Stress and the Architecture of the Brain

By Dorian Friedman

One important way to start would be to address a troubling imbalance in the nation’s current funding priorities: Many billions of dollars are spent on the consequences of childhood neglect—from foster care, child-welfare services, and special education, to juvenile delinquency, welfare dependency and adult criminality—while far less is spent on programs likely to prevent maltreatment in the first place. By one careful estimate from the organization Prevent Child Abuse America, we spend $258 million each day— some $94 billion a year—on these direct and indirect costs of child abuse. At the same time, a growing number of cost-benefit studies have concluded that prevention efforts (especially home-visitation programs for families at highest risk of child abuse) yield a significant return-on-investment for the financial costs of maltreatment—to say nothing of the emotional costs for the children and families affected.

The nation’s two main federal programs aimed at preventing abuse—the Child Abuse and Prevention Treatment Act and Promoting Safe and Stable Families, now part of the Social Security Act—are designed to promote effective investments in this critical policy area.

But changing our priorities requires more than adequate funding. In the view of National Scientific Council members, those with influence over a developing child—including teachers, child-care providers, parents and even sports and recreation coaches—need a better grounding in the developmental stages of childhood. Society would reap the benefits of teaching adults how to deal with common behavioral challenges, including discipline and limit-setting. And by doing so, society should convey this clear message grounded in developmental science: that physical discipline, including spanking and hitting, is potentially harmful as well as ineffective Often, a young child who is punished is incapable of understanding what he or she has done wrong. By elevating adults’ understanding of the ways young children are affected by these ill-informed actions, we could make a substantial contribution to child-abuse prevention in our culture. There are numerous ways to accomplish this, including the infusion of developmental teaching in health and life-studies curricula in high schools.

Moreover, in the public child-protection system, it is imperative that the agencies and officials responsible for investigating suspected child-abuse cases work more closely with child-welfare experts who are trained to diagnose and treat problems commonly associated with that abuse, including developmental delays and ­disabilities. Along the same lines, all children who enter the protection system on suspicion of abuse or neglect should automatically receive careful screening and early intervention.

• Ensuring the best possible child care. This growing body of scientific knowledge has clear implications for child-care policies, too. “We know that humans, like animals, find excessive change to be really stressful,” says Levitt. “If a child never gets to develop meaningful and consistent relationships, it can be a great source of stress,” he adds. For young children especially, stable, loving relationships are critically important. “Consistency builds an environment of relationships that provides the nurturing young children need,” says Levitt. “And that’s very important in helping them develop positive ways of responding to occasional stress.”

Here, too, research should shape new public-policy priorities, ones that are crystal clear to developmental experts such as Nathan Fox. “Child care that’s provided by experienced individuals with a good ratio of caregivers to kids greatly reduces stress,” he says. Among the many policy changes suggested: A major public investment that would fund more rigorous training for child-care providers; ensure top-quality programs for children of affluent families and needy ones; achieve higher ratios of teachers to children; and reduce the current epidemic of staff turnover and attrition. These improvements would result in more stable and healthy relationships for children in care. All of these conditions have been linked in careful research to better child-care experiences—with measurable outcomes for children. A footnote: The successful child-care experience of the U.S. Department of Defense could serve as a model.

• Addressing depression and mental-health challenges. As outlined above, a youngster’s ability to manage stress is a function of several variables, some more mysterious than others. But there is wide agreement on one significant risk factor for children: the mental health of their parents. Depressed mothers, in particular, have trouble responding to their children in ways that make them feel loved and secure. And that, in turn, has been shown to contribute to many adverse outcomes for children growing up with them—including problems in school, poor self-control, and an impaired ability to manage stress later in childhood.

It’s a challenge of surprising magnitude, among women in particular. About one in every eight women suffers from clinical depression during their lifetime. The problem arises most often between ages 25 and 44, among women with young children, and with far higher prevalence among poor mothers. Most troubling, fewer than half of the women who experience clinical depression will ever seek care, which presents an urgent need for better public policies. According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the barriers to adequate care are threefold. Continuing stigmas associated with mental illnesses like depression dissuade many people from getting the treatment they need. Cost, too, remains a big barrier, as too few private insurance plans cover mental-health expenses. Finally, the nation’s mental-health system is very fragmented—a recent White House commission called it “a system in shambles”—and creates confusion for people who don’t know where to turn for help. At minimum, programs should include a thorough screening for parents at greatest risk, and there should be access to resources for comprehensive mental-health counseling and treatment modeled on programs that have been shown to work.

Addressing a related need, Council members also endorse better public policies to improve the nation’s seriously inadequate mental-health system as it pertains to children. Incentives to attract qualified experts to work with young children and professional training for those entering the childhood mental-health field are important steps toward more effective screening, early detection, treatment and prevention of serious childhood ­mental-health problems.

• Using science to inform interventions. As they reflect on what science teaches about stress and the developing brain, members of the Council identify many other policies in need of rethinking. Everything we know about the protective qualities of nurturing relationships for children under stress, for instance, suggests the importance of investing in high-quality parenting and mentoring programs, and renewed efforts to protect children from family discord. Similarly, scientific evidence linking conditions of poverty to stress in children suggests an entire textbook of policy changes. These could include a rethinking of the nation’s redistributive tax policies and subsequent increase in the existing but modest child tax credit; a boost in the Earned Income Tax Credit aimed at poor working families; a shift in current welfare-to-work requirements; and further expansion of the successful Head Start preschool model for disadvantaged children. Importantly, the current Head Start model that pays attention to health and economic stresses on the child’s family would appear to be more congruent with the new brain science than a model that focused solely on the child’s cognitive development.

Together, policy changes like these would represent wise economic investments in the future of our children, and avert problems sure to cost society far more in later years. But more than that, they represent a set of moral principles grounded in hard science. By helping to protect today’s children from the most insidious sources of stress, we are literally building the brains of the future.

Dorian Friedman is the policy editor at The American Prospect, a monthly political magazine, and a former associate editor at U.S. News & World Report. She has worked to advance beneficial social policies and effective communication strategies with the FrameWorks Institute, the Welfare to Work Partnership, and other nonprofit organizations. She is based in Washington, D.C.

For information about commonly used terms in Council publications, see Definitions.