A consistent theme in family adaptation is the family’s ability to make sense of their experience. When a caregiver is away at war, the stress on the family is immediate and can have lasting effects, especially on very young children.

Family Stress

Families of service members deployed to war are forced to live with both the hope and expectation of a safe return and the acute awareness of possible loss of life. During times of war, risk varies for different family members and different family systems.

“When a caregiver is away at war, the stress on the family is immediate and can have lasting effects, especially on very young children.”

Stressful life events and normative life events before notification of deployment, during separation, and after reunion contribute to the overall adaptation of the family.

Individuals who have strong connections to family and community support and can identify and use these supports adapt to the changes and continue to thrive after deployment. For others, the cumulative and chronic nature of stressors on their family system increases uncertainty about individual and family well-being.

Infants and toddlers also experience separation and loss, but their needs can be overlooked when caring adults are overwhelmed and assume that children will not remember this time. Yet the young are the most vulnerable.

Separation during deployment affects an infant’s attachment relationship with the service member. Boundary ambiguity about who is in or out of the family, as well as both visible and invisible wounds of war, represent other losses in the parent-child relationship.

Injuries sustained in war may be visible or invisible to children. Invisible injuries are more difficult for children to understand because there are no obvious physical signs.

Invisible injuries such as post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), traumatic brain injury, and depression can harm the quality of the parent-child relationship because these wounds often are associated with parental irritability, rapid mood swings, emotional numbing, memory loss, and lack of behavior control.

Any of these can enhance children’s risk for disorganized attachment, psychological distress, emotion and behavior dysregulation, and poor health and well-being.

Children growing up in homes with a depressed parent are at increased risk for depression themselves, as are children raised by parents with substance abuse disorders, especially when they occur with high levels of aggression and violence. Children traumatized by parental violence may themselves develop symptoms of PTSD.

Separation during deployment affects an infant’s attachment relationship with the service member.

The nature of the invisible injury may directly harm family functioning and the quality of parent-child relationships necessary for promoting optimal child development. While all types of parental combat injuries influence various components of family functioning, evidence suggests that families are more resilient when there are visible wounds and struggle more with changes related to invisible ones.

Ambiguous Loss

The realities of stress on non-deployed parents can make it difficult for them to be emotionally present with their child during and after deployment. Uncertainty about the extent of the loss and the inability to bring closure to these losses make them ambiguous.

Psychologists describe two types of ambiguous loss: when a loved one is physically absent but psychologically present, and when a loved one is physically present but psychologically absent.

The concept of ambiguous loss became significant when research with families of U.S. military sent to fight in the Vietnam War looked at the psychological presence of a father declared missing in action.

Studies showed that the effect of the father’s absence was influenced by the mother’s adjustment in the first few years after receiving notification of the father’s missing-in-action status. Later studies revealed that ambiguous loss during a parent’s deployment changed not only children’s relationship with the deployed parent but also their relationship with the non-deployed parent.

During Deployment

Certainly, both deployed parents and children at home experience the loss of shared developmental milestones (e.g., first smile, step, word). Lengthy separations are thought to have greater implications for young children, who are developmentally unable to process the cause of the separation, time of the parent’s absence, or explanations of the parent’s return.

When the service member is absent, the non-deployed caregiver and that caregiver’s attunement to the developmental milestones of the child or the impact of stressors on the young child are critical for normal attachment and development of young children.

“Infants and toddlers also experience separation and loss, but their needs can be overlooked when caring adults are overwhelmed.”

Ongoing fear for the loved one’s safety and a fixation on the war can result in the non-deployed parent or caregiver being psychologically absent during the deployment.

While they are physically present, they may be unable to maintain normal routines or care for children. For these adults, feelings of despair can lead to ambivalence, guilt, anxiety, depression, and incapacitation.

Boundary ambiguity about who is in or out of the family unit or what roles individuals play in a family can be conceptualized on a continuum with varying degrees of psychological presence or absence, as well as changing physical presence or absence.

When a parent is deployed or absent from the home for an extended period, other family members assume their roles within the family and may not be interested in relinquishing some of those responsibilities when the service member returns.

Reunion

Community supports in place during deployment might assume that once the service member is home, life will quickly return to normal. However, when service members return, they have to deal with not only their wartime experiences but also the loss of family as they knew it prior to their deployment.

Many become acutely aware of developmental milestones missed and the ability of the family to go on without them. As the boundaries of who is in or out of the family change and the future seems uncertain, families may experience turmoil.

Building an attachment relationship is influenced by parents’ ability to be both physically and psychologically present for their child during all phases of the deployment cycle, including the reunion and reintegration of family.

When service members return, they have to deal with not only their wartime experiences but also the loss of family as they knew it prior to their deployment.

Military families and community support need to understand and normalize bodily responses to chronic stress and how these responses create ambiguity.

The stress response that activated to help the service member or at-home caregiver survive their stressful experience takes a toll on the human body. Over time, the endemic stress affects bodily functions like heart rate, blood pressure, immunity, sleep, attention, and moods.

Furthermore, thinking about negative events that happened in the past or fearing for the future can continue to hijack the stress response, making it more difficult to manage everyday relationships.

When parents are consumed with thoughts and fears, they are unable to be present and attuned to their child in the moment, that is, they might be physically present but psychologically absent. This can happen at any stage of the deployment cycle.

Family Functioning

When parents experience stress that takes them away from being attuned to and present with their children, there is strength is seeking help from professionals. Meaningful treatment focused on the injury, role changes, and loss of personal and family dreams is central in the process of healing.

A multi-level, systemic, resilience-building approach is needed to strengthen family and community resources, rather than focusing solely on individual deficits. Considering parents’ combat injuries, interventions should respect individual, family, military, and community differences.

