Relationship key to resilience
When we hear of the overwhelming, and often heart-breaking challenges that some families face it can be easy to feel despair. Social scientists and policy-makers label these families and children as “vulnerable” and “at-risk”. In some cases labels can seem like destiny, but studies of “resilience,” asking why some children and families who experience adversity flourish, can offer hope amidst the despair, and next steps instead of labels. Recent research shows how loving parental relationships are a key factor for children.
“The single most common factor for children who develop resilience,” according to the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, “is at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult.” This parent-child relationship, they say, scaffolds, buffers and protects the child from adverse experiences and the subsequent damaging effects of toxic stress.
MSD recently released two reports that paint a picture of childhood adversity and resilience. The first showed how adverse childhood experiences, like divorce, domestic violence or substance abuse in the home, hinder a child’s readiness for school. The second explored the protective factors that helped children and families to thrive in the face of those experiences.
The authors ran 749 potential factors through their model, and in a “striking” and “surprising” finding, it wasn’t the parent-child relationship that was the most influential protective factor, but the motherpartner relationship: “A loving relationship between parental figures makes a real difference — a shelter within an otherwise stormy life.”
This finding needs to inform and guide policy, seeking to increase the effectiveness of “coparenting,” as the report puts it. Despite the significant gains made through psychological attachment theory and neuroscience-informed interventions focusing on improving parent-child relationships, the authors argue that “programmes that focus solely on mother-child interactions, without attending to the mother-partner relationship, might be missing an important opportunity for reducing adversities in childhood.”
The report calls for further research here; while “positive correlations of fathers being involved with their children on child cognitive, emotional and social development have been well documented” (even for fathers living away from the mother), more can be done to identify just what it is about these relationships that provides children with the security they need.
Privacy and data collection issues aside, this kind of risk modelling is good at identifying and labelling vulnerable children and families, but not so helpful when it comes to informing how best to help them. Research like this can help guide policy focused on hope rather than despair. Whole-offamily support needs to become the norm.
"Adverse childhood experiences, like divorce, domestic violence or substance abuse in the home, hinder a child’s readiness for school. "