subsidy for every child from birth to fifth birthday in a family at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. This is nearly half the families in the U.S.

If current federal spending on childcare and early childhood programs, amounting to about $26 billion a year, were shifted to the new subsidy, $16 billion more would be required. The charitable deduction presently costs the U.S. Treasury $55 billion a year. A $16 billion offset for childcare would allow the proposed childcare subsidy to be budget neutral while leaving $39 billion on the table to continue the charitable deduction or to support various tax reform proposals that are in the works.

Most voters want government to spend more money of the care and education of young children, for the good of families and everything that flows from stable homes and supportive environments for children and adults. The policy arguments on this topic have largely been sideshows about research on long term benefits for children; whether it is desirable for government to gain substantial control over the environments in which young children are reared; and roles of the federal vs. state government. The immediate issues are more direct. The evidence shows clearly that many families need childcare and that licensed center-based care is not affordable for them. How can the federal government pay for it, assure that parents remain in the driver's seat, minimize unintended negative consequences (including overutilization), and achieve requisite political support?

The present paper provides one solution in the form of childcare and education savings accounts paid for with redirection of current federal spending on early education and care, and through an offset from the federal deduction for charitable contributions. There are other policy mechanisms that have overlapping goals, including a Trump plan involving tax credits. Now is the time and the opportunity for serious political consideration of new funding and delivery models for childcare.

Parents need childcare

Most young children in the U.S. have parents who work outside the home. Both parents work in 56 percent of married families with children under six. For single mothers raising a young child the employment rate is 65 percent. It is 83 percent for single fathers who are the custodial parent. Childcare is a necessity for these families, which in aggregate constitute 60 percent of families with young children. ¹

Good childcare is unaffordable

Center-based childcare is very expensive, both in absolute terms and relative to family income. One estimate pegs the average weekly cost of full-time (40 hours per week) daycare at $196 per child, or about $10,000 per year. ² Other estimates are higher. ³ Costs vary substantially by geographical locale, age of the child, and form of childcare. For example, full-time center-based care for one infant or toddler ranges from about $5,000 a year in Mississippi to over $22,000 a year in Washington, D.C. ⁴ Costs for infants and toddlers are thousands of dollars higher per year than costs for preschoolers.

These costs are very high relative to family income. ⁵ Accredited, center-based childcare for a dual-earner family with two young children and with earnings at 150 percent of the average full-time worker's wage would cost that family, on average, 29 percent of their take-home pay. A poor single parent earning 50 percent of the national average wage would have to spend 52 percent of her income for the same services. The U.S. ranks dead last among developed nations on this measure of affordability, as illustrated in the subsequent figure for a single parent earning half the average wage. ⁶

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concludes that affordable childcare should not exceed 7 percent of family income. There is only one state in the nation, Louisiana, in which the cost of center-based infant care for one child meets that definition for a married couple with the median income for the state. ⁷ In other words, childcare of the type and in the settings that experts favor for child development is simply unaffordable for a majority of working families, and a stretch for many others.

Parents are acutely sensitive to the costs and stresses of obtaining childcare. A recent national poll found that 61 percent of parents who report that their financial situation is not strong say that the costs of childcare pose for them a financial problem, with about third of those parents indicating that the financial burden is "very serious." ⁸ And these results are in the context of parents who have frequently already cheaped out on childcare expenses by using unlicensed providers working out of their homes in the neighborhood. Were these parents forced to spend the national average of $10,000 a year for licensed, regulated center-based care virtually all would experience "very serious" financial burdens.

Unaffordable childcare has negative consequences

There are a range of consequences of the high costs and low affordability of childcare. Among them are deleterious effects on children of unregulated and often substandard childcare; ⁹ lost productivity for employers due to parents missing work to handle gaps in childcare or to care for a sick child; ¹⁰ lost wages and reduced retirement benefits for parents who have to drop out of the labor market to provide at-home care for their young children; ¹¹ a substantial downward pressure on the wages of childcare workers with effects on the quality and stability of the childcare workforce; ¹² and lost opportunities for further education, ¹³ college savings, and other investments that working parents could make in themselves and their children but cannot afford because they are spending most or all of their disposable income on childcare.

The public supports more spending on early childhood if it doesn't increase the deficit

That so many adults have faced, are facing, or will face the challenges of obtaining affordable, reliable childcare is probably one reason that national polls routinely find overwhelming public support for increasing federal and state spending on early childhood programs for low- and moderate-income families. Note, however, that voters condition their support on such expenditures paying for themselves in the long-term and not permanently adding to the federal deficit. ¹⁴ Let's call this the "must-be-paid-for" stipulation.

More spending on childcare is unlikely to pay for itself

The standard response to the must-be-paid-for stipulation by advocates of more public spending on childcare is that such expenditures will produce improvements in the cognitive, social, and emotional skills of young children that, in turn, will lead children to do better as they progress through school and enter the workforce as adults. Because they will get better jobs and earn more, it is asserted, tax revenues will increase. Likewise, it is said that children who have experienced childcare will be less likely to engage in criminal activities or to need social services as adults, thereby reducing government spending. The advertisement is that these returns on the investment in early childhood will more than pay back the public investment in the long term. ¹⁵

I and others have written about the empirically shaky nature of these rosy investment projections. ¹⁶ We point out that the studies on which they are based are of a couple of small intensive programs from a half century ago that bear little resemblance to present daycare and early education programs, some of which have little in the way of explicit educational goals. Studies of modern, scaled-up programs that intend to impact long-term child development find, unlike the studies of small hothouse programs from the last century, that improvements in children's measurable skills and dispositions found at the end of participation in such programs usually fade away entirely by the time children are in the first few grades of elementary school. ¹⁷ There are also findings of null or negative impacts of childcare. For example, studies of the universal childcare program in Quebec, Canada have found that its introduction generated a very large increase in the use of childcare as parents who would otherwise have cared for their children at home took advantage of the free service. But at the same time, outcomes for children and mothers deteriorated. ¹⁸

To the extent that the human capital returns to increased public expenditure on early childcare and education are uncertain, the substantial expenditures that would be necessary to make childcare affordable for low- to moderate-income parents have to be paid for in another way in if they are not to require raising taxes or increasing deficit spending.

Empirically grounded arguments can be made about economic returns to larger childcare subsidies that rely not on what children learn in preschool that might make them more successful in later life but on the impact on parents and all children in a family of the family having more disposable income as a result of having to pay less for childcare. Lower-income families need more money, and they do better when they receive it. ¹⁹ There are also substantial costs to employers related to employee absences and turnover caused by childcare breakdowns that would be reduced with increased childcare subsidies. ²⁰ There is not, however, a strong empirical basis for estimating these costs, how much they would be reduced through an expanded childcare subsidy, and what effects this would have on tax revenues. To hold that increased spending on childcare will pay for itself through such savings is as wishful a speculation as the one that depends on the assumption that childcare produces better children who later become more productive adults.

A large new public expenditure on childcare would have significant negative effects on the federal budget in the near term. The call for many billions of new dollars of annually recurring federal expenditure on expanded support for childcare that is supposed to pay for itself way down the road is politically unrealistic.

More federal spending on childcare will require a budget offset

In that context, the task for those who want to identify a politically plausible way forward for increased childcare subsidies is to find an offset. In other words, what might the Congress be willing to spend less on in order to spend more on childcare?

Finding a place to cut federal spending in order to free up funds for childcare is, of course, not an easy task. Every federal expenditure of substance has beneficiaries that can be expected to oppose efforts to roll back the funding from which they reap an advantage. And the oxen to be gored are likely to be roused to greater levels of advocacy than those who would benefit from the redirected funds, who in this case are lower income families. Further, there are few federal funding programs for which a plausible argument of beneficence to the general public good cannot be made. The challenge, then, is to identify a present program of federal spending that can be restructured so as to free up funds for childcare that has vulnerabilities, political and functional.

The federal deduction for charitable contributions may fill the bill

Charitable contributions receive favorable treatment under the U.S. tax code and are expensive to the federal treasury. The tax benefit is structured in ways that many find perverse, both in who gets the deduction and how much value is provided for the general public. And while there are surely categories of federal expenditure that many people would find more attractive targets for redirection into childcare than the charitable deduction, e.g., carried interest, military spending, my goal is to be politically realistic.

Let's start with some background on the charitable deduction and how it works. The charitable deduction falls into a category of revenue losses, so-called tax expenditures, attributable "to provisions of the Federal tax laws which allow a special exclusion, exemption, or deduction from gross income or which provide a special credit, a preferential rate of tax, or a deferral of tax liability." ²¹

Specifically, the charitable deduction allows individual taxpayers and corporations to deduct from their taxable income in a given year the present value of contributions they make to nonprofit groups that are religious, charitable, educational, scientific, or literary in purpose, or that work to prevent cruelty to children or animals. Examples of organizations that qualify as recipients of contributions for the purpose of a tax deduction include non-profit educational institutions such as Harvard University, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution, hospitals such as St. Jude's, philanthropies such as the Gates Foundation, and arts organizations such as Lincoln Center. Of course, contributions to small or local organizations without the name recognition of my examples also generate the deduction.

The charitable deduction has conditions

There are four principal conditions on a taxpayer's charitable deduction to a qualifying organization.

First, the charitable deduction applies to a contribution up to but not exceeding 50 percent of the income of donor. For example, if a prospective donor has two million dollars in taxable income in a given year, that person can receive a tax deduction for donations of up to $1 million. In contrast, if the prospective donor has a taxable income of $20,000 they can only receive a tax deduction for contributions that have value of up to $10,000. An obvious consequence of this rule is that an individual with a large income can receive a deduction on a much larger charitable deduction in absolute terms than can an individual with a small income.

Second, the charitable deduction is only available to individuals who itemize their deductions. Only 30 percent of American taxpayers itemize. ²² Thus 70 percent of taxpayers, i.e., those who take the standard deduction, are frozen out of the tax benefits of charitable giving. Because higher income taxpayers are much more likely to itemize than those with lower incomes (e.g., 94 percent of individuals with incomes >$200,000 vs. 21 percent of those with incomes from $25,000 to $50,000), this tilts benefits of the charitable deduction heavily towards the affluent. ²³

Third, the value of a charitable gift for the purposes of a tax deduction is its present market value, not how much it cost the donor or its replacement cost. Thus, for example, a donation of clothing to the Salvation Army is valued at the market price of used clothing for the purposes of claiming the charitable deduction, not its purchase price or replacement value. This works against the interest of taxpayers of modest means who make small donations of personal property to charities. In contrast, it is a tremendous boon to wealthy individuals who typically make donations of items with appreciated value, most frequently stocks and bonds. The donor gets the charitable deduction on the present market value of the stock at the time it is donated, not the price at which it was purchased. This provision of the tax code provides a strong incentive for tax payers with high incomes in a particular year to donate stocks that have shown substantial long-term appreciation. Doing so both generates a large tax deduction and avoids what otherwise might be a hefty capital gains tax on the sale of those assets.

Finally, the amount of the charitable deduction is based on the donor's tax rate. The top marginal income tax rate for 2017 is roughly 40 percent for single filers with taxable income of $419,000 or greater. In contrast, the tax bracket for an individual with $30,000 of income is 15 percent. The low-income individual who gives $1,000 to his church and itemizes gets a federal incentive in the form of a $150 tax deduction for doing so, whereas the high-income individual who gives the same amount to his church gets a $400 tax deduction. The wealthy person gets over 2.5 times the match from the federal treasury as the poor person for exactly the same gift.

The charitable deduction favors the rich and is politically vulnerable

It is without doubt that each of these provisions of the charitable deduction heavily favor more affluent over less affluent taxpayers. There is, of course, the reality that it is more affluent taxpayers that have the money to donate and that incentives to them drive up the dollar totals of charitable giving. Notwithstanding this, the cost of charitable giving in functional terms is much greater as income diminishes, and so to reward the donations of lower-income taxpayers less than the donations of higher income taxpayers seems perverse. The lower-income family that tithes to their church may have to forgo a meal out or new clothes to do so, whereas the very affluent donor experiences only a reduction in net worth on a spreadsheet. Our tax policy on charitable donations provides the maximum tax benefit to those who can easily afford to donate whereas it provides the minimal benefit, and typically no benefit at all, to those who give despite limited resources.

In addition to federal tax incentives for charitable deductions that are heavily tilted towards the rich, the donations of the very wealthy often serve substantial self-interests. For instance, the big donor gets the new building at his alma mater named for him and gets a leg up for his children and grandchildren in college admission. High net worth people who establish a foundation can direct a portion of their fortune to the pursuit of goals through the foundation they hold dear but that may not be shared or prioritized equivalently by large segments of the taxpayer population. The general taxpayer is, nevertheless, subsidizing the work of that foundation through the substantial tax deductions given to its founder. Don't like the work of the Donald J. Trump Foundation, or the Clinton Foundation? If you're paying taxes, you're subsidizing both. And while there is not space here to develop the point, high wealth donors frequently advance the interests of their friends and family by seeing that they have positions and salaries at the non-profit organizations that the donors have created. They do this not inadvertently but with full awareness of the benefits such organizations can bestow through employment.

These and related criticisms of the charitable deduction are not new. ²⁴ And they have resonance with some federal officials. For example, several members of Congress have in recent years raised the possibility of removing the charitable deduction from universities that have used it to generate huge endowments that do not seem to be spent much at all, much less spent to decrease the costs of going to college or to increase the enrollment of students from low-income backgrounds. ²⁵ The Obama administration had cutbacks in the charitable deduction in its budgets. ²⁶ And discussions about limiting the charitable deduction in one way or another are part of tax overhaul legislations to be put forward later this year by Speaker Ryan in coordination with the Trump administration. ²⁷

The point is that the charitable deduction is politically vulnerable despite the fact that it encourages private giving above levels that would occur without it. ²⁸ Public spending for childcare has intentions that are generally congruent with those that motivate charitable giving. And childcare expenditures serve a population that is supposed to be the beneficiary of charitable giving. In that sense, the tradeoff of more spending on childcare for less spending on the charitable deduction has an organic appeal that reducing the charitable deduction to spend more on the military or just to help balance the budget under tax reform may not. It might be expedient for advocates of more spending on children to make the linkage and take the tradeoff before the charitable deduction is spent on something else.