Having strong social support facilitates better adjustment for the injured and has a buffering effect on the family. When social supports reduce the stress experienced by the military family, the parent can focus on being emotionally responsive and attuned to the needs of their child.

“When service members return, they have to deal with not only their wartime experiences but also the loss of family as they knew it prior to their deployment.”

The early life trajectory is shaped largely by infants’ relational world of family, community, and life contexts.

During times of stress, parents can provide comfort and security for their children by establishing and maintaining routines. Age-appropriate tasks may help children feel that they are contributing positively to the family.

Children need to make sense of what the stress means for their life. When adults communicate age-appropriate information, it supports children’s intuitive sense that something is wrong.

Parents can also create an environment where the child knows it is acceptable to ask questions. What children want and need to know changes as they grow. Children express a broad range of emotions, and they often need their caregivers to help them name and regulate their emotions.

Child development studies consistently promote the benefits of children maintaining a relationship with both parents. Children need the adults in their life to plan activities and rituals that help them feel connected to a parent who is physically absent.

During wartime deployments, events inevitably occur outside families’ control. Family members’ beliefs, values, goals, and perceptions of themselves in the context of their community may influence whether the family views their situation as manageable.

Community supports can focus on reducing parental stress, mitigating mental health challenges, building confidence in parents’ engagement, and supporting strategies that enable parents to live in ways that are consistent with their values.

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Start with acknowledging and celebrating the diversity of Latinx families and communities

The past 20 years have seen dramatic shifts in the location of Latinx communities, stretching beyond traditional jurisdictions in California, Texas, and New York into areas that are much less familiar with their needs and cultures. Indeed, the label “Latinx” does not capture the diversity of Latinx-identifying families and individuals born and raised in the United States versus recent and earlier arrivals who hail from different countries of origin and heritages, and who are fluent in different Spanish dialects and indigenous languages. (Latinx is a gender-neutral term used in the United States to refer to Latino/Hispanic individuals of Latin American or Caribbean heritage.)

This diversity can sometimes overwhelm rigid and unfamiliar systems, which can contribute to frustration, confusion, and tensions in receiving communities. Correspondingly, fear and distrust among Latinx populations and between Latinx populations and other groups can escalate. What may actually be misinformation or confusion among Latinx parents can be internalized as failure. In reality, Latinx parents bring with them hope, optimism, a sense of family cohesion, and a strong work ethic, which are key strengths that support children’s success.

Three key strengths: Optimism, work ethic, and family cohesion

It is hard to overstate the optimism that Latinx immigrants have today and have always had when they arrive in the United States. They feel they have had to risk everything, leaving behind family and the life they knew to move to a better life, one filled with hope of economic opportunity and promise for their children’s futures. This optimism carries them through difficult times. Such positivity protects their well-being and mental health and drives success.

Service and public infrastructure such as transportation, internet access, and schools can be extended in ways that capitalize on co-location of community organizations and neighborhoods that parents trust.

Optimism is just one of many strengths Latinx families bring with them, whether they are born in the United States or are recent immigrants. Their capacities include a strong work ethic, with many Latinx parents working long hours and producing high-quality output, rarely missing work or calling in sick, often at the risk of losing earned income and with no mechanism for recourse in case of injury or emergency.

This strong work ethic goes hand in hand with an equally strong commitment to their children, ensuring that they receive proper nutrition and feel safe, and attending to their children’s learning and education. As in all families, Latinx parents balance the competing demands of being a worker and a parent, and ensure that their children get not only resources but also their time.

Family cohesion is the hallmark of adapting and thriving in the United States. Latinx families provide love and support for each other in the form of social and financial capital. The strong family bond can protect them from adversity and provides a personal safety net that helps the family not only survive, but in many cases, thrive. An integral part of the family is the belief that children thrive when raised by two parents—mothers and fathers.

Photo: David Beoulve. Creative Commons.

Fathers’ role is not only to provide financially for their children, but also to be there for them and be involved in day-to-day parenting. Latinx fathers have a strong commitment to their family and their children, and their involvement in their lives matters for the development of children’s basic language and social skills. Fathers and mothers also co-parent and combine resources to ensure that their children have more opportunities than they had. 

Celebrating learning and education

The value placed on education and learning is infused throughout stages of child development, as demonstrated during children’s earliest years. Both Latinx mothers and fathers engage in active storytelling which is sustained through support of formal schooling.

Investments in early education in the United States have yielded high enrollment in programs serving preschool-age Latinx children, and the benefits to Latinx children, including dual language learners, sometimes outpace those of other groups of  children. Families also benefit from the role early education and care play in supporting parenting, access to other resources in the community, and connections to social networks.

The strong Latino parent work ethic goes hand in hand with an equally strong commitment to their children. As in all families, Latinx parents balance the competing demands of being a worker and a parent, and ensure that their children get not only resources but also their time.

Indeed, Latinx fourth and fifth graders’ math and reading achievement has increased over time, as have Latinx high school graduation rates and subsequent enrolment in post-secondary education programs. When researchers visit Latinx homes, parents ask about where and how they can purchase the educational toys used to observe children’s play. It is not unusual for young children to ask their teachers for more books to bring home from school, declaring: “One is for me, and one is for Mom.” Modelling good behavior is a tool parents use to inculcate in their children a love of learning, with many parents “doing homework” with their children. Family members, and sometimes entire communities, come together to participate in and witness schooling milestones, such as graduations.

Educational preparedness for many Latinx children includes fluency in two languages, mastering English and Spanish. Schools that embrace equity-oriented practices – including strategies to facilitate family engagement and family-school partnerships, and extended learning opportunities – have reduced disparities in Latinx students’ school progress compared to peers.

