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As noted earlier, the study of resilience grew out of research devoted to identifying "risk factors" associated with poor functioning or other undesirable outcomes in people, especially in children and adolescents. And these "risk factors" (variables/mechanisms/processes) are usually either high risk status or exposure to severe adversity or trauma (Masten and Coatsworth, 1998). In addition to conducting a 30+ year longitudinal study of high-risk children in Kawaii, Hawaii, Werner, dubbed "Mother Resilience" by Garmezy, has worked with children during the Vietnamese and the Indian-Pakistani wars, and with children in Israel, Egypt, and East Africa. She states that high-risk status generally includes factors such as:
She lists other sources of stress in children and adolescents as follows:
(Werner, 1996) Masten and Coatsworth (1998) list family violence, war, and death of a parent as significant risk factors, and Fonagy et al. (1994) add nuclear disasters, forest fires, and institutionalization. Murphy and Moriarty (1976) point to constitutional vulnerabilities such as sensory-motor deficits, unusual sensitivities, deviant body morphology, temperamental characteristics, inherent disposition to passivity, low "sending power," incapacity to read caretaker’s cues, and insufficient impulse control. Indeed, the conditions and events that pose a threat to one’s ability to function competently may be limitless. Socio-Economic Status (SES): In 1991, Garmezy wrote: "Concern about children’s developmental disabilities must recognize the critical role that poverty plays in the maldevelopment of many of the nation’s children" (Garmezy, 1991, 416). He went on to identify multiple risk factors which put infants born to low-SES mothers at risk: maternal undernourishment, heightened stress, poor prenatal care, toxicities, and delivery complications. Developmental Issues: Some researchers have noted that the types of stressors people experience shift qualitatively over the lifespan. For example, younger adults are more typically involved with "acquiring" roles such as spouse, parent, and employee, while older adults are more typically involved in "relinquishing" roles due to retirement, death of a spouse, or serious health problems (Hughes, Blazer, and George, 1988). As a result, in younger adults, "challenges" are generally higher, while "threats and losses" rank higher in the elderly (Costa, Zonderman, and McCrae, 1991). Moreover, Ryan-Wenger (1992) notes that people’s level of cognitive and social development also influences what they perceive as stressful. Gender Issues: Risk factors differ by gender at different times in one’s life. In general, boys are more vulnerable in the first decade of life, whereas girls become more vulnerable in the second decade. During the first decade, boys are more susceptible to prenatal stress, more physically vulnerable as infants, and more emotionally vulnerable. They are more adversely affected by growing up in poverty and by disharmony in the home, and more likely to be sent to institutions if they cannot be kept at home (Werner and Smith, 1982, 1992; Werner, 1987). They have more trouble with social skills in pre-school and kindergarten, especially if they show a combination of shy and aggressive behavior (Schinke et al., 1988; Hawking et al., 1992). Up until ages ten or eleven, boys are more adversely affected by the absence of their father and a change in schools. From eleven to eighteen, the absence of their mother, conflict with their father, and school failure are more stressful for boys (Werner and Smith, 1992). In examining the reasons why boys are more vulnerable in the first decade, Rutter (1987) demonstrates that we must understand multiple interactive processes. He looks specifically at why boys exposed to the "risk factor" of family discord are more likely to develop emotional and behavioral disturbances than are girls in the same families. (His data are from his four year longitudinal study of children whose parents are mentally ill.) He notes that boys are more susceptible to physical problems early on, and speculates that they might have "a parallel, biologically determined susceptibility to psychosocial hazards, perhaps mediated in part by the greater incidence of neurodevelopmental impairment in boys" (1987, p.320). But he goes on to cite the work of other researchers who have identified environmental differences of girls and boys. For example, parents are more likely to quarrel in front of boys than girls (Hetherington et al,, 1982). Moreover, when families break up, boys are more likely than girls to be placed in some form of institutional care (Packman, 1986), and this further increases their risk (Walker, et al., 1981). Boys are more likely to externalize distress through oppositional behavior, which in turn elicits negative reactions from parents and peers, while girls tend to internalize distress (Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974, 1980). Finally, mothers tend to be more punitive with sons, which leads to escalating negative behavior by the boys. With regard to birth problems, fewer girls suffer from them, but among those who do, the effects are as severe as they are for boys. Between ages two and ten, serious risk factors for girls include death of the mother, long-term absence of the father, and chronic conflict between parents (Werner and Smith, 1992). By and large, however, elementary school girls are able to speak honestly, make their ideas and wishes known, and enjoy their increasing autonomy and mastery. In the second decade, however, girls become more vulnerable than boys. As they go through adolescence, girls begin to live under the "tyranny of the perfect girl" who is expected to be always "kind and nice" (Rogers, 1990). Dependency is what is rewarded (Benard, 1991), and it is not considered feminine to be assertive and full of confidence (Gilligan, et al., 1990); girls become more subdued and unsure of themselves (Rutter, 1981, 1984). These changes are extremely detrimental to the girl’s self-esteem and self-efficacy, and in trying to meet these stereotypic gender expectations, she may make bad judgments which alter her life course in a negative fashion, at least for the foreseeable future. For example, Rutter (1979, 1989) and Werner and Smith (1983, 1992) found that girls who got pregnant and/or married as teenagers, without being able to plan their marriages or pick suitable partners, often ended up with deviant and unsupportive spouses who put them in situations of even greater risk. These gender specific differences in risk patterns are seen in gifted children as well as in other children. Kline and Short (1991a) found that, as gifted boys matured into adolescents, their feelings of hopefulness and encouragement increased, while the opposite was true for gifted adolescent girls. For such girls, feelings of self-confidence, self-esteem, hopefulness, and encouragement decreased, and they became more perfectionistic and vulnerable as adolescence progressed (Kline & Short, 1991b). Because of these gender differences, some researchers have made the case for separate intervention programs for boys and girls (Turner et al., 1995). The Cumulative Effects of Risk and Adversity It stands to reason that the greater the number of adversities, the more at risk a person is for dysfunction. Trauma on top of chronic risk situations such as poverty greatly complicates a person’s life. Garmezy (1987) found that, in families with lower SES and fewer protective qualities such as stability, organization, and cohesion, the children were more likely to be exposed to stressful life events and were, as well, less competent and less intellectually able. "The effects of stressful events and these multiple risk factors on children," he says, "appear to be cumulative in terms of reducing qualities of engagement and enhancing disruptiveness" Garmezy, 1987, p. 170). Rutter and his colleagues (1975) conducted an extensive epidemiological study of the incidence of psychiatric disorder in ten year old children residing in either the Isle of Wight or an inner borough of London. They identified seven familial risk factors: severe marital distress, low social status, overcrowding or large family size, paternal criminality, maternal psychiatric disorders, and admissions of children into foster home placement. They found that, if only one risk factor was present, the likelihood of the child’s having a psychiatric disorder was not significantly greater than that for children whose families were free of any risk factors. But two risk factors produced a four-fold increase in the likelihood of a psychiatric disorder, and four factors increased the risk ten-fold. Radke-Yarrow and Brown (1993) sum up the situation by saying, "the presence of multiple and related risks makes it easier for further trouble to develop and harder for the child to get a positive foothold to reverse the process" (p. 588).
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