The program: Childcare and education savings accounts

The politics of increased federal funding for childcare depend not only on data I've presented above on need and the availability of budget offsets from the charitable deduction, but also on how an increased subsidy would be delivered to families. Further, the outlines of a delivery vehicle are required in order to estimate costs. There are several ways that a federal subsidy for childcare might be accomplished. Three broad categories are: tax credits, grants to states, and savings accounts.

The tax vehicle would provide for increased deductibility or credits for childcare expenses, including perhaps refundable tax credits such that a family that has accrued childcare expenses but whose taxes would be reduced below zero with a childcare credit would receive a refund for the difference. There are several problems with a tax credit vehicle, as I describe subsequently. A critical one is that it delivers benefits to parents once a year in connection with a tax return whereas the costs for childcare are due and payable when they are being received. The childcare provider needs to be paid at the end of the week or beginning of the month. A tax credit the parent receives in April is mistimed for families that live from paycheck to paycheck.

A second mechanism is to have a childcare subsidy flow through existing federal programs that are intended to support states in the provision of needed services. The obvious program through which increased funding could flow would be the Childcare and Development Block Grant, which provides money to states to support the child care needs of low-income working parents. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate, as well as the Trump administration, are not likely to favor a vehicle that involves cutting bigger checks to states. Further, the Child Care and Development Block Grant has had many problems in design and in implementation at the state level which make it an undesirable foundation on which to build. ²⁹

Education savings accounts have been a popular policy proposal among Republicans in recent presidential campaigns. ³⁰ Here, I tweak the concept and implementation of a federally funded savings account to adapt it to the particular circumstances of childcare:

Based on prior years' tax returns and birth records, parents of a young child that qualifies for childcare subsidies, as described subsequently, would have deposited to the child's name and their control in a federal Childcare and Education Savings Account (CESA) the amount of subsidy to which they are entitled for a given year. They would then pay their childcare providers through a transaction that debits that account. Half of any funds credited to the account in a given year that are not expended on childcare would remain in the account for expenditure on the care or education of that child until the child is an adult, e.g., leftover funds in the account could be expended on college tuition.

The carryover provision that allows a portion of unexpended funds for a given year to remain in the account and be available for use in subsequent years is a critical design feature. Without the opportunity for such carryovers there would be perverse incentives for parents who would otherwise stay home with their children or engage other family members in their children's care to move their children into center-based childcare in order not to lose their subsidy. Evidence previously described suggests that this may not be good for children or parents, on average. Further, a program that provides substantial incentives for parents to substitute institutional care for their children for full days and full years over the entire period from infancy to the beginning of kindergarten for their own care of their children will find many opponents.

As described in more detail below, a CESA with a carryover provision allows parents to cover needed costs of childcare that arise because the parent is at work or in school and has no family or friends who can care for her child, while providing a strong incentive through the carryover provision not to overspend on or over-utilize professional childcare services. Further, the savings accumulated through the carryover of unspent childcare subsidies are likely to have positive effects down the line on the family's economic circumstances and the ability to plan for and encourage a child's education beyond high school. As well, CESAs could serve as the vehicle by which additional federal transfers to support the education of economically disadvantaged students could be effected in lieu of what are presently separate programs, e.g., Pell grants.

The math on federal funding of childcare and education savings accounts

Two questions are paramount in addressing the budget consequences of federal spending for childcare through CESAs:

How much federal funding is needed to make childcare affordable?

How much of the charitable deduction would have to be redirected to pay for affordable childcare?

Answers to these questions depend on both facts, e.g., how much does the federal government currently spend on childcare, and assumptions, e.g., the number of families and children who would be covered and the amount of subsidy they would receive.
Costs
There are roughly four million children born each year in the U.S., of which about 23 percent live in poverty and another 20 percent who are in households that are between the federal poverty line and 200 percent of that level. ³¹ Thus, at any one time, there are about 3.6 million children under the age of five living in poverty and another 3.2 million between the poverty line and 200 percent of poverty.

By one estimate, the average cost of full-time center-based daycare in the U.S. for infants and toddlers approaches $12,000 per year, whereas it approaches about $9,000 a year for three- and four-year-old children. ³²

Assume that the federal government makes a contribution of these full amounts annually to the CESA of a child in a family at or below the poverty line based on the child's age ($12,000 for an infant or toddler, and $9,000 for a three- or four-year-old). Assume that the contribution is 75 percent of these amounts for a child in a family between the poverty line and 200 percent of poverty.

This information allows a calculation of the upper and lower bounds of costs of the proposed CESA program. We reach the upper bound if every family with an eligible child expends the full amount of the subsidy on full-time childcare in the year the subsidy is credited to the CESA, in which case the annual cost is about $64 billion. We reach the lower bound if no family expends any of the annual credit to their CESA and, instead, carries forward the allowed 50 percent of the unexpended credit. The lower bound is about $32 billion.

Where would costs likely fall between the unrealistic upper and lower bounds? That depends entirely on the level of utilization of paid childcare services by the parents of the eligible children and the charges the parents incur from service providers. Every dollar spent in the year in which it is credited to the CESA costs the government a dollar and moves the overall expenditure towards the upper bound, whereas every dollar saved and carried forward in the CESA costs the government 50 cents, when it is eventually spent, and moves the overall expenditure towards the lower bound.

Let's make the most conservative assumption with regard to utilization, which is that parents maintain the same rate of utilization of non-relative care as is presently the case (33 percent). ³³ Let's pair that with the most liberal assumption with regard to parental spending on non-relative care, which is that every eligible child in nonparental care spends 40 hours a week in a licensed center that charges the parent the average national rate ($12,000 a year for infant/toddler care and $9,000 for preschoolers). Under these two assumptions, the estimated program costs are $42 billion a year.

The estimated program costs of $42 billion move higher if parents with a CESA are more inclined to use nonparental care than is presently the case, which seems likely. The estimate moves lower to the extent that parents use less than 40 hours of week of nonparental care, and continue to utilize family daycare and in-home help that is less expensive than the national average for center-based care, both of which seem likely. These are uncertain parameters that would have to be determined and updated based on program experience. For the purposes of this exercise, which is to determine feasibility rather than to produce a precise budget proposal, the ballpark figure of $42 billion a year will serve.
Revenue
I assume that current federal spending on early childcare and education programs will be redirected to the new CESA program since the existing programs serve functions that are substantially redundant with the proposed childcare subsidy. The most prominent of these programs, along with their FY 2016 budget authority, are listed in the following table.

There are 45 separate federal programs through which money is spent on young children. ³⁴ Several large programs that include childcare are omitted from the table (e.g., Social Services Block Grant, Child and Adult Care Food Program, Title I preschool grants), as are all the smaller programs. This means that the total current federal expenditure for young children in the table of roughly $26 billion is conservative. Note that Head Start, the largest item of expenditure in the table, would not disappear under the proposed CESA program. Rather individual center-based programs delivered under the Head Start banner would compete with other providers and would succeed to the extent that parents choose them for their children.

The existing federal annual expenditure on childcare of $26 billion plus a portion of the federal tax expenditure for charitable contributions is more than sufficient to cover the $42 billion bill, while leaving a substantial charitable contribution deduction in place.

The tax expenditure for charitable contributions for 2016 was $55 billion. ³⁵ $16 billion of that would be needed, along with the existing $26 billion of federal expenditure, to make the proposed CESA program budget neutral. $39 billion would remain for the charitable deduction or other purposes.

There are variety of plans that have been proposed for cutting back the charitable deduction. The mechanics are not critical to the present proposal, although they could certainly bear on its political prospects. One proposal which deals with some of the severe tilt of the charitable deduction towards high wealth taxpayers is to cap the deduction at a fixed percentage of annual income, which would be invariant to the tax rate of the donor. ³⁶ So, for example, rather than providing a deduction for a high income donor equal to that person's marginal tax rate of 40 percent, every donor regardless of taxable income would receive a deduction worth 10 percent (or some other fixed percentage) of the value of the donation. Another proposal is to cap the deduction at $100,000 for single filers regardless of their income. ³⁷

Clearly, tax reform proposals that directly change the provisions of the tax code for charitable deductions will affect the math relevant to that deduction as an offset for childcare subsidies. So, too, will changes in the tax code that indirectly affect the incentives for charitable giving, e.g., a much high standard deduction would reduce still further the proportion of taxpayers that itemize their deductions and, therefore, are affected by the charitable deduction. The specifics of a tradeoff between charitable deductions and childcare subsidies will have to await the resolution of these uncertainties about reforms in the tax code. One purpose of this report is to encourage those who have the responsibility for tax reform and the federal budget to consider the tradeoff while their plans are still being formed.

Choosing among the alternatives

The Republican majorities in the House and Senate, as well as the Trump administration, are likely to favor education savings accounts or tax credits, which deliver federal funds directly to families, over increased spending on the Child Care Development Block Grant or other programs that send money to states and other administrative entities.

There are good arguments to be made for both tax credits and education savings accounts. There are, as well, good reasons to want states to be involved in regulating the childcare industry to assure, at least, that minimal standards for quality are met and good information is provided to parents to help them choose among providers.

The Trump administration is at work on a childcare proposal, with the details presumably foreshadowed in the plan put forward during the campaign. ³⁸ The Trump plan overlaps with the plan I've put forward in its intent to make childcare more affordable and its use of a delivery vehicle that sends dollars directly to parents rather than to state or local governmental entities. It differs from the present proposal in several important respects. First, it is virtually universal in coverage rather than targeted on families in the lower half of the income distribution. Specifically, it would provide benefits to couples earning up to $500,000 a year. Second, and connected to the near universality of the benefit, the financial subsidy for a family would be quite modest, e.g., a reduction of $840 in federal taxes for a family earning $70,000 a year and paying $7,000 for child care. There is virtually no benefit for low-income families. ³⁹ Third, in the Trump plan, benefits are delivered once per year via income tax credits rather than being available when needed. Finally, the Trump plan isn't paid for, except to the extent that the "child care plan itself can more than be offset by additional growth."

Another approach that is out and about (and which might have had a brighter future if Hillary Clinton had won the election) is for a universal child allowance under which every family without regard to income would receive a monthly allowance per child, e.g., $300, to support the family's basic needs. ⁴⁰ Unlike my plan, the universal child allowance is modest in amount per child, not targeted to families in need, not specific to childcare, and not budget neutral.

Clearly, from the prior presentation, I favor assistance that is targeted on families in need, subsidies that are generous enough to allow lower-income families to purchase center-based childcare at market rates, budget neutrality, assistance for childcare itself rather than a universal allowance that the family can spend on anything, and childcare and education savings accounts as the delivery vehicle. Tax credits as preferred in the Trump plan have a serious disadvantage compared to education savings accounts in that they provide once-a-year rebates whereas the bills for childcare are due and payable throughout the year. In contrast, funds in an education savings account would be deposited and available for expenditure soon after a child is born, topped up every birthday thereafter during the preschool period, and available for expenditure on that child's education needs through college and career training. I also favor a funding stream directly to states to support their roles in providing oversight and regulation of childcare.

Conclusions

Most families need childcare. Childcare is expensive and licensed center-based care is unaffordable for families of poor to modest means. There is broad public support for more government spending on childcare as long as that spending does not worsen the deficit. Claims that more spending on childcare will pay back the taxpayer in the long run based on better child development or greater productivity in the workplace are shaky. Political appetite for more spending on childcare will be greater if it can be paid for as we go with an offset elsewhere in the federal budget. The federal deduction for charitable contributions is an attractive target for such an offset.

The plan for increased childhood subsidies sketched in this paper would cost roughly $42 billion a year and would provide a substantial subsidy for every child in a family at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. This is nearly half the families in the U.S. If current federal spending on childcare and early childhood programs, amounting to about $26 billion a year, were shifted to the new subsidy, an offset of $16 billion would be required from tax expenditures on the charitable deduction to make up the difference. The charitable deduction presently costs the Treasury $55 billion a year. A $16 billion offset for childcare would leave $39 billion on the table to continue the charitable deduction or to support various tax reform proposals.

Families with young children are at the center of our nation's life and prospects. Childcare expenses for most of these families are both necessary and unaffordable. Most voters want government to do something about that, for the good of families and everything that flows from stable homes and supportive environments for children and adults. The policy arguments on this topic have largely been sideshows about research on long term benefits for children, whether it is desirable for government to gain substantial control over the environments in which young children are reared, and roles of federal vs. state government. The first order issues are more direct. It is clear that many families have to have childcare and that it isn't affordable for them. How can the federal government pay for it, assure that parents remain in the driver's seat, minimize unintended negative consequences (including overutilization), and achieve requisite political support? There are answers to these questions and openings for serious political consideration of new funding and delivery models.

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Why the federal government should subsidize childcare and how to pay for it

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Most families need childcare. Childcare is expensive and licensed center-based care is unaffordable for families of poor to modest means. There is broad public support for more government spending on childcare as long as that spending does not result in another unfunded entitlement that worsens the deficit.

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How does generational trauma effect children’s relationships?

Keywords: generational, trauma, effects, children

The article Intergenerational transmission and prevention of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is about how to prevent adverse childhood experiences (ACES) on children. The article goes in depth to explain parents' own mental development may have been affected by their own childhood experiences. In addition, the researchers believe they need further knowledge and understanding of intergenerational trauma within the parents to fully understand it effects on children and find ways to approach these situations to prevent it the recurring cycle of trauma. I feel that it's very important to acknowledge the underlying issue of ACEs and resolving parents' own childhood trauma/experiences is a huge step into having healthy relationships and communication with children. Acknowledge trauma within the adult and learning how to navigate solutions to heal is vital to prevent a hostile and abusive environment.

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How can classroom management strategies improve learning outcomes for elementary school age children?
Keywords: classroom management, elementary school
I believe this topic is important because any area that we as educators and child care workers can improve on in order to better our children's lives are steps we should take. I am particularly interested in this topic because I would like to have a career as a school psychologist, where part of my duties include assisting teachers with classroom management.

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The Relationship Between Teachers' Implementation of Classroom Management Practices and Student Behavior in Elementary School

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Key Words: technology on children, effects

This topic is important because people don't realize technology has an effect on children. I understand that the generation we live in today, have become very dependent on technology, but children it has a negative effect on children because of the over use of it. In this article, they discuss the negative and postive affects technology has on children. This article brings awareness to the topic and give people more knowledge on how their child is affected by their technology.