A foundation of good health

Across many metrics of children’s health, Latinx children fare well, notably in low rates of infant mortality. Latinx parents care deeply about the health of their children and the foundation that good health provides for their children’s educational attainment and economic opportunities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Latinx families, like many other families, expressed concern about the social isolation and mental health of their children. They also experienced high rates of economic, food, and housing insecurities, which threatened the well-being of their children.

Yet their abilities to meet the physical and mental health needs of their children are often hindered by structural barriers to medical care, public services, and other resources needed to support children’s well-being. As one example, 12 states, many in the U.S. South, have chosen not to expand Medicaid, a health insurance program for low-income persons. Even with insurance, Latinx families can face a variety of barriers to care, including limited time off from work to obtain medical care, limited access to transportation, and a lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate services in the communities in which they live.

Pandemic challenges

Optimism can wear thin when families are faced with health risks and economic uncertainty over a prolonged period. During the first few months of the pandemic, the mental health of Latinx parents was initially buoyed by their optimism and strong co-parenting support, but high rates of unemployment, especially among Latina parents, reduced household income. Not all eligible Latinx families received pandemic-related government assistance.

Although most Latinx families did their best to keep children engaged in learning activities at home, Latinx children’s learning suffered because they did not receive the support they needed for education transmitted remotely or online. Latinx children did not have consistent access to technology or equipment, such as extra iPads or laptops. In some cases, children missed online testing because digitally accessible equipment, including a smart phone, was shared by an entire household. 

As Latinx parents struggled to cope with extra demands, Latinx teens and young adults were expected to help their younger siblings with learning.

Photo: Jhon David. Unsplash.

Opportunity for policy investment and the price of policy failure

These and other stories speak to Latinx family strengths. How can these strengths of optimism, work ethic, and family cohesion be harnessed – and not undermined – by investments in education, health care, and child care policy?

Latinx children arrive at formal schooling curious and eager to learn. Although Latinx children quickly catch up to their peers in some academic domains, lack of support for their home language and cultural barriers contribute to dashed hopes and disillusionment with educational opportunities. As economic pressures on the family, youth are forced to disengage from the educational system as they face competing demands, including working to financially support their family or sharing in the responsibility of raising younger siblings. This path can lead to lost years of formal education.

Child care providers have difficulty accommodating the complexities of work schedules among some Latinx parents, and early education and care arrangements are not always culturally responsive, lacking support for Spanish-speaking or dual-language parents and children and failing to adequately accommodate children with special needs. The supply of child care slots is low, resulting in fewer options to reconcile work and parenting commitments.

Many Latinx families with children are left out of health insurance because of discrimination against individuals whose immigration status is not regularized. Latina adolescents have some of the highest rates of depression and suicide attempts in the United States. Longer-term consequences are documented in poor cardiovascular health, diabetes, and suboptimal functioning in adulthood.

When family cohesion faces such stressors, how far can the safety net it provides its members be stretched before it snaps? It is hard to know precisely. Low-wage work is deeply problematic, setting tight limits on what parents can do for their children. When a mother works two or three jobs, who cares for her children? When can a mother or father engage with the school if they are both working long hours? When is there time to navigate the health care system?

How can parents ensure that child care is good? If work is unreliable and unstable, with no benefits and few hours required on short notice, children may have to be placed in three or four different child care arrangements. Typically, there is no formal child care on weekends, so low-paid Latinx families are forced into an informal network of supports, some of which are not of very high quality.

How do parents square the circle of wanting to spend loving time with their children and earning enough money to feed their family? One father we know works three jobs, getting home at 11 pm every night. His two-year-old naps until 10:30 pm, then is wakened so she can play with her father for half an hour – but she is tired the next day.

A manifesto for change

It is time for public programs and services to re-envision their engagement with Latinx families and support Latinx children’s paths to success. They must also respect the rights of Latinx individuals: Most young children of immigrants are U.S.-born, thus have rights and privileges equal to all other U.S. citizens such that their parents’ immigration status is not a barrier.

Service and public infrastructure more generally—including transportation, internet access and schools—can also be extended in ways that capitalize on co-location of community organizations and neighborhoods that parents trust. Community schools have proven their worth in, for example, improving access to children’s health care and reducing the administrative burden on hard-pressed parents of accessing other services.

Latinx families bring such strengths – so much energy, skill, and commitment – to raising their children well. A public commitment to policies and practices that harness and align with these strengths can go a long way to recouping returns to investments.

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• Consider fathers’ health behaviors as well as mothers’,
• Assess and treat fathers’ mental health as well as mothers’,
• Treat family stress and attend to the couple relationship, and
• Provide access for fathers to family leave.

Much research focuses on how mothers-to-be influence babies’ health and development before and during pregnancy – touching on mothers’ environments, emotions, and behaviors. Mothers-to-be are often advised to alter their lifestyles accordingly.

Less attention is paid to fathers, but there is sufficient evidence to make a case for practice and policy to change in this regard.

This research review sets out seven ways fathers influence children’s development during pregnancy, providing a useful tool for planners of prenatal services and policies.

1. Epigenetic and genetic changes: Prior health behaviors

• Obesity is associated with epigenetic changes that predict restricted growth in childhood.
• Alcohol affects the sperm epigenome and is a risk factor for alcohol use and alcohol sensitivity in offspring.
• Fathers’ diabetes and fast-food consumption predict earlier births.

2. Epigenetic and genetic changes: Exposure to environmental toxins

• Exposure to workplace welding fumes is linked with higher prevalence of congenital abnormalities (Egyptian study).
• Fathers exposed to pesticides (e.g., nematocide, dibromochloropropane, ethylene dibromide) are more likely to have suboptimal sperm quality.

