The Critical Role of Parenting in Human Development

Marianna S. Klebanov, Adam D. Travis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317687214
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This thorough and multidisciplinary overview of childrearing illustrates and stands on two foundational principles: that the importance of parenting is immense, and that it is undervalued. The Critical Role of Parenting in Human Development surprises readers with the realization that the way we were parented in childhood impacts nearly every aspect of our lives. Based in part on cutting-edge research using MRI and fMRI technologies demonstrating that the brains of those traumatized in childhood are essentially different, the book explains that our brain development during our earliest years and in the womb is fundamental to the lives we lead.

It covers attachment theory, the impact of corporal punishment on the brain, the effects of emotional abuse and neglect, and the widespread nature of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, describing the process that leads to the transmission of parenting patterns through the generations and explaining how resulting personal issues recur throughout the lifespan.

The Critical Role of Parenting in Human Development also examines laws and policies that impact parenting in our culture, making a case for their importance, and describes the effect of childrearing on various aspects of human life, including relationships, crime and violence, economics, mental and physical health, addiction, education, and career issues, among others. Interdisciplinary in nature, this book is a much-needed resource for professionals and students in the psychology, psychotherapy, social work, and related mental health and child welfare fields.

1
The Evidence

An immense amount of research, particularly that being reported in recent years, supports the concepts set forth in this book, namely that parental mistreatment is widespread and that it leads to lifelong issues that tend to recur, negatively impacting national and worldwide affairs including crime, health, addiction, relationships, innovation, scientific development, family violence, mental health, education, the economy, among many others. Notably, due to apparently limited interest in the topic, much of the world is unaware of many of the critical, recent, ground-breaking studies on this subject.

The research ranges from the series of recent studies showing that childhood trauma leads to physical abnormalities in the structure and function of the brain, to that showing that violent criminals tend to have been abused as children, that parenting styles repeat themselves in families generationally, that maternal communicativeness impacts a child’s intelligence, that trauma in childhood leads to adverse life experiences, that corporal punishment leads to children who grow up to be more violent and have lower IQs, that a human brain is most receptive to influence in the earliest years and in the womb, and more.

Attachment

Any child can be made into a psychopath through failure of attachment. We know that. We have known it for a long time. We have to change a lot of established patterns or ways we do things—our priorities—so that nothing gets in the way of attachment in the earliest years. The capacities for trust, empathy, and affection are in fact the central core of what it means to be human, and are indispensable for adults to be able to form lasting, mutually satisfying co-operative relationships with others.

Elliott Barker, M.D., D. Psych. ¹

Scientists have demonstrated through a multitude of studies that a close relationship with the mother or primary caregiver, in which the care-giver regularly interacts and communicates with the child, protects the child, sensitively responds to the child, and exposes the child to positive developmental stimuli through a rich learning environment is critical to healthy social, emotional, and cognitive development.²

The concept of attachment, originally outlined as a theory by John Bowlby, is currently a dominant approach to understanding early social development. Its primary tenet is that an infant needs to develop a strong mutual relationship of communication and sensitive response with the mother or primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally, and that further relationships build on the patterns developed in the first relationship.³

Children attach to caregivers instinctively for the purpose of survival, and the child–caregiver bonds are based on the child’s need for safety, security and protection, paramount in infancy and childhood.⁴ Healthy attachment behaviors include close interaction with the primary care-giver, distress at the caregiver’s disappearance, expression of needs and feelings to which the caregiver is sensitively responsive, expressions of aversion toward those who are not the primary caregiver, and eventual gradual exploration away from the caregiver and periodic return to the caregiver for reassurance. In a healthy child–caregiver relationship, the infant can openly signal discomfort and receive a sensitive response from the caregiver.⁵

The primary caregiver must form a separate but secure parental attachment bond to the child in order for the child to develop a secure state of mind upon reaching adulthood. Where the primary caregiver is neglectful or disordered in her relationship with her infant, leading the child to fail to develop a healthy attachment, problematic psychological consequences follow, including an inability to form healthy relationships in the future.⁶

Consequences of poor mother and child attachment in infancy also include developmental delays; disordered psychological patterns;⁷ inappropriate response and interaction in social situations, including ambivalent, hypervigilant, contradictory, or excessively inhibited responses;⁸

higher levels of both internalizing and deviant behaviors in adolescence;⁹ among others.

Various types of problematic mothering behaviors by the caregiver, including caregiving behavior that is aggressive, negative, neglectful or emotionally manipulative, can lead to attachment problems for the infant.

Interestingly, scientists in one study contrasted hostile behavior by the mother, including teasing, self-referential behavior, or physical aggression toward the child, with helpless and fearful behavior by a mother, characterized as withdrawing and inhibited. Infants of helpless/fearful mothers continued to express their distress, approach their mothers, and gain some physical contact with them, but they also displayed disorganized behaviors including signs of conflict, apprehension, uncertainty, or helplessness. These mothers “advertised” some potential for responsive contact, and then often delivered contradictory behaviors.¹⁰ This means that even helpless or “minimally” neglectful childrearing by the mother during her child’s infancy can lead to disorganized behavior in the infant and lead to later negative impact in the child’s future mental development.