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What is needed in bilingualism speech therapy to ensure the most success?
Key Words: bilingualism, California, education, Speech, k-12, funding
Speech-language pathologists advocate for individuals with communication disorders and that interfere with their daily life and means for expression. In this study, the article pointed out the fact that most SLP’s have a lack of confidence surrounding their ability to support their clients that are bilingual. The reason behind this is that they do not feel proficient in the client’s language. The article also reported that SLP’s work in the US does not reach 10% of bilingual individuals. In studying to become a Speech-Language Pathologist myself, I have a lot of doubt surrounding my bilingual abilities. I recently just signed up for a program, “Spanish for Healthcare Workers”, to help this skill.

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Understanding and addressing racial stress and trauma in schools: A pathway toward resistance and healing

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1. Key words: racial trauma, stress, School Trauma, and racial Stress.

2. This specific is essential because, in order for our students to flourish in the education system, we must not only understand our students but understand how the education system needs to improve for BIPOC youth. When students are dealt with generational trauma and racial trauma, their well-being is affected and so is their mindset from how they should live to what they should learn in k-12 classrooms. And when the student's well-being is affected, their academic performance will demonstrate that the schooling system needs to be improved and should address their mental health.

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How does social media contribute to mental disorders among teens?

Keywords: mental health, social media, teens

This topic is important as the rise of social media use in teens coincides with a rise in mental health concerns. Ironically, social media use may be helping and hurting at the same time.

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Like this meta-analysis: Screen media and mental health.: EBSCOhost

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Can access to mental health supports lessen burnout rates amongst Special Education teachers?

Keywords: Special Education teacher, burnout

Hi everyone, I chose the topic of teacher burnout rates, specifically special education teachers. The field of special education can be extremely emotionally taxing and unfortunately there are little resources offered to these professionals to support them. The field of special education is an extremely important one as these kids need even more individualization and focus from their educators in order to reach their full potential. Unfortunately the weight of this job results in a large burnout rate. I feel that as professionals in the field of CAD it is our responsibility to each other to make sure we are supporting educators and childcare professionals to ensure they can continue to be there for the children they are supporting.

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SF State Global Login - San Francisco State University

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Global web login for San Francisco State University

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Effects of poverty in Marginalized Communities

Keywords: Marginalized Communities, Poverty, Risk youth

The article Exploring the impact and risks of the 2008
recession for marginalized communities and
high-poverty schools' academic achievement is a study about for economic hardship are associated with risk behavior within  marginalized groups and communities. This article explains how communities surrounded by poverty affect students and staff as well as what things we can do outside of school to counter act the environment affect on a child metal development. It discusses how children and adults can suffer negative cognitive development due to their environment and how we can change that by having resources outside of school. This is just the tip of the ice bird for my research but it a really good article that talks about the struggles of poverty in marginalized communities and how it affects a child’s cognitive development.

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SF State Global Login - San Francisco State University

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Global web login for San Francisco State University

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key words- parenting practices, free play, human development.

Hello everyone! I believe understanding different parenting styles and how they affect a child is important. I feel like something that is not really talked about is how going out in public and the people around you can either have a positive or negative impact on how you react to your child and what they are doing or acting. there are many different studies of how the public eye can affect a parent and their children even if the child is doing nothing wrong except being a child. we often let society make it seem as if children are being bad by being loud, silly, etc when overall they are just children.

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Ancestral Landscapes in Human Evolution: Culture, Childrearing and Social Wellbeing

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Abstract. The social contexts in which children develop have transformed over recent decades, but also over millennia. Modern parenting practices have diverged

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Hi Everyone,

As we always hear about traumatic exposure in childhood can lead to lifelong physical and mental health consequences.I am interested in finding more regarding this major public health issue. This article describes how childhood trauma exposure (adverse childhood experiences) and toxic stress will affect the children's brain and body growth. The adverse childhood experiences or traumas that include childhood emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, domestic violence, domestic substance abuse, family mental illness, parental separation or divorce, and crime family member.

I think it's important for parents/caregivers to know that early identification of trauma exposure coupled with appropriate intervention can assist in the prevention of lifelong consequences for victims. Enhancing

resilience is important for all children and is crucial for children exposed to trauma.

.

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LGBTQ+ Youth and Sex Education: How should we increase the visibility for LGBTQ+ youth when it comes to sex education?

Keywords: LGBTQ, Inclusivity, School

I think this topic is very important because more students in K-12 are becoming much more open and accepting to being members of the LGBTQ+ community and need to learn about what it means to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community especially when it comes to sexual health and sex education. Not only should the education cover gay/lesbian relationships, but should also provide information about transgender, queer and questioning youth as well. I believe youth do not always get the best information when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community and may not feel comfortable asking questions at home so they should be able to get the education at their place of learning.

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How is a child’s development and upbringing affected by having a parent in the military?

Keywords: military family, child development, children.

I think that this is an important topic to research because children whose parents are in the military may be dealing with stress and anxiety from having a parent deployed or having to deal with relocating. In addition, these stresses may also cause traumas and negatively impact children’s development.

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The impact of military deployment on children: Placing developmental risk in context

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During recent conflicts in the Middle East, U.S. military families have endured multiple separations, relocations, and alterations in family structure...

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How are children’s social skills being hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic?

The key words that I used in this search are COVID-19, socialization, children.

I think this is important because social skills are such an important aspect of a child’s development, yet we don’t realize how they are being deprived of it for an indefinite amount of time. Furthermore, we won’t know how detrimental it would be to deprive them of socialization for an indefinite amount of time.

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Child behavior problems during COVID-19: Associations with parent distress and child social-emotional skills

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The COVID-19 pandemic and associated government-mandated shutdowns disrupted schooling, socialization, and family life for school-aged children during…

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Effect of Social Media on Children Since COVID-19

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I believe this topic is important because the COVID-19 pandemic affected the entire world, forcing many people to isolate themselves within their homes. Children faced the transition out of their classroom environments to online zoom courses, losing their opportunity to socialize with peers and create new relationships. Since technology has played an overwhelming role in the past two decades, with social media platforms growing everyday, many children found comfort in their own devices and the online world. And because of this, it is important to understand how children have been impacted, and whether social media has influenced the way they, and even the rest of the world, socialize with one another face-to-face.

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Melissa Torres - Homelessness and Early Development

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Melissa Torres - Homelessness and Early Development

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Key Words: Preschool Children, Homeless, Child Development, Poverty

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The effects of childhood trauma on the developing child and how we can avoid those outcomes
Keywords: Childhood trauma, Psychopathology, Mechanisms of enhanced threat processing, Resilience
This topic is very important because today in society, it is more commonly known how terribly exposure to trauma at a young age will affect the mental health of a child and adult; This article not only outlines those specific effects, but also ways in which we can overcome those "inevitable" side effects with positive relationship and emotional regulation techniques in childhood before it is too late. We can't change what happened to children affected by trauma, but we can begin to help them move forward and not let the effects of trauma overcome them.

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I think this topic is interesting because it affects thousands of families. Children are affected and they are not provided with coping mechanisms or support. They face instability, which leads to potential
trust, emotional, and social issues. Bereavement in children under the age of 5 lack affection and emotional stability which is needed in a child.

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Coping with loss

Dora Black, honorary consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist

Infants do not come into the world as "empty slates" but bring with them complex behavioural systems. One system that has been well studied protects the child from danger during the long period of extra-uterine immaturity. It involves the development of mutual attachment behaviour (box), which ensures that the child does not stray far from a caretaker. Infants are active partners in the development of this behaviour, using instinctive behaviours to engage caretakers in protecting them. These include smiling, vocalising, crying, and, later, returning frequently to the secure base of the adult after exploratory forays.1 Infant attachment is at its height at about 3 years of age and then becomes increasingly diffused by the development of other relationships, but it remains important throughout life, with later relationships qualitatively echoing the earlier ones.

For optimal emotional, social, and psychosexual development to occur, children need a warm, secure, affectionate, individualised, and continuous experience of care from a few caretakers who interact with them in a sensitive way and who can live in harmony with each other.

Summary points

The pattern of attachment between infant and parent is rooted in instinct but modified by experience. It is an important source of security throughout life

Separation from a parent in early childhood is followed, in succession, by protest, despair, and detachment; feeding difficulties, bedwetting, constipation, and sleeping difficulties may arise

In later childhood the loss of a parent commonly gives rise to emotional and behaviour problems

Children bereaved in childhood may be vulnerable to psychiatric disorder later in life

Forewarning can help children to prepare for bereavement, and they usually benefit from viewing a dead parent and attending funerals and other rituals

Family support meetings can reduce morbidity after bereavement

Separation and loss in childhood

Infants and toddlers react to separation from an attachment figure by protesting vigorously. If their cries are not successful in restoring the adult, protest eventually gives way to despair, and eventually, if they are not restored to their attachment figure, pathological states of detachment and indifference may ensue. They probably have little concept of death, and the disappearance of a parent, whatever the cause, will evoke similar reactions. Thus a parent away for a few hours and one absent for longer both evoke the same separation anxiety in infants and toddlers older than a few weeks or months.2 Even very young children can mourn for a lost parent, although the form of their grief differs from that of adults and older children.2,3 Their reactions tend to be bodily ones such as feeding difficulties, bedwetting, constipation, and sleeping difficulties.

By 5 years of age, most children can understand the difference between a temporary separation and death. They know that death is irreversible and universal, has a cause, and involves permanent separation and that dead people differ from live people in several respects: they are immobile, unfeeling, and cannot hear, see, smell, or speak. It is more difficult for children to understand that dead people change in their appearance, and this concept does not develop until nearer puberty.4

Children from 5 to 11 years are more likely to understand the physical changes that death brings and are helped by seeing these changes for themselves. They should be told what to expect, and they should be allowed to view the body if they wish. Exceptions may arise if the body is severely mutilated or if the child or parents have a strong aversion to the idea of viewing. In such cases additional support may be needed.

Children's characteristic response to the death of a parent is an increase in activity, and behavioural problems may result. Hallucinations of the dead person are a common feature of grief in adult life.5 They can also be experienced by young children, who may interpret them as evidence of the parent's return, or as evidence of persecution by the ghost of the dead parent because of imagined shortcomings on the part of the child, in which case they can give rise to severe anxiety. Because of their need for parenting, children who lose one parent often become anxious about the survival of the other, and they may protect that parent from knowing of their distress. That, and the difficulty of sustaining mood states in childhood, may lead the parent or teacher to believe the child has recovered from, or has not been affected by, a bereavement.

Components of attachment behaviour in infants

Behaviour that maintains attachment:

Smiling

Vocalising (babbling)

Clinging

Following

Behaviour on separation:

Crying (protest)

Restless searching

High anxiety

Irritability

Reactions to bereavement in childhood

The florid reactions tend not to last beyond a few weeks, with most children regaining their previous level of psychosocial functioning.6 However, as assessed by parental reports, children have higher levels of emotional disturbance and symptoms than non-bereaved children for up to two years, and up to 40% of bereaved children show disturbance one year after bereavement.7,8 In direct assessments of bereaved children, Weller and colleagues found that 37% of their sample of 38 bereaved prepubertal children had a major depressive disorder one year after bereavement.9

Longing for reunion is common and may lead to suicidal thoughts in bereaved children and adolescents, although they are rarely acted upon.9 Other difficulties include learning problems and failure to maintain school progress.10

Long term effects of bereavement on children

Children who are bereaved early are more likely to develop psychiatric disorders in later childhood.11 Rutter found a fivefold increase in childhood psychiatric disorder in bereaved children compared with the general population.12

Adults bereaved of a parent in childhood seem to be more vulnerable than the general population to psychiatric disorder, particularly depression and anxiety, and this is often precipitated by further losses.13,14 Attempted suicide is more common in adults bereaved in childhood.15

Children who lose their mother suffer a reduction in the quantity as well as quality of care, and this may account for the finding of differential effect according to the sex of the deceased parent.9

Effects of the death of a sibling

Children compete for parental attention and often feel resentful of the attention given to a sick sibling. This can be heightened if a parent has spent time in hospital with the sibling. Guilt may be the predominant emotion that follows triumph at having survived when a sibling dies. Young children may believe that their hostile or ambivalent feelings actually caused their sibling's death, and this may lead to profound behavioural changes. If the sibling was older, and carried out some parental functions, the reaction may be similar to that after loss of a parent.

Helping bereaved children

Children are rarely prepared for the death of a parent or a sibling, and yet we know from studies of bereaved adults that mourning is aided by a foreknowledge of the imminence and inevitability of death.16 Children who are forewarned have lower levels of anxiety than those who are not, even within the same family.17

When death occurs, young children in particular may need the concrete experience of seeing the parent after death. Bereaved adults find it particularly difficult to help a child in this way, and the general practitioner could offer to accompany the child. Similarly, children benefit from attending the funeral but need some protection from the raw expressed grief that may be shown at that time. Attending in the company of someone less affected by the death than the immediate relatives is desirable. This could be the child's teacher or someone from the family practice with whom he is familiar.

The monitoring and help with practical matters (applying for a home help, mobilising family support, ensuring adequate income, etc) needs to be accompanied by specific bereavement counselling for both the child and the surviving parent. A controlled trial of family therapy with children bereaved of a parent showed that the postbereavement morbidity of 40% at one year could be reduced to 20% by six sessions of family meetings which focused on promoting shared mourning within the family and encouraging communication about the dead parent.8,9 Preventive counselling is properly the responsibility of the primary care team, utilising the resources of bereavement counselling services as necessary. Cruse (the national charity for bereavement care) publishes useful literature for bereaved children and their carers and provides training and bereavement counselling services. Dyregrov's excellent handbook for adults deserves a place in a practice library,18 and workbooks for children of primary school age can aid those counselling them.19,20

Finally, the practitioner needs to be aware of the small number of children who may need more specialised help in recovering from depressive or other symptoms that may be associated with bereavement. These will include children who may have been partly instrumental in causing death (of a sibling perhaps), those who have gone through sudden and particularly traumatic bereavements, children who have suffered more than one bereavement, adolescents who express suicidal ideas, and children who do not respond to the initial preventive interventions.

Footnotes

Funding: No additional funding.