3. Epigenetic and genetic changes: Early life stress

• Children of fathers who survived the Holocaust and fathers with post-traumatic stress disorder show epigenetic differences, namely increased DNA methylation in a promoter region of the glucocorticoid receptor. These are linked with increased prevalence of psychiatric illness and reduced cortisol levels in the children.
• Studies of mothers have shown links between their exposure to disasters (e.g., natural disasters, terrorist attacks, COVID-19) and outcomes for their children. No such research exists for fathers but it would likely reveal similar links.

4. Neurobiological and hormonal changes

• First-time fathers with a higher prenatal testosterone level report less effective and positive parenting six months after the birth.
• First-time fathers with a higher prenatal oxytocin level endorse a more nurturing parenting philosophy after the child’s birth.

“This research review sets out seven ways fathers influence children’s development during pregnancy, providing a useful tool for planners of antenatal services and policies.”

5. Influences on expectant mothers’ health behaviors

• Alcohol use by an expectant father is linked to higher alcohol use by pregnant mothers (Ukrainian study).
• Expectant mothers engage more in prenatal health actions such as stopping smoking when their male partners do more caregiving (e.g., listening to baby’s heartbeat, purchasing items for baby, attending prenatal classes).

6. Influences on expectant mothers’ mental health

• A higher quality of couple relationship is associated with expectant mothers’ lower distress, which in turn is associated with more positive temperament of the baby (U.S. study).
• More relationship conflict correlates with greater incidences of medically complex births. Much research links prenatal stress in mothers to premature birth and low birth weight.
• Depression in expectant fathers correlates with depression in expectant mothers. Joint mental health symptoms in two parents prenatally predict the same symptoms in the parents 12 months after the birth, which in turn correlate with children’s executive function problems at 7-8 years (Finnish study).

7. Influences on mothers’ hormones

• A couple’s hormonal levels tend to synchronize and follow similar patterns. Lower testosterone levels in both expectant parents predict greater investment by the father in the parenting relationship after the birth.
• When cortisol levels are lower in both expectant parents, there is likely to be less conflict between them before birth and less depression on the part of the father after the birth.
• Hormonal changes in mothers can affect fetal development and children’s long-term social and emotional development.

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Involved, vigilant parenting is key to children developing the capacity to regulate their emotions and avoid poor mental health outcomes that can emerge from racism. This confirms findings from earlier research of African American families, with associations between positive parent-child relationships in middle childhood and adolescents having skills to make decisions, pay attention, avoid distractions, set priorities, and control emotions.

In this study, the researchers make the case that, given how typical the experience of the negative effects of racial discrimination is in African American families, it is important to understand these strength-based, cultural parenting assets. Family support services need to understand and build around these assets when delivering preventative interventions for African-American families.

Middle Childhood

Middle childhood is an important stage in child development. This is when children develop a greater sense of self and the capacity to regulate their emotions. Their social world expands during this time as they learn how to engage in wider social settings. Such social competence is associated with numerous positive developmental outcomes in adolescence. Talking to your children about racism is another topic we’ve covered.

In the abovementioned study, African-American mothers were asked how satisfied they were with their children and how happy they were with their relationship with their children. The mothers were also asked questions like, “How often do you know what your child does after school?” “When you discipline your child, how often does the type of discipline you use depend on your mood?” and “How often do you give reasons to your child for your decisions?”

Middle childhood is an important stage in child development. This is when children develop a greater sense of self and the capacity to regulate their emotions.

When the mothers reported experiences of discrimination, they were more likely to report depression and anxiety on their part, as well as strained relationships with their children.

These in turn were associated with a greater likelihood of lower-quality parenting, as assessed by the mother. Both maternal depression/anxiety and lower parenting quality are linked to a greater likelihood of children developing poor self-control and emotion regulation skills.

Results & Conclusions

The study produced one surprising result. African American children who experienced the negative effects of racial discrimination during middle childhood showed a higher likelihood of developing stronger self-regulation and emotional control in early adolescence, which in turn was associated with less depression and greater social competence. This was the same for boys and girls. In some children, exposure to adversity during early childhood may help them self-soothe and regulate emotion, protecting them from adverse impacts on mental health.

However, this unexpected finding does not counteract the overall negative correlations between a family’s experience of racial discrimination and symptoms of depression in children. These links were found both in this and in earlier work by the same researchers.

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During the current pandemic, many new parents have found themselves with little support, but there are simple things parents can do at home to nurture essential interactions with their baby.

Around this time last year, an inexorable force swept into people’s lives. It upended everything — relationships, friendships, routines, work life, independence, and sense of control. In this respect, the COVID-19 pandemic has similarities to another dramatic event — becoming a parent. And just like the pandemic, nothing quite prepares you for it.

For all those who became parents in the last year, these two realties have collided. New parents have been left without many of the usual support networks that help support them through the early days. Those networks include their own parents, parent-baby groups, informal social networks, and in-person postnatal and breastfeeding support groups. Added to all this is the constant threat from a life-threatening virus.

“We hope it is a comfort to know that there is something simple and easy to do together, safely and in the comfort of home, that lays positive foundations for the developing brain.”

It is too soon to say what effect these extraordinary circumstances will have on babies born during the pandemic, but the effect on parents is already being felt. Numerous studies show that parents have found lockdowns extremely hard emotionally, and that the strain they are under has affected their ability to parent, which has consequences for children. The lockdowns have been linked to an increase in parental anxiety, depression, and hostility. And the pandemic has put women at increased risk of anxiety and depression in the perinatal period. At the same time, increased parental support has been shown to help decrease stress associated with the pandemic. The brunt of this burden has fallen on certain groups, including single parents and low-income families.

Because of this, it is vital that new parents receive additional support at this difficult time, especially in terms of their mental health.

There are some very simple, intuitive ways parents can work on laying the foundations for their children’s development from the very early days. One of the simplest of these is to pick up a book and read together.