Insecure attachment and a mother’s inappropriate or neglectful responses toward her infant have also been described by scientists as “hidden trauma,” leading to dysfunction in the stress response systems (discussed in detail in Chapter 3), and potentially to dissociative behaviors (discussed in more detail in Chapter 6).

While as a general matter a traumatic event involves threat to one’s physical integrity, in infancy, the caregiver’s signals and availability are critical. Such behaviors may not sound traumatic in the conventional sense, but they are traumatic to the infant because of the infant’s limited understanding and its fundamental need for attachment at its early stage of development. Equipped with limited behavioral and cognitive coping capacities, the infant cannot gauge the actual degree of threat. Instead, primary experiences of threat in infancy include the threat of separation from the caregiver and the threat of having little caregiver response to the infant’s signals of distress. Scientists have shown that insecure attachment can impact healthy functioning of the stress response systems.¹¹

The literature generally classifies problematic attachment in a child as either avoidant, insecure, ambivalent or disorganized, sometimes referred to generally as “attachment disorder.” When it becomes severe, poor attachment may be psychiatrically diagnosed as reactive attachment disorder (RAD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).¹²

Researchers have also studied the impact of early life co-regulation with a primary caregiver on morality and have found that such appropriate early life attunement leads to mature moral functioning. According to studies conducted by Professor Darcia Navarez of Notre Dame University and colleagues, mature moral functioning involves the integration of emotion, intuition, and reasoning, all of which develop appropriately through attuned parenting, particularly in the early years of life when the brain’s neural circuits are most sensitive.¹³

First Years

All the child-development experts have reiterated to me time and again that zero to 3 is the most formative time in a person’s life— a time when they develop a conscience. It’s going to do little good nine and 10 years from now unless we raise children in that age range right.

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno¹⁴

The human mind is shaped by experience and develops in an orderly fashion beginning from fetal life, at certain time periods being particularly receptive to environmental influences. The first years of life are the critically vulnerable time period for the development of the brain architecture.¹⁵ This is both a time of great opportunity and a time of the deepest susceptibility.¹⁶

The brain develops in stages from the most fundamental and foundational levels and builds on each step through continually more complex levels of development. If any of the foundational stages develop in a faulty fashion, the impact is particularly great and enduring, interfering with the brain’s healthy growth and functioning throughout life, even if the individual is exposed to healthier environments later in life.¹⁷

The brain develops through a complex interaction of genetics and experience. The initial genetic encoding for the human brain involves a basic set of instructions for the connection of nerve cells. However, experience modifies and shapes those circuits so as to adapt the individual’s brain to his or her environment.¹⁸

Neural circuits group to form mental functions such as vision, language, or emotional response, for example. Experience impacts the development of neural connections in stages from the simplest during fetal life to the more complex.¹⁹

Neural circuits are plastic during sensitive time periods. At that point, they are particularly responsive to environmental influence. Once a neural circuit has matured and passed the critical stage of plasticity, the potential for modification becomes limited. In fact, the circuit undergoes a process called myelination, which involves the growth of a sheath of protective tissue.²⁰

The young developing brain consists of many areas of plasticity. During the time period of plasticity, the brain develops more connections than is necessary. As part of the process, the brain then prunes those connections that have been formed which it determines to be superfluous or unneeded. Thus, if this process takes place in a healthy manner without negative interference, it leads to efficient neural connections and brain functioning.²¹

As mentioned above, this early brain plasticity leads to opportunity as well as vulnerability. The brain is particularly receptive to learning, especially the appropriate materials that impact the currently sensitive neural connections. However, it is also particularly receptive to stress in the environment, including physical or emotional abuse, neglect, witnessing domestic violence, and so on.²²

During sensitive periods, the neural circuits in the brain are directly impacted by stressful or traumatic experiences, which fundamentally alter the way those circuits develop. If the stress or trauma continues throughout the period of plasticity for those circuits, then the negative changes become enduring, lasting into adulthood. The negative impact during times of sensitivity will prevent the circuit from operating in a healthy and efficient manner, interfering with proper functioning in the relevant area. Of course, child abuse or maltreatment can constitute a stressful or traumatic experience which fundamentally detrimentally impacts the development of neural circuits.²³

While there are indications that some level of repair by attempts to reassess the relevant damaged neural circuits and correct their functioning may be possible, it also appears that it may not be possible to conduct a therapeutic process that will restore the state of the neural circuit at issue to its optimal level, the level at which it would have been had it been subject to the most favor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Evidence
• 2 Nature and Nurture
• 3 Excessive Stress
• 4 “Issues”
• 5 Severity
• 6 Avoidance, Emotional Numbing, Dissociation, and Self-Blame
• 7 Through the Generations
• 8 Recurrence
• 9 Prevalence
• 10 Examples
• 11 Physical Health
• 12 History
• 13 Nations and Social Groups
• 14 Consequences
• 15 Policy, Law, and Social Discourse
• 16 Therapy
• Appendix
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Index