Conflict of interest: None.

The articles in this series are adapted from Coping with Loss, edited by Colin Murray Parkes and Andrew Markus, which will be published in May.

References

2. Bowlby J. Attachment and loss. Vols 1-3. London: Hogarth Press, 1969-80.

7. Black D, Urbanowicz MA. Bereaved children-family intervention. In: Stevenson JE, ed. Recent research in developmental psychopathology. Oxford: Pergammon, 1985;179-87.

15. Birtchnell J. The relationship between attempted suicide, depression and parent death. Br J Psychiatry 1970;116:307-13. [ PubMed]

Articles from The BMJ are provided here courtesy of BMJ Publishing Group

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Coping with loss: Bereavement in childhood

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Coping with loss Dora Black, honorary consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist Infants do not come into the world as "empty slates" but bring with them complex behavioural systems. One system that has been well studied protects the child from danger during the long period of extra-uterine immaturity.

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Children in Separated Families
key words: children, development, divorced parents.
Coming from a family with separated parents myself, I wanted to know a little bit more on how children from separated families are affected. After reading this article, I didn’t realize that there were more factors besides children having to process the separation of their parents. Most of the time children also have to adjust to a new financial situation and living situation which may also cause stress and changes to their lives.

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The Adjustment of Children with Divorced Parents- A Risk and Resiliency Perspective

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Prevalence and Impact of Child Abuse Traumatic Stress
Keywords: Abuse, Child, Trauma

I think this topic is interesting and very much importaant because its something that alot of children experience in this world. Unfortunaly, at least one in seven children have experienced child abuse or neglect. Traumatic stress on a child can leave a great impact on their mental health and can leave long lasting effects into adulthood. Alot of mental illness's such as cognitive and behavioral disorders are derived from negative adolscent experiences such as abuse, neglect, etc. I think this topic is important for individuals to learn about as we can find solutions to help children who suffer from traumatic stress wether your a future parent, educator, or peer to a child.

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Hi Mariah,
I really enjoyed reading your post on padlet. Your topic and article are very interesting. This topic is interesting because we really do not know the long term effects of the pandemic, many babies were in isolation for so long, but we will not know the long-term effects.

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Hi Mariah!!

As I mentioned before in this weeks discussions I believe that your topic is extremely important and relevant right now. I am intrigued to see the progression of your paper. I did take look at the article you chose and I think the information about how a child is affected by COVID is extremely significant to our society right now and how we move forward with teaching children. I also think that teachers should be knowledgable on how COVID will affect children's development and their lives within traditional classrooms and how to better aid their students.

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Mikaela Contreras re: Mariah Villanueva 

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Mikaela Contreras re: Mariah Villanueva 

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Hi Mikaela,
With everything going on about Roe v. Wade, I think this is a fantastic topic to research further into. Perhaps you can target adolescents around the ages of 13-18 since you're focusing on secondary education?

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The COVID-19 Pandemic's effect on Early Child Development
Keywords: Stress, COVID-19, Pandemic, Child Development
This topic is pretty interesting because it's a relatively new phenomenon and a natural experiment about something (the pandemic) that has affected virtually all of our lives. With that being said, I think researching further into this topic is incredibly important so we can identify COVID's potential impacts on children. As a future teacher, researching this topic might provide me insight on how to accommodate and support my future students.  I also think this would be a great way to practice engaged pedagogy. If I can understand who exactly I'm teaching, I can cultivate a safe learning environment where students feel safe, engage in meaningful discussion, and acquire valuable knowledge.

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The outbreak of a global pandemic associated with COVID-19 has brought to the forefront the question of how stress influences children's developmental outcomes. Potential sources of stress related to the pandemic include fear of illness or death of family and friends due to exposure to COVID-19, economic instability due to job loss and the economic recession, school and work closures, and lack of consistency in policies designed to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. All of these potential sources of stress can disrupt typical family dynamics (Gassman-Pines & Gennetian, 2020). We already see evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly job and income loss, is associated with more harsh parenting behaviors (Kalil et al., 2020) and increased risk for maltreatment (Lawson et al., 2020), as well as increased risk for behavioral issues in children (Patrick et al., 2020). The potential for stress during the pandemic is intensified by existing inequalities: low income and minority communities have been disproportionately affected by both the health and economic consequences of the pandemic, having higher death and COVID-19 case rates, decreased access to virtual learning environments, and increased food insecurity (Ahmed et al., 2020; Armitage & Nellums, 2020). Chronic and/or severe stress during early childhood, referred to as early life stress, can have long-lasting consequences for development (Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011; Pollak, 2015). Given this, there has rightfully been concern about how the pandemic will affect children's development (Crawley et al., 2020; Prime et al., 2020). We discuss how research examining the bio-behavioral effects of early life stress can inform our understanding of the potential consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's health.

The term stress refers to the psychological response elicited when an individual perceives themselves to be under threat or challenge. Stress is generally beneficial, producing a range of behavioral and physiological changes designed to address the perceived threat. However, extended activation of stress response systems can have negative physical and mental health outcomes (McEwen, 2017b; Sapolsky, 2015). A key aspect of stress is that stress responses are elicited by an individual's perception of something as stressful rather than the events to which they are exposed. This means variability in individuals' perceptions of stress is an integral contributor to individual differences in psychological and physiological stress responses (Brosschot, 2017; Peters et al., 2017).

Historically, research on stress and child development has tended to focus on the types of external events children encounter, such as war exposure, abuse, neglect, or food insecurity. More recently, researchers have started to incorporate a role for children's perceptions of their environments as a way to better understand the effects of stress (Allwood et al., 2017; Danese & Widom, 2020). While somewhat mixed (Negriff, 2020), this research, along with that in adults and nonhuman animals suggesting that perceptions are critical in shaping experiences of stress, indicates a need for conceptualizations of early life stress that do not rely solely on events. A new approach, termed "topological," reframes consideration of how early life stress might affect biological stress response mechanisms by emphasizing how children understand and interpret what is happening to them (Figure 1; Smith & Pollak, 2020). In this approach, it is not the type or category of an event to which a child is exposed that is meaningful, but rather how various factors influence how an event or environment is perceived and interpreted by the child. This means that when examining the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on development, it is important to examine factors that may be shift how children perceive and interpret the pandemic alongside specific potential stressors, such as economic strain and parental job loss.

Topological approach for conceptualizing early adversity (figure adapted from Smith & Pollak, 2020). Factors or dimensions surrounding the potentially adverse events children are exposed to contribute to the child's experience, which then activates relevant bio-behavioral responses to those circumstances. Meaningful factors might include features of the event (e.g., intensity, chronicity, developmental timing); features of the environment (e.g., predictability, contingency, controllability); and features of the child's social context (e.g., presence of safety, social support), as well as other individual differences factors, such as genetics, temperament, or previous life history. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this suggests that children's outcomes will not be determined solely by their existing environment. Instead, they will likely be more influenced by factors related to features, such as predictability, controllability, and safety, that shape how children make meaning of the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is characterized by a number of aspects that have the potential to result in chronic, extreme perceptions of stress for many individuals. Changing and inconsistent messaging from public health officials and policy makers along with abrupt changes in policies tied to the COVID-19 pandemic-moving in and out of stay at home orders and lockdowns, schools closing, reopening, and closing again, and piecemeal mask policies that lack enforcement-all have the potential to increase feelings of uncertainty and unpredictability associated with the pandemic. Additionally, social distancing policies and workplace and school closures can increase feelings of social isolation, which could exacerbate perceptions of stress linked to the pandemic. Evidence suggests that both children and adults are experiencing increases in stress, perceived social isolation, depression, and anxiety related to the pandemic (Lee et al., 2020; Li & Wang, 2020; Tull et al., 2020). However, there has been a range of variability in how stressful and isolating individuals find the pandemic (Ellis et al., 2020; Sutin et al., 2020). Taking an approach towards stress that incorporates a role for children's perceptions of the pandemic in influencing their experiences of stress can aid with understanding why children may be differently affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this manuscript, we apply a topological approach to examine potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's development, reviewing the role of perceptions of predictability and safety, particularly perceptions of safety related to having strong, supportive social relationships, in shaping children's responses to stress.

Early life stress and development: A brief overview

To date, early life stress, as measured by children's event exposures, has been linked to consistent patterns of effects on neural development. Indeed, early life stress is associated with altered functioning of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis, autonomic nervous system, and immune system (Alkon et al., 2014; Danese & Lewis, 2017; Koss & Gunnar, 2017; Loman & Gunnar, 2010). These systems are critical to facilitating motived psychological and behavioral responses to the environment, particularly environmental threats and challenges (Berntson & Cacioppo, 2004; B. S. McEwen, 2019b). The effects of early life stress on peripheral stress response systems are thought to be a result of altered neural plasticity in circuits integral to stress responses, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC), hippocampus, amygdala, and striatal circuits (Fareri & Tottenham, 2016; C. A. McEwen & McEwen, 2017). Many of these changes have been hypothesized to represent adaptive responses to environments of high threat, which become problematic within the broader social context (Boyce & Ellis, 2005; Obradović et al., 2016). However, there also is a wide range of variation in children's outcomes after exposure to early life stress (Hostinar & Gunnar, 2013b; Palacios-Barrios & Hanson, 2019). We understand relatively little about what drives this variability (Smith & Pollak, 2020). This suggests a need for alternative approaches aimed at examining the bio-behavioral effects of childhood stress that are not solely focused on children's event exposure.

Perceptions not events determine variability in stress responses

While the early childhood literature has tended to focus on whether children have been exposed to events deemed by researchers to be stressful or adverse, the vast majority of evidence with adults and nonhuman animals suggests that neural, physiological, and behavioral stress responses are not primarily influenced by the type of event to which an organism is exposed (Berntson & Cacioppo, 2004; McEwen & McEwen, 2012; Sapolsky, 2015). There is a range of variability in how both humans and nonhuman animals respond to the same type of stressor. Nonhuman animals demonstrate distinct behavioral responses to the same event, and this variability in behavior is tied to differential activation in the sympathetic adrenal-medullar, hypothalamic gonadal, and HPA systems (Buwalda et al., 1992; Korte et al., Korte et al., 1992, Korte et al., 1995; Veenema et al., 2003). Humans demonstrate similar variability in stress responses. This variability is observed in indices including cardiac autonomic responsivity (Berntson et al., 1994; Berntson & Cacioppo, 2004), immune reactivity (Cohen & Hamrick, 2003; Manuck et al., 1991), cortisol responses (Buchanan et al., 2006; Roy et al., 2001; Vedhara et al., 2000), and neural responses in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex (Pruessner et al., 2008; Wager et al., 2009). These findings support the idea that the type of event or environment to which an individual is exposed is not directly tied to a specific neurobiological response or outcome.

Given variation in stress responses does not appear to be attached to a particular environment or event, this raises the question of what does drive variability in stress responses. Evidence suggests that individuals' neurobiological stress responses and outcomes are more influenced by their perception of an event or environment as adverse (Brosschot et al., 2017; Goldstein & McEwen, 2002; Lazarus, 1990; McEwen, 2019a; Peters et al., 2017; Sapolsky, 2015). To illustrate, perceptions of controllability and predictability are two of the primary factors that influence whether a potential stressor is perceived as stressful (Bollini et al., 2004; Henry, 1992; Mormede et al., 1988; Muller, 2012). In humans, individual differences in perceptions of control have been linked to differential cortisol responses to acute laboratory stress, differences in brain volume, and differences in brain reactivity to stress in regions, including the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex (Harnett et al., 2015; Hashimoto et al., 2015; Pruessner et al., 2005). Other factors that influence how individuals interpret potential stressors include whether individuals perceive themselves to be in a safe or dangerous environment and their perceptions of their coping resources (Blascovich, 2008; Jamieson et al., 2018; Mendes et al., 2001).

This means that perceptions of stress, and associated neurobiological responses, can occur in the absence of any specific identifiable environmental event. Examples of this include rumination over previous experience or events, anxiety about future events, and feelings of loneliness and social isolation despite having social relationships available (Cacioppo et al., 2011; Hilt & Pollak, 2013; Ottaviani et al., 2016; Paulesu et al., 2010). Together this research indicates that any approach aimed at understanding individual differences in outcomes after stress exposure needs to incorporate the factors that shape individuals' perceptions and interpretations of their events. Additionally, it suggests that variability in individuals' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic will be linked to their perception of the pandemic.

Perception, childhood adversity, and the COVID-19 pandemic

Given the important role of perception in influencing variability in stress responses, it is unlikely that all children will respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in a similar manner. There are a wide range of factors that likely shape and modulate children's perceptions and interpretation of environmental adversity, including perceived control and predictability, perceived safety, genetics, timing, intensity, and chronicity of adversity, and gene by environment interactions, among many others (Hostinar & Gunnar, 2013a; McEwen & McEwen, 2017; Smith & Pollak, 2020). Given the high risk of unpredictability and social isolation associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, we focused on recent research, which suggest integral roles for perceptions of predictability and safety, particularly perceived safety related to presence of sensitive and supportive social relationships, in shaping children's interpretations of their early environment.

Perceptions of predictability

Predictability is defined as the degree to which accurate predictions can be made about future events based on current ones. Contingency, often characteristic of predictability, refers to the likelihood of one event or action being followed by another (Frankenhuis, 2016; Hasson, 2017). As stated previously, perceptions of control and predictability are two of the most critical factors shaping perceptions of stress (Peters et al., 2017; Sapolsky, 2004). This is especially relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic, because it has been accompanied by many factors that increase individuals' risk for high levels of perceived unpredictability and uncontrollability. Limited knowledge, especially early in the pandemic, about the virus and its transmission, along with conflicting and rapidly changing information and recommendations from elected and public health officials, all have the potential to contribute to high perceived unpredictability and uncontrollability. In the literature linking stress in early childhood to development predictability has been of increasing interest. Given this, we focused our discussion on how perceptions of predictability shape development and the implications this has for how children may respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we recognize predictability and controllability are highly interrelated (Peters et al., 2017; Sapolsky, 2015) and likely both play important roles in influencing children's interpretations of their early environment and the COVID-19 pandemic.