Plenty of evidence shows how important it is to read with children, not least for their cognitive development and vocabulary. In one study, both the quality of the books and the amount of reading time starting at six months were important predictors of literacy and vocabulary four years later. New parents might be surprised to learn that a shared activity like reading promotes a kind of back-and-forth interaction between child and caregiver that can trigger a chain reaction of long-lasting beneficial effects, and that these interactions might also help reduce the stress parents are feeling.

Adults who interact sensitively with a child — for instance, reading or singing, looking at the same things, and copying sounds and faces — help children feel safe and secure. In turn, these feelings can help children cope better in challenging situations later on — something we know is important during the pandemic. These interactions also encourage children to explore more, which helps them develop problem-solving skills. All this builds to the kind of learning and development that prepares children for big steps in life, like starting school.

This cascade of development is supported by the science of early learning, which shows that parents and caregivers lay the foundation for secure caregiver-child attachment relationships, which help children develop the ability to focus and pay attention, remember instructions, and demonstrate self-control (also called executive function). Positive caregiver-child interactions also help children develop social-emotional skills, such as cooperating and playing well with others, and managing feelings appropriately. Together, secure relationships and strong social-emotional and executive function skills in children are related to resilience and school readiness.

“New parents might be surprised to learn that a shared activity like reading or singing together promotes a kind of back-and-forth interaction between child and caregiver that can trigger a chain reaction of long-lasting beneficial effects.”

The children are not the only ones who benefit. Positive and engaging interactions between children and the adults in their lives are also good for the adults, helping them become more confident caregivers. Reading to children may also help with parental stress and even depression.

It can feel strange to read books to very young babies. Even without a pandemic, the early days of parenthood can be overwhelming and it can be hard for parents to know what they should be doing, especially given the deluge of parenting advice. Parents also underestimate just how early the care they provide has long-term impacts on their children’s development. For instance, in one survey, parents said they believed what they did started to make a difference at six months, but we know that the impact starts from birth. At a time when uncertainty abounds, especially for new parents, we hope it is a comfort to know that there is something simple and easy to do together, safely and in the comfort of home. And that the simple back and forth that reading and rhyming creates can extend beyond the pages of the book and lay positive foundations for the developing brain that last for many years.

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Adverse childhood experiences include growing up in poverty; absence or death of a parent; violence; caregivers’ drug or alcohol addiction; physical or emotional neglect; peer victimization; or physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.

Based on the study, the researchers concluded that fathers should be involved in programs that support children with problems such as anxiety, anger, inattention, and sleep disturbance. Other studies have shown that parents with a reported history of prior maltreatment have the capacity for improving their parenting practices. Fathers should also receive direct support to address depression and negative parenting practices.

The study featured 118 fathers of 6- to 17-year-olds. All fathers were in stable, committed relationships with the mother of their children. Fathers completed a series of psychological questionnaires and evaluations of their own children. They were asked about their own childhood experiences, their assessment of their children’s mental health (inattention, sleep disturbance, depression, anger, anxiety), their own parenting practices, and their relationship with their children’s mother.

The correlations in this research do not imply causation, but they do correspond with earlier research, particularly on mothers. Mothers’ depression and negative parenting has been shown to explain the link between their own adverse childhood experiences and their children’s development – including communication, problem solving, motor skills at age 2, health, and hyperactivity. Many studies have confirmed that individuals who were maltreated in childhood are at risk of repeating these negative behaviors toward their own children.

Fathers’ symptoms of depression have also been linked to their children’s anxiety, depression, substance addiction (for up to 20 years), psychiatric disorders, lower academic performance, hyperactivity, social problems, and emotional difficulties. The global socioeconomic changes that have been occurring for the last 40 years suggest that the traditional mother-focused models of developmental influence are old fashioned. The presence and involvement of fathers in their children’s lives is strongly associated with their offspring’s social well-being, academic achievement, and behavioral adjustment. Moreover, longitudinal studies have confirmed that, in child development, fathers matter in ways similar to mothers.

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The mental health of stressed young people was transformed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: Many felt better. Anxiety and symptoms of depression dropped among older, high-achieving children in the United States. That was particularly true for students about to graduate from high school, our research in U.S. schools has found.

Why? Children relaxed … for a bit. COVID-19 provided a full stop to the busyness of some teenage lives. The treadmill of pressure, activities, and commitments halted. Out went crisscrossing among band practice, sports clubs, social activities, and hours of homework into the small hours. Lockdowns brought that high-octane life to a sudden standstill.

Children got more sleep – they weren’t leaving home at 7 am. Many schools had staggered hours and reduced the pressure, shifting from grading assignments to awarding a pass or fail. Social anxiety was reduced – a teenager didn’t need to worry about being left out of the lunch table or not being invited to parties that no longer happened. Missing out on a romantic relationship didn’t matter as much – kids were not seeing seemingly happy couples at school or at social gatherings.

But this break didn’t last. As we worked with schools through the arrival of summer, we found that anxiety and depression had risen again among older high school students. Their initial relief morphed into feeling that life was unsettling, scary, and lonely — young people experienced grief about incomplete endings and fears about what might lie ahead.

“Anxiety and depression dropped initially for older, high-achieving children in the United States.”

Middle school children less relieved

Children in middle school did not have even the initial relief – in our survey, anxiety and depression stayed at previous levels for them. That’s probably because virtual communication is more challenging for children of this age. Their peer groups are less well formed and less stable than those of 16- to 18-year-olds. If you are an awkward, insecure 12-year-old with few social connections, it can be easier to casually share confidences with friends at soccer practice or while walking around than to do so from home via Zoom. Self-consciousness kicks in: “Will they like my room?” “Will they see my family?”

We’ve learned a lot about what helps children of all ages feel good in a period characterized by prolonged uncertainty, with no end in sight. Two predictors of their well-being stand out: the well-being of parents and the supportiveness of teachers.

