Harvard research: Impact of poverty begins in the womb, but it doesn't have to

[redqueen]

The dangers of fetal exposure to alcohol, drugs and lead are widely known by now. But researchers have found increasing evidence of another potential threat to babies in utero: toxic stress. And, more specifically, the kind that’s churned up in a mother who’s struggling to make ends meet.

“People living in poverty are at much greater risk to experience toxic stress, because the causes of stress in their daily lives don’t go away easily — the stress of having a roof over your head, the stress of food, the stress of having bills to pay, the stress of not being able to get out of that hole,” says Jack Shonkoff, a Harvard University professor of pediatrics and director of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child. The physiologic results of constant worry include elevated heart rate and blood pressure and the release of stress hormones into the bloodstream — where they can cross the placenta and affect the development of the fetal brain.

“When you are in the kind of stresses that come from not knowing where you’re going to be living or where your next meal is coming from, the severity of the stress can cause us to actually shut down certain aspects of the brain,” explains Elisabeth Babcock, president and CEO of Economic Mobility Pathways (EMPath), a Boston-based nonprofit that aims to end poverty through scientific research and direct support.

The stresses of poverty essentially handicap a baby for life literally before birth, according to a massive and growing body of research from over the past decade, causing the brain to react in ways that lead to riskier behavior — and to a higher likelihood of bad health, poor grades, lower earnings and prison time.

How, then, to level the playing field for babies being born into the disadvantage of poverty? Scientists think the answer is simpler than you might think.
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/how-breakthrough-science-can-change-the-lives-of-poor-families-starting-in-the-womb-100020836.html

[FirstLight]

1. huh....

So the "cure" is consistent care and support...? I'm skeptical.

Poverty mentality is pervasive and almost like a mental health issue. Can't explain it unless you've been there. But it takes a lot more than prenatal care to help IMO

My kid started going to the car at the grocery store checkout line...she finally told me it was because she was afraid we wouldn't have enough and she didnt want to be embarrassed...things like that, those strange habits that shape us when faced with pervasive poverty...those arent easily fixed.

[redqueen]

2. Well, that's the first option they discuss.

Later, there's this:

“What if we tried to help young children in poverty by simply giving their families more money?” asks neuroscientist, pediatrician and lead researcher Kim Noble in a January 2019 TED Talk about the study, which, in 2018, recruited 1,000 new mothers living below the federal poverty line to receive unconditional monthly cash gifts for the first 40 months of their children’s lives. The mothers have been randomized, with some receiving a nominal gift and others receiving several hundred dollars a month, increasing some incomes by 25 percent.

“While income might not be the only or even most important factor in determining children’s brain development, it may be one that, from a policy perspective, can be easily addressed.”

Results won’t be in for several years, but Noble is hopeful that the findings could provide yet one more solution when it comes to stopping the cycle of intergenerational poverty, noting that “our experiences change our brains,” in a phenomenon known as neuroplasticity.

[nolabear]

3. Okay, prenatal care and more. The reaction to shame can be a symptom

The maternal cortisol levels in utero can affect the threshold at which something seems unbearable versus awful but handleable. And that can be helped—not cured but helped—with care that reduces maternal stress. The effects can be handed down through generations. It’s complex and I hope this is a beginning.

[FirstLight]

7. Yes...those cortisol levels are important

I know it's given my youngest son a disadvantage compared to siblings

[gratuitous]

4. Yes, making life easier for the impoverished would improve their health

But Americans are a cruel lot, and rather than make life easier for anyone, we insist that it be made harder particularly for folks on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, who already have it tough. The creativity and inventiveness of the reasons for doing so (without mentioning cruelty) are truly astonishing, and a testament to human ingenuity in the service of selfishness. We're so good at it, even some of the victims of our cruelty endorse it. Anyone else is simply sneered off the stage, denied even a place at the table.

[redqueen]

5. Oh so very well said. nt

[Act_of_Reparation]

6. One of the stronger indicators of adult health...

...is your childhood ZIP code.