A lack of predictability in the environment leads to perceptions of uncertainty, volatility, and uncontrollability, which can result in extended activation of stress response systems (Soltani & Izquierdo, 2019). This extended activation alters brain growth and architecture in regions, such as the PFC, amygdala, and hippocampus, which undermines stress regulation and coping (Peters et al., 2017). Parent-child relationships are stereotypically repetitive, highly predictable, and marked by contingent parental responses-adult caregivers reliably respond to infant cries, comfort a child who is hurt, and provide support to a child who is dysregulated (Fisher et al., 2016; Hallers-Haalboom et al., 2017). Lack of predictable and contingent input from caregivers affects children's expectations of the environment, leading to uncertainty and perceptions of a lack of control and vulnerability (Chen & Baram, 2016; Harms et al., 2018).

Indeed, evidence from nonhuman animals suggests that predictable and contingent parental responding plays an important role in shaping learning processes, particularly social learning (Baram et al., 2012; Risbrough et al., 2018; Zajac et al., 2019). In rodents, variations in maternal care, measured via licking and grooming behaviors, have been associated with poorer learning and memory (Barha et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2000) and altered stress regulation (Champagne et al., 2008; Weaver et al., 2004). These effects appear to be dependent on changes in hippocampal (Champagne et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2000), prefrontal (Monroy et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2005), and amygdala (Caldji et al., 1998; Fries et al., 2004) synaptic plasticity, areas that together play an important role in both stress responsivity and learning and memory (Eichenbaum, 2017; McEwen, 2017a). Variations in maternal care are linked to epigenetic changes in glucocorticoid receptors (Turecki & Meaney, 2016; Weaver et al., 2004) and alterations in both glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptor expression (Champagne et al., 2008; van Hasselt et al., 2012). This is suggestive of changes in HPA functioning. Additionally, these changes appear to be driven by the type of maternal behavior to which pups are exposed. Cross-fostering infants of low-licking and grooming mothers with high-licking and grooming mothers appears to reverse some of these changes at the neural and behavioral levels (Liu et al., 2000; Weaver et al., 2004). Recent evidence suggests that these effects are not solely due to changes in amount of high-licking and grooming behaviors mothers exhibit towards their pups, but rather the predictability of these behaviors (Risbrough et al., 2018). More fragmented maternal behaviors are associated with greater alterations in stress response systems (Davis et al., 2017; Glynn & Baram, 2019).

While little research has attempted to directly assess predictability of the early environment in humans, growing evidence indicates that predictability of parental inputs contributes to children's outcomes above and beyond the types of inputs. Predictability of parental inputs (measured by calculating entropy rate for maternal auditory, visual, and tactile inputs during the parent-child interaction) demonstrates a stronger association with children's cognitive outcomes than the type of inputs (measured through coded maternal sensitivity, positive regard, and intrusiveness during a parent-child interaction) (Davis et al., 2017). Longitudinal research assessing early influences on adolescents' externalizing behaviors finds that unpredictability of the environment during childhood, quantified using changes in maternal employment, changes in residence, and changes in cohabitation, is associated with increased externalizing behaviors in adolescence. However, type of adversity (in this study, SES) is not (Doom et al., 2016).

Research in rodents suggests that these effects are a result of altered functioning in prefrontal-hippocampal-amygdala circuits. Unpredictable maternal inputs are associated with altered connectivity between the medial PFC and amygdala (Bolton et al., 2018) and decreased dendritic arborization in the hippocampus (Molet et al., 2016). These effects on prefrontal-amygdala-hippocampal circuits are apparent beyond effects produced by types of maternal inputs. Additionally, the effects of predictability on neural circuits are linked to PTSD and depressive-like behaviors as well as deficits in learning (Risbrough et al., 2018). Together, this body of work suggests that variation in the predictability, stability, and/or degree of contingent responding of adult caregivers is a factor in shaping children's responses to adversity through alterations in prefrontal cortical and subcortical stress response circuits. It indicates that assessment of predictability of early environments has the potential to provide increased insight into individual differences in the neurobiological effects of early adversity on child development-variability that is not captured when focusing solely on types of adverse events. This also means that children's experiences of stress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic will be at least partially shaped by the extent to which the pandemic shifts their perceptions of predictability.

Perceptions of safety

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials have recommended individuals and policy makers enforce social distancing measures aimed at limiting transmission of the virus. Depending on where an individual lives, these policies have included closing of nonessential businesses, school closures and limitations of in-person education, limiting the number of people outside a single household who can gather, and encouraging all individuals to stay at home and limit interaction with nonhousehold members as much as possible. In addition to being inconsistent and unpredictable (i.e., schools closing, reopening, and then closing again), these measures have the potential to increase the risk of children feeling socially isolated and lacking social support. In adults, having high-quality and supportive social relationships is associated with reduced perceptions of stress as well as dampened psychological and physiological responses to laboratory stress (for review see Eisenberger, 2013; Hawkley & Capitanio, 2015). These effects are thought to in part result from high-quality and supportive social relationships acting as a signal of safety (Beckes & Coan, 2011; Brosschot et al., 2017). Together this suggests social distancing measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic may alter children's experiences of stress associated with the pandemic by shifting perceptions of safety.

Increasingly, research supports a role for perceived safety in contributing to variations in children's responses to stress. Safety/security in early childhood has been characterized in a variety of different ways. Parental presence/adult "buffering," sensitivity, responsivity, and support are all thought to be cues of safety (Brody et al., 2019; Gunnar et al., 2015). Lack of parental input, through isolation, maternal separation, neglect, or abusive parenting behaviors are all thought to represent cues of lack of safety (Callaghan & Tottenham, 2016; Sanchez et al., 2015). Cues of safety early in development play an important role in engaging the prefrontal circuits that inhibit threat response circuits (Porges, 2015). This in turn will have implications for how children perceive and interact with their environment later in life (Grupe & Nitschke, 2013; Mobbs et al., 2007).

Indeed, evidence from nonhuman primate and rodent models supports this, finding that early parental presence plays an important role in inhibiting neurobiological threat response systems. Both rodent pups and infant primates demonstrate reduced glucocorticoid release and decreased amygdala activation in the presence of the mother (Sanchez et al., 2015; Sullivan & Opendak, 2018). However, in cases of abusive maternal rearing, maternal presence does not appear to exhibit buffering effects. Under these circumstances, rodent pups and primate infants demonstrate enhanced glucocorticoid responses to stress (Moriceau et al., 2009; Sanchez et al., 2015) along with alterations in both the structure and function of the amygdala and prefrontal cortex (Nephew et al., 2017; Rincón-Cortés & Sullivan, 2016; Spinelli et al., 2009). From this literature, it is clear parental presence, a salient early cue of safety, is important to supporting typical development of the neurobiological stress response systems.

There is evidence indicative of similar early regulatory effects of parental presence on the development of stress response systems in humans (Gunnar et al., 2015; Tottenham, 2015). Parallel to the rodent and primate literatures, parental presence has been demonstrated to dampen both cortisol (Hostinar et al., 2015; Seltzer et al., 2010) and amygdala reactivity (Gee et al., 2014) to stress in children. There also is evidence that disruptions of these early relationships, through maltreatment, is associated with altered prefrontal-amygdala connectivity (Fan et al., 2014). These changes in connectivity have been linked to children's risk for psychopathology (Gee et al., 2013; Herringa et al., 2016). It is difficult to establish causality from this type of correlational research (i.e., these effects could be a result of shared genetic factors between parent and child). However, this literature in combination with the animal research described above points to alterations of typical development of prefrontal-amygdala circuits in children lacking early cues of safety that have implications for their behaviors and mental health.

Additionally, in cases of maltreatment or adversity where children still receive high levels of support from their parents, the effects of adversity on prefrontal-amygdala circuits are mitigated. Adolescents living in poverty show altered connectivity in prefrontal cortical networks involved in executive functioning and emotion regulation, but not if they reported having high levels of parent support (Brody et al., 2019). Additionally, support provided by other adults or peers may diminish some of the bio-behavioral effects of adversity. Reported social support from family and friends is associated with reduced risk of psychopathology in children who experience maltreatment (McLafferty et al., 2018; van Harmelen et al., 2016). Children who report having more higher quality peer relationships and adolescents who spend more time with their friends outside of school demonstrate reduced neural activation in circuits involved in pain processing to social rejection (Masten et al., 2012; Will et al., 2016). Adolescents who report lower levels of perceived social isolation also report decreased levels of perceived stress and reduced risk for depression, anxiety, and poor physical health (Harris et al., 2013; Ladd & Ettekal, 2013; Vanhalst et al., 2013). This suggests that, at least in humans, individuals outside of the parent-child relationship may be able to supplement these safety cues when they break down.

Consistently incorporating assessment of factors that represent early cues of safety, such as parental and peer support, when studying how children respond to early adversity, has the potential to greatly illuminate the neurobiological mechanisms through which negative environments shape development. Additionally, taking this type of approach can inform our understanding of individual variability in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Children may not necessarily experience increased isolation merely, because they are spending more time at home and less time at school. Rather, their perceptions of isolation and lack of support are going to vary based on the support they have at home from parents and other family members, their own relationships with parents and family members at home, and their access to relationships with other peers and adults. These perceptions likely will provide more insight into any long-term developmental effects of the pandemic.

Developmental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: Informing policy

There has rightfully been a large amount of attention focused on how the stress associated with the pandemic will affect children's development long term and how to develop policies aimed at aiding those children at greatest risk for chronic or extreme stress associated with the pandemic (Dalton et al., 2020; Prime et al., 2020; Richtel, 2020). Indeed, the risk of experiencing the pandemic as a chronic and extreme stressor is especially high for children already in environments characterized by inequality and disparity (Gassman-Pines & Gennetian, 2020; Kalil et al., 2020). These are children for whom school and other extracurricular activities may represent some of the few predictable, reliable, and controllable aspects in their life where they have access to supportive relationships with peers and adults. Removing these structures not only increases these children's risk of experiencing the pandemic as a chronic, extreme stressor but has the potential to exacerbate the stress they are exposed in the home and deplete any available coping resources they may have. This in turn increases the risk for chronic, extended activation of psychological, neural, and behavioral stress response systems and long-term negative physical and mental health outcomes.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic increasing risk for chronic and extreme stress, the research we have reviewed above suggests that the pandemic and concomitant policies, such as school closures, are not necessarily going to equate to negative developmental outcomes for all children later in life. Instead, it indicates that the effects of such a population level event will be shaped by how children are perceiving and interpreting this event rather than the event itself. Indeed, recent research using a machine learning approach to examine what kinds of events typically characterized as stressors are associated with a range of academic and health outcomes found that no one event was particularly predictive of children's outcomes (Salganik et al., 2020). Additionally, reported exposure to child abuse or neglect has recently been demonstrated to more predictive of children's mental health outcomes than exposure identified through court reports (Danese & Widom, 2020). Given parental inputs of predictability and support seem particularly critical for shaping perceptions of stress, it is likely that, for children who are in a home environment in which parents are continuing to provide support, love, and affection and attempting to maintain consistency and predictability, the long-term effects of the pandemic on development may be buffered.

Taking a perception focused topological approach to understanding the effects of COVID-19 on development means that we should be careful about assuming which children are more or at less risk. As illustrated above, there are a plethora of factors not tied to specific events or environmental circumstances that will influence children's meaning making related to the pandemic. This also means there is ample opportunity for adults to buffer and intervene against the negative effects of pandemic related stress. At the same time, there are widening disparities related to economic and racial inequality, especially in the United States. These disparities do place a large proportion of families at significantly greater risk of chronic, extreme stress associated with the pandemic (Boyraz & Legros, 2020; Fortuna et al., 2020). These also are the families that likely will have decreased access to any policies or interventions developed to aid families and parents in establishing supportive, predictable, and controllable environments (Araya et al., 2018; Lê Cook et al., 2017). Economic and racial inequality has already been linked to a range of differential outcomes for families during the pandemic. Low-income and minority communities have significantly higher cases and deaths from COVID-19, decreased participation of children in virtual learning environments, and many of these parents are having to choose between a job and income or childcare for young children (Ahmed et al., 2020; Armitage & Nellums, 2020; Chen et al., 2020). It is critical that opportunities for intervention take into consideration the significant disparities associated with inequality in the United States.

In implementing policies designed to provide economic and social support, through income supplements, rent moratoriums or assistance, and food aid programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), it can be helpful for both researchers and policy makers to examine how these policies may shift how parents and children are perceiving and coping with their environments. Policies that both provide much needed economic relief along with alleviating feelings of uncontrollability, unpredictability, and lack of safety will likely have the most efficacy. Of particular interest are strategies that work to provide families with the resources to establish reliability and predictability at home to aid in management of stress. Exploring how parents' own stress about economic resources, meals, and potential job loss can be alleviated and finding new options, such as outdoor classrooms or activities in which social distancing can be maintained to continue to allow for peer interaction and engagement, likely can aid in supporting families and children during the pandemic. These all represent areas in which intervention could potentially help to shift children's perceptions of the pandemic towards those of safety rather than threat. Indeed, interventions that demonstrate the most efficacy for improving outcomes for children in high-stress environments are those that focus on the level of the family or both the family and school (Bakermans-Kranenburg et al., 2003; Finlon et al., 2015). Additionally, interventions designed to directly shift how individuals perceive and attend to information in their environments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (Butler et al., 2006; Hofmann et al., 2012), may have utility. In sum, the long-term developmental outcomes of children related to the COVID-19 pandemic are likely not going to be uniform and will be linked to other factors that shift children's perceptions of stress and threat associated with the pandemic. Better understanding what and how those function can help support and aid children in coping with any stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusions

Under typical circumstances, early life stress has long-lasting and substantive consequences for development, making it a considerable public health and humanitarian problem. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these issues, placing children and families already at risk of long-term psychological, behavioral, and health outcomes due to chronic or extreme stress at even greater risk-a risk that increases the longer the pandemic continues. An evidence-based approach towards identifying those children and families that may be most at risk of chronic and extreme experiences of stress related to the pandemic is critical to implementing policies designed to provide these families with effective tools and interventions to aid them in coping with stress. Key to this mission is elucidating the neural, physiological, and behavioral mechanisms involved in individual differences in children's outcomes.