Photo: kris krüg. Creative Commons.

Parents and teachers vital for resilience

First, we found strong, unique links between adolescents’ depression and anxiety and whether they felt their parents were coping well. When children felt their parents maintained a calm, stable home and were in good enough shape to provide emotional support, they were likely to be doing well. This was true across ages, genders, and races. Our finding is in sync with a major report published last year on children’s well-being by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Its take-home message: If you want children to do well, the single most important step is to ensure that the parents are doing well themselves.

“When children felt their parents maintained a calm, stable home and were in good enough shape to provide emotional support, they were likely to be doing well.”

Second, our research found that the support of key adults – and teachers in particular – was vital to children in maintaining their well-being. In open-ended questions on what was going well in their schools, children and youth responded most often with answers such as, “My teacher cares about me and reaches out to me,” and ‘I really like that my teachers check in on how I’m feeling and not just my school work.”

Parents need proper care 

These two observations should inform practice and policy. The first highlights that we need to expand the focus of policy and practice beyond just styles of parenting. Children’s well-being depends not simply on quality of care but is linked directly to parents’ own well-being. During the pandemic, adults – just like children – also require love, gentleness, comfort, and stability. This helps the adults ensure that their children feel well looked after.

“Burned out” teachers need help, too

Teachers’ welfare is also important, not just for its own sake, but also because these adults provide valuable care and support for students. During the pandemic, we surveyed U.S. teachers’ well-being. Stress rates stayed steady, but clinically significant burnout has risen sharply among educators since March 2020. The risk factors seem to be lack of clarity about what they are required to do and blurry boundaries between work and recreation. These findings reflect how many teachers have worked long hours and had few breaks over the summer. Their needs should also be supported, especially if they are to play their role in bolstering children’s resilience.

Which aspects of home life were most helpful?

Our research about children during the COVID-19 pandemic identified three factors, , that reliably predicted anxiety and depression in children. By far the most important was having a low-quality relationship with parents. Following this was lack of structure to the day (separating time for leisure or fun), and high levels of distraction or inability to focus on schoolwork.

Parents and schools can help address each of these factors. For parents, the challenge in these very difficult circumstances is to stay well themselves. Stress levels have risen for all and it is important that parents share their burdens with others and, where necessary – and if they can – seek professional help.

Manage technology, expectations, and assignments

For schools, an important task is to support their teachers well. Professional development programs must address directly the psychological burdens educators take on as they support their students through the pandemic. For students, schools should ensure that their days are well-structured and that lessons are not too long. Online technology should be streamlined so children are not juggling between different platforms. Educators should scale back expectations and focus on the core skills children need, letting go of much of the rest. Teachers should coordinate with other teachers when making assignments and scheduling due dates. It doesn’t take much figuring out to ensure, for example, that Monday is science homework day, Tuesday is math homework day, and so on. This helps children have a predictable and manageable week.

None of us should forget, if life begins to return to how it once was, that there was something wrong with the overly busy schedules of many children’s lives. The figures for serious anxiety and depression tell the story. COVID-19 has brought its own problems, but the temporary sense of relaxation it has offered some children shows that life was not that healthy beforehand. Children deserve better than the old normal.

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Mom or dad sharing and modelling how to manage aggression and upset may explain why some impoverished young children grow up more resilient.

Why do some children who are raised amid poverty, risk and danger emerge as more resilient than others in similar circumstances ? Why do some grow up relatively unscathed compared with their peers, whose later lives may be scarred by criminality, poor mental health, and repeated disadvantage?

Having a calm, supportive parent when something goes wrong may be part of the answer. That’s a mom or dad who responds to early childhood frustration, anger, anxiety or tantrums by neither suppressing those emotions nor ignoring them. Rather, such parents are empathetic and understanding, and they help children to steady themselves. They also model this steadiness in the way they deal with the adversities that they encounter. That’s not easy for parents who may themselves be struggling with multiple challenges. But our research suggests that doing it well can make a big difference for their children.

Emotionally supportive parenting has long term impacts

This parental skill of helping young children handle their emotions – in difficult social and economic circumstances that may provoke many strong feelings – can support emotional self-management. This in turn enables young children to concentrate better at school and get along with others. We know from other studies of self-regulation that, in the longer run, these skills help children to grow up at lower risk of anxiety, depression, violent behavior and criminal acts. As adults, they operate better at work, at home and within the law.

We’re not necessarily talking about parents working miracles amid adversity. Emotionally supportive parenting can’t turn around every impact of the many difficulties faced by children who, in their early years, may experience poor, crowded housing, an inadequate diet, and insufficient stimulation, surrounded by badly resourced neighbourhoods. But our research shows that, for these children, emotionally supportive parenting can flatten the curve: it can at least stop things from getting worse.

“What do parents do, when, for example,  a young child becomes angry because someone has done something unfair to them, such as take their toy?”

Our study examined the relationship between emotion-related parenting and externalising symptoms such as aggression across early school years among 207 children (two-thirds of them boys) from high-risk urban communities in the United States, who showed aggressive/oppositional behaviors when they started school. Their mothers’ level of supportive, emotion-related parenting was observed in the year of kindergarten during structured interactions at home. Our measure captured how parents responded to children’s emotions, how parents talked about emotions, and the way parents expressed their own emotions. Teacher ratings of externalising symptoms, including aggressive and rule-breaking behaviors, were then measured every year to the second grade.

Aggression rose amid less-skilled parenting

Aggressive behavior worsened among children who lacked emotionally supportive parenting. Each year, teachers reported seeing more problems than in the year before. In contrast, when mothers offered supportive emotion-related parenting, the children did not necessarily improve, but they didn’t get worse. Emotionally supportive parenting seems to halt the escalation in aggression as children grow older, which, research shows, can predict so many difficulties in later life.

