Childhood Adversity, Externalizing Behaviors, and the Protective Roles of Cultural Connection and Social Support

Introduction: From the prenatal period through the early childhood, early experiences determine future success in well-being, school, work, and in the community. Adversity creates an accumulated number of risks that are potentially damaging and could contribute to greater vulnerabilities for negative health and social outcomes, including likely involvement in the juvenile justice system. This study focused on examining the relationship between intergenerational adversity and early behavioral indicators of risks for entering the juvenile justice system and the role of cultural connection and social support as protective factors against the negative effects of adversity. Differences across groups were also investigated, comparing associations between whites, Blacks, and Latinos.

Methods: Path analysis was conducted using baseline, Wave 1, and Wave 9 data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (N=4,898) with nationally representative sample of Black and Latino mothers and their children in U.S. urban cities. Outcome measure is externalizing behavior at age 9 as measured by Achenbach’s Child Behavior Checklists. Intergenerational adversity is measured by the sum of adversities including family instability (e.g. divorce or separation), mother’s experience of partner violence, parental incarceration, food insecurity, financial insecurity, and maternal depression. Cultural connection is measured by the frequency of family’s participation in cultural activities per month. Social support was measured by parent’s perception of having someone they could count on for material and emergency support. Control variables include mother’s age and number of children.

Results: Results showed a positive relationship between intergenerational adversity and externalizing behaviors, where greater adversity was significantly associated with worse externalizing behavior (p<.01). This result was consistent across ethnic groups but with stronger association for African-Americans followed by Latinos. Social support was a significant protective factor for all ethnic groups (p<.05), while cultural connection was significant only for African-Americans.

Conclusion:These results provide evidence towards the potentially increased risk and vulnerabilities of children exposed to multiple adversities in childhood towards later involvement in the juvenile justice system. Additionally, results show that adversity’s negative effects are potentially not inexorable. Cultural connection and social support are promising resources that could mitigate adversity’s impact on behavioral risks and vulnerabilities of young children. Examining protective factors in the context of early exposure to adversity helps to identify potential targets for preventive interventions and has implications toward preventing future involvement of at-risk children in the juvenile justice system. The two-generation approach employed in this analysis emphasizes the role of early life context in shaping the trajectories of at-risk children, and underscores prevention as an instrument of social justice (Kenny and Hage, 1997).