Because growing evidence suggests that individual differences in stress responses are not accounted for by the events to which children are exposed, it is imperative that we adopt alternative approaches towards understanding early life stress. Incorporating assessment of factors, including predictability, controllability, and perceived safety, that shift perceptions of stress has promise towards illuminating the underlying mechanisms supporting variability in children's responses to stress (Smith & Pollak, 2020). Taking this type of approach towards understanding childhood stress has the potential to greatly inform our understanding of why children respond to the COVID-19 pandemic differently and which children may be in most need of policy aid and intervention. It also can aid in policy-level interventions, as it may be possible to identify large groups of individuals who may be more likely to lack predictability or social support-i.e., low SES children whose parents are having to choose between employment and childcare. Additionally, it can more broadly illuminate our understanding of the bio-behavioral mechanism through which early environments influence development and why children end up in different places after experiencing similar events. A topological approach that is oriented around children's perceptions, rather than just the external stimuli they encounter in the world, can provide avenues through which to think differently about how to support and aid families and children struggling to cope with the pandemic. Longer-term, it can provide researchers and policy makers with better tools to address the important societal issues linked to experiences of stress early in life.

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Blascovich, J. (2008). Challenge and threat. In A. J. Elliot (Ed.), Handbook of approach and avoidance motivation (pp. 431-446). Psychology Press.

Obradović, J., Stamperdahl, J., Bush, N. R., Adler, N. E., & Boyce, W. T. (2016). Biological Sensitivity to Context : The Interactive Effects of Stress Reactivity and Family Adversity on Socioemotional Behavior and School Readiness Published by : Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development Stable URL : http://www.j. 81(1), 270-289.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health [R01MH61285 (SDP), T32MH018931-30 (KES)] and by a core grant to the Waisman Center from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [U54 HD090256]. Karen Smith ORCID: 0000-0002-6689-7346; Seth Pollak ORCID: 0000-0001-5184-9846.

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Department of Psychology and Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1500 Highland Avenue, Room 392, Madison, WI, 53705, USA

Karen E. Smith & Seth D. Pollak

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Correspondence to Karen E. Smith.

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Smith, K.E., Pollak, S.D. Early life stress and neural development: Implications for understanding the developmental effects of COVID-19. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 22, 643-654 (2022). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-021-00901-0
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Keywords

Stress

Development

Adversity

Predictability

Safety

COVID-19

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Early life stress and neural development: Implications for understanding the developmental effects of COVID-19 - Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

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Chronic and/or extreme stress in childhood, often referred to as early life stress, is associated with a wide range of long-term effects on development. Given this, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to concern about how stress due to the pandemic will affect children's development and mental health.

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Hi everyone! There is a lot of evidence that family income has an impact on people's mental health. Children who grow up in affluent families tend to be extroverted and confident, while children who grow up in poor families tend to be introverted and not confident.

The article describes a negative cycle of mental illness and poverty. This means that people living in poverty are at risk of developing mental illness, while people with mental illness fall into or remain in poverty. Furthermore, poverty increases the risk of mental illness through various social factors. The article also assesses the impact of poverty alleviation interventions on the outcomes of mental, neurological, and substance abuse disorders among low-income people. Moreover, they also assessed the impact of mental health interventions on the economic well-being of poor individuals and families.

I think this topic is important. If interventions on poverty or people's mental health are effective, we can break the negative cycle of mental illness and poverty. It can improve the living standard of the whole society.

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Child abuse and mental health are topics I am deeply interested in too. Adverse childhood experiences feed intergenerational trauma. So, finding ways to educate people about this helps combat ACEs. Are you focusing on one age group or all youth from 0-18? I love your idea and can't wait to hear more about it!

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My research topic: Impacts on Quality of Education for Children with Learning Disabilities due to Teacher Shortage in Special Education.

Keywords: Special Education, Teacher Shortage, Supply, Demand

I want to highlight the importance of all children receiving a quality education. Too often, special education is left out of the discorse surrounding education reform. There is an overwhelming need for special education teachers, but the supply of qualified individuals is minimal. As a result, unqualified people are being put in these positions, and the quality of education for children with learning disabilities is suffering.

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I agree with the article that you chose to include for your padlet and the importance behind the meaning of the article. Child abuse is something that should not happen, but happens and children are often hit by it really hard and it is important to understand what one needs to do in order to handle the situation in a correct way.

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Fatima Miramontes: FIRST GENERATION STUDENTS:

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Fatima Miramontes: FIRST GENERATION STUDENTS:

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Key Words: First Generation Students

This topic is important because many don't realize that first gen students are actually effected in a variety of different ways and not just school wise

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CHILD ABUSE & MENTAL HEALTH

Keywords: Childhood Maltreatment, Child Abuse, Mental Health, Psychological Disorders

I believe that this topic is very important because in our future careers we may be dealing with children who are either experiencing or have experienced child abuse or neglect. It is important to understand how adverse childhood experiences can become risk factors for children and adolescents.

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The link between cumulative CM or poor-quality parenting and self-criticism and dependency has been demonstrated. For example, Campos, Besser, and Blatt ( Reference Campos, Besser and Blatt2010) investigated the mediating role of the self-critical and dependent personality vulnerability traits in the link between perceived early experiences and depressive symptoms. They found that early relationships characterized by low levels of caring and high levels of overprotection are associated with higher levels of depression and self-criticism among adults. The results also indicated that high levels of self-criticism mediated the relationship between perceived early childhood experiences with the mother and current depression. Dunkley, Masheb, and Grilo ( Reference Dunkley, Masheb and Grilo2010) examined the relations between various forms of CM (emotional, physical and sexual abuse, and emotional and physical neglect) and body dissatisfaction in binge eating disorder (BED) patients and tested a model in which self-criticism mediated the link between childhood maltreatment and body dissatisfaction in BED. Their findings indicated that the relations between childhood emotional abuse and body dissatisfaction in BED patients were fully mediated by the presence of a self-critical cognitive-personality style. Soffer, Gilboa-Schechtman, and Shahar ( Reference Soffer, Gilboa-Schechtman and Shahar2008) found that those who experienced CM, such as insults, excessive criticism, or some form of physical abuse, may come to adopt a similarly critical view of themselves based on the behavior of those who criticized them, resulting in a self-critical personality style (see also, Glassman, Weierich, Hooley, Deliberto, & Nock, Reference Glassman, Weierich, Hooley, Deliberto and Nock2007; Falgares et al., Reference Falgares, Marchetti, Manna, Musso, Oasi, Kopala-Sibley and Verrocchio2018b). In their review of this literature, Kopala-Sibley and Zuroff ( Reference Kopala-Sibley and Zuroff2014) confirmed that adverse childhood experiences, including maltreatment, are associated with elevated levels of self-criticism and dependency.

However, little is known about associations of cumulative CM as well as self-criticism or dependency with BPDs in adolescents, and no research has examined whether self-criticism or dependency may mediate or moderate the relationship between cumulative CM and BPDs. The current study aimed to examine, in a mixed sample of nonclinical and clinical adolescents, the relationship between cumulative CM and BPDs, and to examine whether the personality traits of self-criticism and dependency contribute to this relationship. The specific objectives were to: (a) identify vulnerable personality profiles by combining self-criticism and dependency scores; (b) examine whether specific personality vulnerability profiles of self-criticism and dependency might be related both to specific BPDs and multiple forms of CM; (c) test the potential mediating and moderating roles of vulnerable personality profiles in the relationship between cumulative experiences of CM and BPDs. We hypothesized that different profiles of personality vulnerabilities would emerge with high and low levels of self-criticism and dependency; vulnerable personality profiles of self-criticism and dependency would be significantly related both to multiple forms of CM and BPDs and would mediate the relationship between cumulative CM and BPDs. We also tested whether personality profiles moderate this latter association, although this analysis was exploratory given that no prior research, to our knowledge, has examined this issue.

Method

Participants

Two hundred and forty-one nonclinical and clinical adolescents (61.4% female) aged 13-20 years ( = 16.37, SD = 1.84) participated in the study. One hundred seventy-four nonclinical participants were randomly recruited from lists of local collaborating schools in central and southern Italy. Sixty-seven clinical adolescents (42 males and 25 females), characterized by having some form of substance abuse or other psychiatric diagnosis, were recruited from private and public therapeutic clinics in central Italy. Demographics for each group and the total sample are displayed in Table 1. Of the clinical sample, 43 (64.2%) were teens in middle adolescence (ages 13 to 17 years), while 24 (35.8%) were in late adolescence (18 to 20 years). Approximately 90% of them had a history of drug abuse (10.4% used no drugs) and nearly all those used cannabis (89.6%) alone (56.8%) or in combination with cocaine (23.9%) or, to a lesser extent (8.9%), with other substances (i.e., amphetamine, ketamine, and heroin). A Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-based clinical diagnosis characterized 23 of the clinical adolescents (of the total 67 participants). This subsample showed mixed psychiatric disorders. Specifically, nine (39.1%) were diagnosed with a depressive or mood disorder, seven (30.4%) with an impulse control or conduct disorders, four (17.4%) with BPD, two (8.7%) with an anxiety disorder, and one (4.4%) with an eating disorder. Diagnoses were made by psychiatrists with at least 5 years of clinical experience in clinical assessments, by using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 (First, Williams, Karg, & Spitzer, Reference First, Williams, Karg and Spitzer2016). Approximately 85% of the clinical participants (57) were receiving some form of therapy during the data collection period: 49% participated in individual psychological/psychiatric psychotherapy, 6% in group psychotherapy, 4.5% followed pharmacological therapy, while 40.5% attended socio-educational rehabilitation therapy.

Procedure

The psychology department's ethics committee at the University of Chieti (Italy) approved this study and its procedures. Data were collected during school time for nonclinical participants or by appointment at the clinic for clinical participants. Parents' and adolescents' written informed consent was obtained prior to collecting data.

Measures

Socio-demographics

Participants were asked to indicate their gender, age, ethnicity, marital status, education and occupation, as well as their parents' education and marital status. For each clinical adolescent, the reference person in the clinic was asked to specify the reasons for visiting the clinic as well as previous and current therapies.

Depressive experiences questionnaire

The Italian version of the Depressive Experiences Questionnaire (DEQ; Blatt, Schaffer, Bers, & Quinlan, Reference Blatt, Schaffer, Bers and Quinlan1992; Falgares et al., Reference Falgares, De Santis, Gullo, Carrozzino, Marchetti, Verrocchio and Oasi2017) adapted for adolescents was used to measure self-criticism and dependency. The DEQ consists of 66 self-reported items yielding factor scores for three primary factors: dependency, self-criticism, and efficacy. In this study, the efficacy subscale was not used as it was not expected to be a potential vulnerability factor associated with both CM and BPDs. Instead, the current study focuses on the subscales of dependency (example item: "I become frightened when I feel alone") and self-criticism (example item: "I tend to be very critical of myself") given their robust links to a range of psychopathologies. Items were scored on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 ( strongly disagree) to 7 ( strongly agree). Scores for both dependency and self-criticism were obtained using the original factor score procedure of Blatt, D'Afflitti, and Quinlan ( Reference Blatt, D'Afflitti and Quinlan1976). The Italian version of the DEQ showed good internal consistency and validity (see Falgares et al., Reference Falgares, De Santis, Gullo, Carrozzino, Marchetti, Verrocchio and Oasi2017; Falgares et al., Reference Falgares, De Santis, Gullo, Kopala-Sibley, Scrima and Livi2018a). In the present study, Cronbach's α was .81 in the nonclinical sample and .77 in the clinical sample (.81 pooling the samples together) for dependency, and .92 in the nonclinical sample and .90 in the clinical sample (.91 pooling the samples together) for self-criticism.

Borderline personality inventory

The Italian version of the 53-item Borderline Personality Inventory (BPI; Leichsenring, Reference Leichsenring1999; Fossati et al., Reference Fossati, Feeney, Maffei and Borroni2014a, Reference Fossati, Gratz, Maffei and Borroni2014b) was used to assess symptoms linked to BPD. The BPI is a self-report questionnaire based on Kernberg's concept of borderline personality organization (Kernberg, Reference Kernberg1981). Although originally developed to score responses dichotomously (as true or false; Leichsenring, Reference Leichsenring1999), updated versions of this measure score items on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( disagree strongly) to 4 ( strongly agree) (Chabrol & Leichsenring, Reference Chabrol and Leichsenring2006; Fossati et al., Reference Fossati, Feeney, Maffei and Borroni2014a, Reference Fossati, Gratz, Maffei and Borroni2014b). The BPI contains subscales for assessing identity diffusion (12 items, e.g., "Sometimes, I feel that people and things around me are not real"), primitive defense mechanisms (eight items, e.g., "My feelings towards other people quickly change into opposite extremes"), impaired reality testing (five items, e.g., "I have seen strange figures or visions when nothing was really there"), and fear of fusion (eight items, e.g., "I feel smothered when others show deep concern towards me"). Each subscale is scored by summing the related items, with higher scores corresponding to greater levels of each BPDs. As suggested by Leichsenring ( Reference Leichsenring1999) in the initial BPI validation study, the current study considered these subscales dimensionally (for a total of 33 items) in the main analyses. However, to obtain a descriptive categorial assessment of BPD, a total BPI score including an additional 18 items that measure impulsivity (i.e., problems of impulse control) and self-mutilation (i.e., suicide attempts or self-mutilating acts) was computed (score ranging from 51 to 204). We used this latter approach only to calculate the percentage of adolescents with marked BPDs both in the nonclinical and clinical samples (see Preliminary analyses section). Evidence for reliability and validity of BPI has been provided both in adult and adolescent participants (Chabrol & Leichsenring, Reference Chabrol and Leichsenring2006; Fossati et al., Reference Fossati, Feeney, Maffei and Borroni2014a, Reference Fossati, Gratz, Maffei and Borroni2014b; Leichsenring, Reference Leichsenring1999). In the present study, the Cronbach α values ranged from .72 to .83 for the four subscales across the nonclinical and clinical samples (from .90 to .92 pooling the samples together).