In practical terms, we are talking about what parents do, when, for example, young children become angry because someone has done something unfair to them, such as take their toy. A child might want to scream, start crying or punch the child that took the toy. But a parent can encourage a range of strategies to help the upset child avoid following this first impulse.

Doing so might be difficult. The parent might be struggling with a host of other serious issues, such as how to pay the rent, living in a dangerous neighbourhood and parenting a difficult child. These problems can weigh on the parents, making it hard for them to sympathise in the moment about the relatively insignificant problems faced by their child. Mom or dad’s response might be: ‘Life’s unfair. You have no idea. I hate my job.’ They might think it best to toughen up the child to face disappointments, telling them to suck it up and cope with it.

But that’s not as helpful – even when the upset seems to be around something apparently trivial – as when a parent sympathises, talks things through, and helps the child understand their feelings. Simply labelling an emotion, saying it is normal, helps children regulate their reactions. Parents can also help children develop a step-by-step strategy when feeling upset, such as taking deep breaths and calming themselves. Afterwards, parents might say, ‘I’m sorry that your toy was taken, but let’s leave it in the past and do something fun now.’ That can help children who are feeling negative to know that their emotions are understood while giving them a way of coming back and feeling better.

Opportunities to model emotion-related parenting

A lot of parents also find opportunities in daily life – when a young child is not expressing emotions – of exploring feelings and how to handle them. When parents and children read a book, they might encounter a character who is experiencing difficulties. That’s an opportunity to talk about what the character is feeling and what the character could do.

Parents can also model how they deal with their own stress. Parents are the gateway to the world for young children. Stress can either flow through parents by affecting how they respond to their children, or parents can make the decision to demonstrate how stress can be handled. This doesn’t mean parents should hide their emotions, or the fact that they are upset or scared. Children are way too good at picking up on that. It’s better for parents to acknowledge that they are worried and explain how they are going to handle what’s going on. They can say: ‘This is how we will resolve it and, if you are worried about it too, let’s do something together about it.’ These parents are modelling that emotions are normal and that there are ways to manage them.

In our research sample, we did not see a lot of emotionally supportive parenting. Only 10 per cent of the mothers showed consistently emotionally supportive parenting. But where they could offer it, we saw a flattening of the curve, so that, over time, the increased aggression and externalising behavior found in other children were less likely to occur.

Learning to be more empathetic parents 

There is potential to improve this picture further. Few programs specifically focus on emotion-related parenting. One that does so is Tuning in to Kids, which has been tested in low- to middle-income families in Australia. This program had moderate to strong effects, at least in the short term, in improving parents’ supportive behaviors and in reducing parents’ dismissive reactions to children’s emotions.

“Emotionally supportive parenting seems to halt an escalation in aggression as children grow older, which can predict so many difficulties in later life.”

It has also been shown to be effective when implemented in families with children who already demonstrated behavioral problems (similar to our sample), or went through traumatic experiences. And researchers also found improvements in children’s behaviors when parents participated in the program, compared to a control group. This evidence suggests that there may be strong potential to promote supportive, emotion-related parenting behaviors through training programs, even for families in disadvantaged situations.

Many other parent training programs, such as Triple-P and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, may not specifically target emotion-related parenting, but they include components that try to promote parents’ sensitivity to children’s emotional cues, such as signals that may indicate a child is upset, and teach parents skills to help children regulate emotions.  These programs have been tested in diverse populations, including families living in disadvantaged communities or families with children already showing behavioral problems. They have led to more positive parenting, such as warmth, effective discipline, and sensitivity, as well as improvements in children’s behaviors.

Parents should recognise their achievements

A key message from our research is that children may display behavior problems for many reasons, particularly given the multiple difficulties that disadvantaged families face. Parents should not beat themselves up and be judged as failures if their children continue to have behavioral problems. Their interventions might be doing a lot to stop their children from getting worse amid multiple challenges. That huge achievement should be celebrated.

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Stress in children at ‘the best’ schools can triple risks of anxiety, depression, substance abuse and delinquency.

Children in America’s “good schools” – those with high test scores and graduates heading to selective colleges – may look like they have it all. But appearances mask an epidemic of children’s mental health problems. In fact, major policy reports now list students at high-achieving schools as an at-risk group, alongside children in poverty, those experiencing trauma, and those in foster care or with incarcerated parents.

Rates of clinically significant anxiety and depression can be as high as six times the national norm in many high-achieving schools (HASs), where children’s mental health is severely affected by ongoing, ubiquitous, and unrelenting pressure to achieve. Students are scrambling to stay on top of a group of high performers; amid a squeeze of the middle classes in the US, young people tend to fear that, unless they are among the very top performers, they will somehow be left behind.

Pressure on these children’s mental health comes from multiple sources in their lives, including teachers, coaches, parents and peers. Elite universities – fervently sought by many of these children – play an important role, as they pick fewer and fewer from many applicants with exemplary resumes. By 2018, the admissions rate for the top 50 ranked US higher education institutions had dropped to 22.6 per cent, down from 35.9 per cent in 2006. The drop was most pronounced in the top 10 schools, where the admissions rate fell in that 12–year period by almost two thirds, from 16 percent to 6.4 percent.

Children’s mental health problems in every high-achieving school

Our group, Authentic Connections, has found high rates of serious disturbance – anxiety, depression, substance abuse or delinquency – in every HAS we have studied, including day schools and boarding schools, and public and private schools. These rates can be two to three times the national averages, and in some cases, six times as high and even greater. Other developmental researchers have shown that in large national data sets, serious problems in children’s mental health tend to be the highest in schools at the lowest and highest levels of community affluence, with those in the middle income range faring the best.