Childhood experience of care and abuse questionnaire

The Italian version of the Childhood Experience of Care and Abuse Questionnaire (CECA.Q; Bifulco, Bernazzani, Moran, & Jacobs, Reference Bifulco, Bernazzani, Moran and Jacobs2005) was used to assess adverse childhood experiences (before the age of 17 years for the older participants). The questionnaire incorporates sections on parental loss and reference figures in childhood as well as parental or reference figures' lack of care (antipathy and neglect), and psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Good internal consistency data for CECA.Q have been provided in different contexts, including Italy (e.g., Infurna et al., Reference Infurna, Brunner, Holz, Parzer, Giannone, Reichl and Kaess2016; Falgares et al., Reference Falgares, Marchetti, Manna, Musso, Oasi, Kopala-Sibley and Verrocchio2018b; Smith, Lam, Bifulco, & Checkley, Reference Smith, Lam, Bifulco and Checkley2002). A full description of CECA.Q scales and scoring is given elsewhere (Falgares et al., Reference Falgares, Marchetti, Manna, Musso, Oasi, Kopala-Sibley and Verrocchio2018 b). Here, we briefly illustrate the scales' content and report some additional information about scoring and internal consistency.

Parental loss refers to either parental death or separation of 1 year or more owing to a parent moving and permanently living elsewhere in childhood. Scores range from 0 to 4, with higher scores indicating more severe loss during childhood.

Lack of care refers to mothers' and fathers', or surrogate parents', antipathy and neglect toward their children. In both nonclinical and clinical samples, maternal (α = .82 and .77, respectively) and paternal (α = .81 and .80, respectively) antipathy scores were highly related ( r = .44 and .53, respectively) and therefore averaged to provide a single indicator of parental antipathy. Similarly, maternal (α = .79 for both nonclinical and clinical samples) and paternal (α = 84 and .80, respectively) neglect scores were highly related ( r = .42 and .40, respectively) and therefore averaged. Parental antipathy and neglect scores ( r = .69 for nonclinical sample and .56 for clinical sample) were further averaged to provide a total score, with higher scores indicating more parental lack of care.

Psychological abuse refers to a highly controlling and domineering relationship of parental figures with the child. In both nonclinical and clinical samples, maternal (α = .81 and .86, respectively) and paternal (α = .83 and .86, respectively) psychological abuse scores were highly related ( r = .61 and .46, respectively) and therefore averaged to provide a single indicator of parental psychological abuse, with higher scores indicating more parental psychological abuse. The final score, ranging from 0 to 102, was re-scaled using the square root to obtain a new score range of 0-10.10, as reported in a previous study (Falgares et al., Reference Falgares, Marchetti, Manna, Musso, Oasi, Kopala-Sibley and Verrocchio2018 b).

Physical abuse refers to violence toward the child by parents or other caregivers in the household. Scores were dichotomized with a score of 0 for absence of any episode of physical abuse and a score of 1 for presence of one or more of such episodes.

Sexual abuse refers to age-inappropriate physical contact or approach of a sexual nature by any adult to the child. Scores were dichotomized with a score of 0 for absence of any episode of sexual abuse and a score of 1 for presence of one or more of such episodes.

Statistical analysis

Five main steps characterized data analyses. First, we computed descriptive statistics for the key study variables and examined univariate and multivariate normality of the distributions. Second, within a person-centered approach, we identified profiles of dependency and self-criticism by cluster analyses based on factor scores obtained from DEQ subscales. We initially examined whether the best cluster solution was replicable in both the nonclinical and clinical samples. Following Gore's ( Reference Gore, Tinsley and Brown2000; see also Aldenderfer & Blashfield, Reference Aldenderfer and Blashfield1984) two-step approach, we conducted hierarchical cluster analyses using Ward's method (Ward, Reference Ward1963) and based on squared Euclidian distances. We compared cluster solutions with two to six clusters on the basis of three criteria: theoretical meaningfulness of each cluster, parsimony, and explanatory power (i.e., the cluster solution had to explain approximately 50% of the variance in both dependency and self-criticism dimensions). Then, distributions of adolescents from nonclinical and clinical samples across the obtained profiles were compared by chi-square test. If both adolescent groups were distributed in similar proportions across the profiles, they were collapsed into a single group and a new cluster analysis was carried out using the same procedure. Ultimately, study participants were grouped by K-means cluster analysis procedures and standardized mean values of the DEQ grouping variables describing the characteristics of each identified profile were calculated. Validity of the final solution was checked via a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) on the two DEQ dimensions by profile. We also tested the replicability of the final solution by splitting the sample into two random halves and reconducting the cluster analyses for each subsample. Levels of agreement were calculated using Cohen's ( Reference Cohen1960) kappa.

Third, in order to examine how profiles of dependency and self-criticism were related to BPDs as well as CM, we performed two distinct multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVAs) with profiles and group belonging (nonclinical vs. clinical) as independent variables and BPI dimensions in one model, and CECA.Q dimensions in the other, as dependent variable. Age, gender (0 = male 1 = female), parental loss, socioeconomic status (dummy coded: 0 = low-medium; 1 = medium-high), parent's marital status (dummy coded: 0 = cohabiting; 1 = not cohabiting), and parents' educational level (dummy coded: 0 = at most one of parents with high school diploma; 1 = both parents with at least high school diploma) were entered as covariates.

Fourth, to explore the mediating role of profiles of dependency and self-criticism in the relationship between cumulative forms of CM and BPDs, we conducted a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis with continuous latent (cumulative CM and BPDs) and categorical mediation variables (see Results section for the specific approach). After reporting bivariate correlations for the main variables, we tested the a priori model linking cumulative CM with BPDs via profiles of dependency and self-criticism. We used the robust weighted least squares estimation method within Mplus 7.2 (Muthén & Muthén, Reference Muthén and Muthén2014). Model invariance across nonclinical versus clinical samples and indirect effects were assessed. We based the model fit evaluation on multiple criteria (see Faraci & Musso, Reference Faraci, Musso, Barbaranelli and Ingoglia2013; Kline, Reference Kline2010). Reasonably good fit was supported when the chi-square (χ ²) test value was associated with p > .05, comparative fit index (CFI) value was close to or greater than .95, root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA) value was close to or less than .06, RMSEA 90% confidence interval (CI) values were below .05 for the lower bound and below .08 for the upper bound, and the weighted root mean square residual (WRMR) value was close to or less than 1.00. For nested model comparisons, the chi-square difference test (Δχ ²) was used to test the difference in fit between less restrictive and more restrictive models.

Fifth, to explore the moderating role of profiles of dependency and self-criticism on the relation between cumulative forms of CM and BPDs, we performed a multiple-group SEM analysis with the profiles of dependency and self-criticism as the grouping variable. In this case, the a priori model was tested using the Satorra-Bentler (S-B) robust maximum likelihood estimation method. Fit criteria were the same as for the mediation model, with the exception that the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) replaced the WRMR and needed to be less than .10.

Results

Preliminary analyses

Physical abuse and sexual abuse showed many observations equal to 0 in the nonclinical sample. This resulted in a not-positive definite covariance matrix in the covariance structure analyses. Thus, physical abuse and sexual abuse were summed to form a composite index of "physical and sexual abuse" ranging from 0 to 2. Furthermore, as there were few missing values in both nonclinical and clinical samples (4.6% and 4.5%, respectively), these were imputed at item level using the regression estimation function in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24. This approach allowed us to use all the data in analyses. Tables 2 and 3 summarize the descriptive statistics for the entire sample as well as separately for nonclinical and clinical samples. All variables showed univariate and multivariate normality (see George & Mallery, Reference George and Mallery2016).

Profiles of dependency and self-criticism

Based on the a priori criteria, in both nonclinical and clinical samples, a three-cluster solution was the most acceptable. Solutions with two clusters explained less than 50% of variability in both the grouping dimensions, while solutions with four, five, and six clusters violated the principle of parsimony because they included clusters that represented slight variations of other clusters. Findings also indicated that the three-cluster solution that emerged in both nonclinical and clinical samples were highly comparable. Examining the distributions of adolescents from the two samples across the three paired profiles by chi-square test, no significant differences emerged, χ ² (2) = 0.53, p = .77. Thus, in the two samples the adolescents were distributed in similar proportions across the three profiles. We therefore combined data across nonclinical and clinical samples.

In the combined sample, a three-cluster solution emerged as the most acceptable, closely resembling the solutions found in each single sample. This solution was therefore used to cluster participants into three groups by K-means cluster analysis. The obtained profiles are shown in Figure 1. Using a cutoff of ± 0.30 to distinguish between above and below average mean z-scores (see, for example, Inguglia & Musso, Reference Inguglia and Musso2015), the first cluster ( n = 72; 29.9%) consisted of adolescents showing average mean z-scores on dependency and mean z-scores below average on self-criticism. The second cluster ( n = 96; 39.8%) was comprised of individuals showing mean z-scores above average on both dimensions. The third cluster ( n = 73; 30.3%) was primarily composed of adolescents showing mean z-scores above average on self-criticism and mean z-scores below average on dependency. Thus, we found, in sequence, clusters representing an average dependent and low self-critical profile, a both highly dependent and highly self-critical profile, and a highly self-critical but low dependency profile, which we referred to as the average dependent profile, dependent and self-critical profile, and self-critical profile, respectively.

As a validity check on this three-cluster solution, results from MANOVA indicated that the three-cluster solution explained substantial percentages of variance (58% of variability in dependency and 59% in self-criticism). The same three clusters were replicated in each of the two random subsamples previously drawn. Levels of agreement between the classification performed in the total sample and those conducted in both the nonclinical and clinical samples as well as in the two random subgroups ranged from .75 to .81, indicating good reliability. Finally, we again examined the distributions of adolescents from both the nonclinical and clinical samples across the three profiles (see Table 4) with no significant differences obtained, χ ² (2) = 1.27, p = .53.

Associations between BPDs and profiles of dependency and self-criticism

Results from the MANCOVA showed a significant multivariate effect of profiles of dependency and self-criticism, Wilks' Lambda = .77, F (8, 452) = 7.85, p < .001, η ² = .12. None of the other main and two-way effects were statistically significant. Follow-up univariate analyses indicated that all the dependent variables differed significantly across profiles, except for impaired reality testing (see Table 5). Pairwise comparisons revealed that adolescents in the average dependent profile reported significantly lower levels of identity diffusion, primitive defense mechanisms, and fear of fusion than their peers in the other two profiles. Moreover, adolescents in the self-critical profile scored significantly lower on identity diffusion and primitive defense mechanisms than those in the dependent and self-critical profile. No other significant differences were found.

Associations between CM and profiles of dependency and self-criticism

Results from the MANCOVA showed significant multivariate effects of both profiles of dependency and self-criticism, Wilks' Lambda = .93, F (6, 454) = 2.75, p < .05, η ² = .04, and group belonging, Wilks' Lambda = .92, F (3, 227) = 7.01, p < .001, η ² = .08. Two-way effects were not statistically significant. Follow-up univariate analyses indicated that all the dependent variables differed significantly across profiles and group belonging (see Table 6). Specifically, pairwise comparisons revealed that adolescents in the average dependent profile reported significantly lower levels of lack of care, psychological abuse, and physical and sexual abuse than their peers in the other two profiles. No significant differences were found between adolescents in the self-critical profile and the dependent and self-critical profile. Moreover, adolescents in the nonclinical group scored significantly lower on lack of care, psychological abuse, and physical and sexual abuse than those in the clinical group.

Mediation of the associations of cumulative CM with BPDs by personality profiles

The theoretical mediation model to be tested is illustrated in Figure 2. Lack of care, psychological abuse, and physical and sexual abuse were modelled to form the latent factor of cumulative CM. Identity diffusion, primitive defense mechanisms, impaired reality testing, and fear of fusion were modelled to form the latent factor of BPDs. BPDs was indirectly predicted by cumulative CM via the profiles of dependency and self-criticism.

Because the dependency and self-criticism profile variable was multicategorical, we used a dummy coding strategy to represent the groups in the model (see Hayes & Preacher, Reference Hayes and Preacher2014). Table 7 shows the indicator coding system, where the average dependent profile was not explicitly coded; that is, all the k-1 dummy variables ( k denotes the total number of categories) were set to 0 for cases in that group. Thus, the average dependent profile functioned as the reference group in the analysis and parameters interpreted relative to this reference group.

We initially estimated a SEM specifying all the covariances among the key latent (cumulative CM and BPDs) and dummy variables to obtain bivariate correlations for the entire sample (see Table 8). This model had good fit, χ ² (23) = 26.72, p = .26, CFI = .990; RMSEA = .026 [90% CI = .000-.061], WRMR = .468. Then, we tested the mediation model, inserting the dummy variables as full mediators of the relation between cumulative CM and BPDs and controlling for age, gender, parental loss, socioeconomic status, parents' marital status, and parents' educational level. As suggested by both the findings from the MANOVA (see Table 6) and bivariate correlations (see Table 8), we also constrained the pathways from cumulative CM and the two dummy variables to be equal. The model fit was excellent, χ ² (77) = 70.36, p = .69, CFI = 1.00; RMSEA = .000 [90% CI = .000-.030], WRMR = .602. Moreover, the model was invariant across nonclinical versus clinical samples: when performing the analyses within a multigroup SEM framework imposing cross-group equality constraints for all the factor loadings, pathways, and covariances, the fit was excellent, χ ² (183) = 180.18, p = .54, CFI = 1.00; RMSEA = .000 [90% CI = .000-.038], WRMR = 1.044, and not worse than the unconstrained model, Δχ ² (19) = 21.04, p = .33. The final model with standardized parameter estimates is shown in Figure 3. Some parameter estimates exceeded the value of 1. This is because parameters in such models can represent group differences relative to the reference group (Hayes & Preacher, Reference Hayes and Preacher2014).

Findings showed that cumulative CM was significantly and positively associated with the two dummy variables, meaning that adolescents in the dependent and self-critical as well as the self-critical profiles experienced more cumulative CM relative to the adolescents in the average dependent profile. The two dummy variables were significantly and positively related to BPDs. That is, adolescents in the dependent and self-critical as well as the self-critical profiles showed greater BPDs compared with adolescents in the average dependent profile. Moreover, the indirect effect between cumulative CM and BPDs through the dummy variables was significant and positive (β = .19, p < .001, 95% CI = .11-.28, through the dependent and self-critical profile vs. average dependent profile variable and β = .16, p < .001, 95% CI = .09-.23, through the self-critical profile vs. average dependent profile variable), meaning that the group differences between the two dummy variables and the reference group mediated the association of cumulative CM and BPDs. Thus, relative to the average dependent profile, higher cumulative CM was linked to a higher probability of belonging to the dependent and self-critical or the self-critical profiles and, in turn, this was associated with higher level of BPDs.