It’s not surprising to find high levels of stress amid poverty, given challenges related to physical and emotional survival and its consequent ill effects on mental health. But it’s unsettling to find that a notion of “survival of the fittest” is leading to similar symptoms in high-achieving settings, where anxiety about being (or remaining) among the small group of the “very best among the best” can lead, essentially, to a state of hypervigilance.

Children’s mental health problems observed as early as 7

Most of the HAS samples we have studied are from high schools, or grades 9-12 in the US, but we have documented high distress levels among younger children as well, starting around 6th and 7th grade (ages 12–13). Anecdotally, many of our school collaborators routinely report seeing high levels of stress among HAS children when they are as young as 7 or 8.

“Major policy reports now list students at high-achieving schools as an at-risk group, alongside children in poverty, those experiencing trauma, and those in foster care or with incarcerated parents.”

I first stumbled upon the risks to children’s mental health in high-achieving cohorts in 1999. In this early study involving relatively affluent, suburban students, we were surprised to see higher rates of problems among them as compared not only to national norms, but also to their counterparts in poverty.

In our early interpretations of these findings, we speculated that suburban youth might have experienced some degree of isolation from parents (who often had demanding jobs), and also, perhaps, lack of after-school supervision (as communities generally seemed to be safe). It has taken me over 20 years of research, and dozens of conversations with adults and students across the country, to see clearly that this is a systemic issue. There are serious stressors coming from all levels of influence in HAS students’ lives – not just from families but also peers, schools, and universities.

Stressors on children’s mental health

Consider just the stressors coming from peers. Adolescence is a time when children are supposed to form close relationships with their peers. But how does one get truly close to, and trusting of, peers with whom one is in direct competition for being the star or “standout”?

Teachers in HASs are expected to maintain high test scores, and naturally, these expectations filter down to their students, resulting in gruelling workloads and hours of homework. Coaches want to win prestigious sports competitions, again resulting in long hours of practice among student athletes plus, of course, high pressure during their games.

And as I’ve said, the admissions criteria of selective colleges are a major root cause. There is little hope of getting into a well-reputed college unless a child has stellar accolades across multiple academic and extracurricular domains (and often, even these aren’t enough, given the growing number of accomplished applicants).

The problem is not confined to the United States. When I present our findings on these schools to international audiences, they acknowledge that a constant battle to succeed in high-achieving environments is taking a toll on their children’s mental health as well.

Photo: Tom Woods. Creative Commons.

Multiple approaches to improving children’s mental health

How do we tackle this epidemic? The first step is for schools to know how they’re doing on critical aspects of children’s mental health. This implies a rigorous assessment, using research-based instruments and sophisticated analyses of data, to pinpoint the most important issues to be addressed within that particular community. I’ve found repeatedly that when parents, faculty and administrators see findings on their own children (rather than data on HAS kids in general), the adults begin to mobilise for change. It tends to be a wake-up call as they understand that of, say, 10children sitting around their kitchen table on a given evening, four could be struggling with serious depression or substance abuse.

Next, we need collaborations between parents and educators to take meaningful steps toward reducing the high stress levels. One place to start is by looking at practices that exacerbate competition among kids, as well as feelings of embarrassment when they don’t “measure up”.

Do the students receive marked assignments and tests in the order of grades, for example, so that everyone knows who has the top scores and who has the lowest? Do coaches replay – for the whole team – videos of a mistake that one team member made during a particular game? After college acceptance, do students come to school wearing the logo of the schools to which they are headed – and thus publicly embarrass those who are accepted by less prestigious institutions?

Parents have a key role in supporting their children’s mental health

Parents and teachers can help in other ways. Research has shown that children feel the effects of harsh words much more keenly than those of praise or affection. So minimising negative interactions is vital, especially because these highly pressured children are already fragile.

A balanced perspective on achievement also matters greatly. We’ve found that adolescents have better mental health (and better test scores) when they believe that both their parents value character traits such as being helpful and respectful as much as, or more than, achievements such as attending a good college, excelling academically or having a successful career.

Getting a handle on substance use in adolescents is important. HAS students consume alcohol and drugs, and suffer from addiction at higher rates than their peers. Our studies have shown that if parents are perceived as lax on this front, teenagers may use more often, and that this is linked to greater risk of addiction in early adulthood.

HAS youth and universities 

The elevated problems of HAS children’s mental health, which begin to appear as early as elementary school, become clearly manifest in alarming ways when they get to college. In US universities, campus mental health services routinely report that they are overwhelmed by students’ serious mental health issues.

“Colleagues internationally acknowledge that a constant battle to succeed in high-achieving environments is taking a toll on their children’s mental health as well.” 

But universities have thus far remained largely uninvolved in the conversation about distress among high–achieving students—even though much of this is tied to acceptance policies, particularly at selective institutions. One suggestion to consider, raised by my colleague Barry Schwartz many years ago, was that, after students’ résumés reach a stipulated point of excellence, college admissions might essentially use a lottery process.  The underlying logic is that, in reality, there is always some randomness in final selections culled from thousands of stellar applicants; knowledge of this could help stop students from feverishly pursuing that one extra percentage point in a course, or taking on yet another demanding sport, believing that this would be the tipping point in gaining acceptance.

Whether or not universities consider such changes (or others) to their admissions policies, leaders in higher education must begin to address what has truly become an epidemic of distress in today’s high achieving schools. It would be invaluable for these leaders to join collaborative conversations involving HAS educators, developmental scientists, parents and practitioners, and ultimately, policy makers at the local and national levels.  In the absence of such collaboration, we will only see further escalation of the already frightening rates of children’s mental health problems, such as serious depression, anxiety, and self-harm, that affect a large swath of today’s young – at least 20-25 percent of children who are attending the “good schools” in the United States.

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