We also replicated the analysis using the self-critical profile as the reference group for the dummy variables. Based on previous results, the pathways from cumulative CM and the two dummy variables were free to be estimated. This model again showed excellent fit, χ ² (76) = 78.04, p = .41, CFI = .995; RMSEA = .011 [90% CI = .000-.038], WRMR = .654, and was invariant across samples, χ ² (182) = 194.92, p = .24, CFI = .973; RMSEA = .024 [90% CI = .000-.048], WRMR = 1.114, Δχ ² (20) = 31.60, p = .05. Cumulative CM was significantly and negatively associated only with the average dependent profile versus self-critical profile dummy variable, meaning that adolescents in the average dependent profile reported fewer cumulative CM experiences than the adolescents in the self-critical profile, while no significant differences emerged between adolescents in the dependent and self-critical profile and those in the reference group in terms of cumulative CM (see Figure 3). A similar pattern was found in relation to BPDs. That is, adolescents in the average dependent profile showed lower BPDs compared with adolescents in the self-critical profile, but no significant differences were found between adolescents in the dependent and self-critical and those in the reference group. Moreover, the only significant indirect effect between cumulative CM and BPDs was through the average dependent profile versus self-critical profile dummy variable (β = .42, p < .001, 95% CI = .05-.78), meaning that the association of cumulative CM and BPDs was mediated by only the group differences between the average dependent profile and the reference group. Thus, relative to the self-critical profile, higher levels of cumulative CM were linked to a lower probability of belonging to the average dependent profile and, in turn, this was associated with lower BPDs, while no significant differences emerged in the dependent and self-critical profile group in the patterns of associations. Thus, participants who were highly self-critical or both highly self-critical and dependent experienced similar amounts of cumulative CM and showed comparable levels of BPDs.

Associations of cumulative CM with BPDs: Moderation by profiles of self-criticism and dependency

The theoretical moderation model to be tested is illustrated in Figure 4. The initial model specifying the pathway from cumulative CM to BPDs for the entire sample had very good fit, χ ² S-B(13) = 12.87, p = .46, CFI = 1.00; RMSEA = .000 [90% CI = .000-.063], SRMR = .029. The standardized regression coefficient (β) was .35, p < .001. We then tested the moderation model comparing the three profile groups with respect to this link after controlling for age, gender, parental loss, socioeconomic status, parent's marital status, and parents' educational level. The unconstrained moderation model, in which cross-group equality constraints were imposed only for the factor loadings, showed an acceptable fit to the data, χ ² S-B(203) = 230.88, p = .09, CFI = .949; RMSEA = .041 [90% CI = .000-.065], SRMR = .087. The completely constrained version of this model, also imposing equality constraint for the pathway between cumulative CM and BPDs across the three profile groups, did not significantly differ from the fit of the unconstrained model, χ ² S-B(205) = 230.84, p = .10, CFI = .952; RMSEA = .040 [90% CI = .000-.064], SRMR = .088, Δχ ² S-B(1) = 0.08, p = .96. These findings showed no significant moderating role of profiles of dependency and self-criticism in the link between cumulative CM and BPDs.

Discussion

The present study examined the association between cumulative forms of CM and borderline psychopathology features, thereby contributing to a growing literature that recognizes a distinction between BPD primarily characterized by elevated self-criticism versus dependency or both (Blatt & Luyten, Reference Blatt and Luyten2009; Levy et al., Reference Levy, Edell and McGlashan2007). After identifying three personality profiles by combining self-criticism and dependency, we examined the relationships between these profiles and multiple forms of CM and BPDs. Finally, we tested the mediating and moderating roles of profiles of dependency and self-criticism in the relationship between cumulative CM and BPDs.

Consistent with hypotheses, different personality profiles with high and low levels of dependency and self-criticism emerged. One such profile represented adolescents with average dependency and low self-criticism. A second profile comprised adolescents with high self-criticism but low dependency. A third profile represented adolescents with both high dependency and self-criticism. This last group showed the most severe BPDs as indicated by high levels of identity diffusion and primitive defense mechanisms. This may indicate that being self-critical and dependent is associated with greater or more severe BPDs compared with being only highly self-critical. This is consistent with previous evidence that individuals presenting an elevated polarization with both relatedness and self-definition issues present more severe borderline psychopathological manifestations than individuals that develop only either dependent (i.e., focused on relatedness issues) or self-critical (i.e., focused on autonomy and self-definition concern) traits (Blatt, Quinlan, Chevron, McDonald, & Zuroff, Reference Blatt, Quinlan, Chevron, McDonald and Zuroff1982; Campos, Holden, Baleizão, Caçador, & Fragata, Reference Campos, Holden, Baleizão, Caçador and Fragata2018; Falgares et al., Reference Falgares, De Santis, Gullo, Kopala-Sibley, Scrima and Livi2018aa; Shahar, Blatt, & Ford, Reference Shahar, Blatt and Ford2003).

There were no significant differences between adolescents in the self-critical profile and the dependent and self-critical profile in terms of CM experiences, while the average dependent adolescents reported the lowest levels of CM experiences. It is therefore possible that multiple forms of CM (i.e., lack of care, psychological abuse, and physical and sexual abuse) predict the development of a vulnerability pertaining to self-definition issues that may or may not be accompanied by a preoccupation toward attachment issues. This finding is in line with the concept of multifinality, in that different adverse outcomes may stem from similar developmental experiences (Cicchetti & Rogosch, Reference Cicchetti and Rogosch1996). This finding is also consistent with the conclusions from Kopala-Sibley and Zuroff's ( Reference Kopala-Sibley and Zuroff2014) review in which they found non-specific links between a range of adverse parenting behaviors (e.g., criticism, coldness, psychological control, maltreatment) and the development of both self-criticism and dependency.

Further analyses examined whether vulnerable personality profiles mediated the relationship between cumulative CM and BPDs. Cumulative CM was significantly associated with both self-critical and dependent and self-critical profiles. These two profiles were both positively related to BPDs. The two vulnerable personality profiles then mediated the association between CM and BPDs. Thus, relative to the average dependent personality profile, higher levels of CM were linked to a higher probability of belonging to the dependent and self-critical or the self-critical profiles and in turn this was associated with higher level of BPDs. This finding is intriguing because it suggests that exposure in childhood to multiple and cumulative types of maltreatment during childhood may lead to different personality vulnerability profiles both in terms of a tendency to internalize a critical attitude toward the self (self-criticism) and intense feelings of loneliness, abandonment, helplessness, and weakness (dependency). Thus, consistent with Blatt's ( Reference Blatt2008) theory, self-criticism and dependency may be considered interrelated given they both stem in part from adverse childhood experiences, co-occur, and confer risk for psychopathology such as BPDs. It is therefore possible that cumulative CM may have disrupted the dialectic interaction between relatedness and self-definition personality domains that may in turn result in an exaggerated or distorted preoccupation with issues regarding one's own identity (self-definition). Since the development in each personality domain is believed to be interrelated (Blatt, Reference Blatt2008), elevated self-criticism may affect individuals' ability to establish mature forms of interpersonal relatedness, resulting in a tendency towards feelings of abandonment and loss and therefore high dependency (Luyten & Blatt, Reference Luyten and Blatt2011).

Personality profiles, however, did not moderate the effects of cumulative CM on BPDs. This suggests that self-criticism and dependency may be outcomes of CM, rather than independent factors that exacerbate the effects of CM on BPDs. Consistent with Blatt's theory of personality development, self-criticism and dependency are, at least in part, the result of a disruption in a balanced developmental process that is likely related to the quality of early childhood experiences (Luyten & Blatt, Reference Luyten and Blatt2011). Thus, personality characterized by varying levels of self-criticism and dependency may be important to consider in the process of identifying and understanding underlying mechanisms that link maltreatment experienced during childhood to borderline manifestations assessed in adolescence.

Given BPD is increasingly seen as a life-span developmental disorder represented on a dimensional continuum of severity (Kaess et al., Reference Kaess, Brunner and Chanen2014) with stable features in adolescence and adulthood (Chanen, Jovev, McCutcheon, Jackson, & McGorry, Reference Chanen, Jovev, McCutcheon, Jackson and McGorry2008), understanding how personality profiles may intervene in the development of early manifestations in adolescents who reported a single or multiple form of CM may have implications for early intervention. Concerning prevention and treatment for these adolescents presenting BPDs, it is worthwhile to consider early maltreatment, which may not always be examined in everyday clinical practice. When present, trauma-focused therapies may be indicated. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approaches may be useful in targeting self-critical and dependent personalities. For example, self-criticism has been successfully treated with compassion focused therapy (Kannan & Levitt, Reference Kannan and Levitt2013; Kelly & Carter, Reference Kelly and Carter2015; Sommers-Spijkerman, Trompetter, Schreurs, & Bohlmeijer, Reference Sommers-Spijkerman, Trompetter, Schreurs and Bohlmeijer2018). Schema therapy or CBT that targets maladaptive core beliefs could be useful for targeting self-criticism and dependency as well. When the development of BPDs are rapid and severe (with the possibility of self-harm or suicidal behaviors) dialectical behavior therapy techniques (Linehan, Reference Linehan1993b), including multifamily groups, may also be recommended to target self-definition and relatedness issues. Theoretical and empirical contributions (Blatt & Luyten, Reference Blatt and Luyten2009; Safran & Muran, Reference Safran and Muran2000; Blatt, Zuroff, Hawley, & Auerbach, Reference Blatt, Zuroff, Hawley and Auerbach2010) support the view that sustained therapeutic change may involve the reactivation of the normal developmental processes that proceed through a dialectical balance between attachment and autonomy domains in which the therapeutic relationship supports changes in the sense of self that lead to a more mature expression of interpersonal closeness that in turn contributes to further refinement in the sense of self.

Limitations and future directions

Several limitations of this study should be noted. First, whether CM influences change over time in personality or BPDs, or whether personality influences change over time in BPDs cannot be examined owing to the cross-sectional design. Cross-sectional data cannot identify the direction of effects or causal links. Second, the study used only self-report measures, which may be sensitive to social desirability and can inflate some of the associations among variables owing to shared method variance. Future research should use a multiple method approach, including interviews. Third, the distribution of our participants by gender was unbalanced both within and across groups; in the nonclinical sample gender was unbalanced at approximately a ratio of 3.4:1 for females to males, while in the clinical sample there was approximately a 2.7:1 ratio of males to females. Both nonclinical and clinical samples were composed of Italian adolescents who predominantly came from middle-class backgrounds. These are issues that could bias results and limit generalizability. Replication of our findings with more heterogenous samples in terms of gender, socioeconomic status, and culture would therefore foster generalization of findings to broader populations.

Despite these limitations, our data advance our understanding of the relationship between multiple forms of CM and BPDs by examining the role of personality profiles emerging from a combination of dependency and self-criticism traits. Future research may benefit from considering dependency and self-criticism in the development of BPDs by investigating the interaction with recognized heritable traits, such as emotional vulnerability and impulsivity (Crowell et al., Reference Crowell, Beauchaine and Linehan2009; Gratz et al., Reference Gratz, Moore and Tull2016; Kendler et al., Reference Kendler, Aggen, Czajkowski, Røysamb, Tambs, Torgersen and Reichborn-Kjennerud2008). Research suggests both Gene × Environment interactions and correlations in the development of BPD (Distel et al., Reference Distel, Middeldorp, Trull, Derom, Willemsen and Boomsma2011). An investigation of genetic factors was beyond the scope of this study and, therefore, we cannot exclude the role of predisposing factors that confer a biological vulnerability through which negative childhood experiences contribute to the development of personality vulnerabilities. Even though knowledge of developmental pathways to BPD has increase substantially in the last decade, we do not yet have a detailed understanding of the role of Gene × Environment interactions in the development of BPD in adult and adolescent populations (Kaess et al., Reference Kaess, Brunner and Chanen2014). Future research on emotional dysregulation, early negative experiences, and BPD may benefit from behavioral genetic research and from considering personality profiles as a vulnerability factor as a potential mechanism through which negative early experiences influence later BPD pathology.

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Childhood maltreatment, personality vulnerability profiles, and borderline personality disorder symptoms in adolescents | Development and Psychopathology | Cambridge Core

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The link between cumulative CM or poor-quality parenting and self-criticism and dependency has been demonstrated. For example, Campos, Besser, and Blatt ( Reference Campos, Besser and Blatt2010) investigated the mediating role of the self-critical and dependent personality vulnerability traits in the link between perceived early experiences and depressive symptoms. They found that early relationships characterized by low levels of caring and high levels of overprotection are associated with higher levels of depression and self-criticism among adults.

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The obstacles that arise with cultural differences

The different styles of living within cultures are both admirable and distant, leaving a large gap for misunderstanding. I want to  keep culture and diversity alive while closing the gap of cultural disrespect misunderstanding. Medical practices are performed in various ways all across the world. More often than not, the differences in practices are scrutinized before they are understood. I want to create change by exposing the difference in cultural traditions, and the reasoning and beliefs that support them.

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Key Words: academic achievement gap, Covid, children development
My research topic is closing the academic achievement gap after Covid.
I like to study about this topic because I did heed the academic achievement gap increased after Covid. Virtual learning did cause the children lacking teacher's supports. I want to find out the methods to close this learning gap and support the children who is lacking assistance during Covid.

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Mikaela Contreras                        Foster Youth and Secondary Education   

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Mikaela Contreras                        Foster Youth and Secondary Education   

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keywords: Foster youth, Secondary education, transition
I believe this topic is important because it is not talked about much. When foster kids reach the age of 18 they are on their own to figure out the world, this is a tough period in one's life and not having any support makes it that much more difficult.

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Here is my example study. My name is the title, so you know who posted. I pasted a copy of an article I consulted for my research paper from my graduate comp exams and relevant to the research I've been involved with at work. This article examined high incarceration rates and the problems with returning back to communities with high rates of incarceration. Method of data collection involved individual and group interviews. I'm new to this too, so I'm going to hit the "publish" button to make sure this posts correctly. Hope you enjoy the Padlet format for sharing!

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Clear, Rose, & Ryder (2001) Incarceration and the Community