Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T17:21:30.468Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - When Societal Events Occur in Lives: Developmental Linkages and Turning Points

from Part II - Historical and Life Course Transitions: Economic and Demographic Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2019

Ross D. Parke
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
Glen H. Elder, Jr.
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Get access

Summary

In this chapter, we argue that the timing of societal events in an individual’s life plays a major role in shaping that life through interacting developmental processes at multiple levels. We focus on classic research by Elder showing how two such events in historical proximity dramatically altered the lives of California children who were born at opposite ends of the 1920s, 1920–21 and 1928–29, the Great Depression of the 1930s followed by World War II (1941–45) and the Korean War (1950–53). We employ insights from both Elder’s cohort historical life course approach and developmental science including recent work on developmental neuroscience to understand the life-long impact of exposure to events that occur at different times in life, and the mechanisms through which these exposures may influence development, as well as experiences that may provide turning points in development.

Type
Chapter
Information
Children in Changing Worlds
Sociocultural and Temporal Perspectives
, pp. 25 - 56
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Austin, B., Glaeser, E. & Summers, L. (Spring, 2018). Saving the heartland: Place-based policies in 21st century America. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) Conference Draft, Brookings Institute.Google Scholar
Bennett, S. K. & Elder, G. H., Jr. (1979). Women’s work in the family economy: A study of Depression hardship in women’s lives. Journal of Family History, 4(2), 153176.Google Scholar
Blair, C. (2002). School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobiological conceptualization of children’s functioning at school entry. American Psychologist, 57(2), 111127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blair, C., Granger, D. A., Kivlighan, K. T., Mills-Koonce, R., Willoughby, M., Greenberg, M. T., & the FLP Investigators (2008). Maternal and child contributions to cortisol response to emotional arousal in young children from low-income, rural communities. Developmental Psychology, 44, 10951109.Google Scholar
Blair, B., Granger, D. A., Willoughby, M., Mills-Koonce, R., Cox, M., Greenberg, M. T., Fortunato, C., & the FLP Investigators (2011). Salivary cortisol mediates effects of poverty and parenting on executive functions in early childhood. Child Development, 82(6), 19701984.Google Scholar
Bornstein, M. H. & Bradley, R. H., eds. (2003). Socioeconomic Status, Parenting, and Child Development. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. H. & Corwyn, R. F. (2002). Socioeconomic status and child development. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 371399.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brody, G. H., Murry, V. M., Kim, S., & Brown, A. C. (2002). Longitudinal pathways to competence and psychological adjustment among African American children living in rural single-parent households. Child Development, 73(5), 15051516.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brotz, H. & Wilson, E. (1946). Characteristics of military society. American Journal of Sociology, 51, 371375.Google Scholar
Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor (2018). www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdfGoogle Scholar
Calkins, S. D. & Bell, M. A.(Ed.) (2010). Child Development at the Intersection of Emotion and Cognition. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Calkins, S. D. & Marcovitch, S. (2010). Emotion regulation and executive functioning in early development: Integrated mechanisms of control supporting adaptive functioning. In Calkins, S. D. & Bell, M. A. (Eds.), Child Development at the Intersection of Emotion and Cognition (pp. 3758). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Clarke, A. M. & Clarke, A. (1976). Early Experience: Myth and evidence. London: Open Books.Google Scholar
Conger, R. D. & Elder, G. H., Jr. (1994). Families in Troubled Times: Adapting to change in rural America. New York: A. de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cox, M. J., Mills-Koonce, R., Propper, C., & Gariepy, J. L. (2010). Systems theory and cascades in developmental psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 22, 497506.Google Scholar
Dozier, M., Roben, C. K. P., & Hoye, J. R. (2015). Adversity in early social relationships. In Calkins, S. D. (Ed.), Handbook of Infant Biopsychosocial Development (pp. 336358). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Duncan, G. J., Magnuson, K., & Votruba-Drzal, E. (2017). Moving beyond correlations in assessing the consequences of poverty. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 413434.Google Scholar
Dunn, J. & Plomin, R. (1990). Separate Lives: Why siblings are so different. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Edin, K. & Kissane, R. J. (2010). Poverty and the American family: A decade in review. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 72, 460479.Google Scholar
Elder, G. H., Jr. (1974/99). Children of the Great Depression: Social change in life experience. Boulder, CO: Westview Press (originally published by University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Elder, G. H., Jr. (1986). Military times and turning points in men’s lives. Developmental Psychology, 22(2), 233245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elder, G. H. Jr. (1987). War mobilization and the life course: A cohort of World War II veterans. Sociological Forum, 2(3), 449472.Google Scholar
Elder, G. H., Jr. & Clipp, E. C. (1988). Wartime losses and social bonding: Influences across 40 years in men’s lives. Psychiatry, 51, 177198.Google Scholar
Elder, G. H., Jr. & Hareven, T. K. (1993). Rising above life’s disadvantage: From the Great Depression to war. Elder, G. H., Jr., Modell, J., & Parke, R. D. (eds.) Children in Time and Place: Developmental and Historical Insights (pp. 4772). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elder, G. H., Jr., Modell, J., & Parke, R. D. (eds.) (1993). Children in Time and Place: Developmental and historical insights. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Elder, G. H., Jr. & Rockwell, R. C. (1979). Economic depression and postwar opportunity in men’s lives: A study of life patterns and health. In R. Simmons (ed.), Research in Community and mental health. (Vol. 1, pp. 249–303). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Evans, G. W. (2003). A multimethodological analysis of cumulative risk and allostatic load among rural children. Developmental Psychology, 39, 924933.Google Scholar
Evans, G. W. (2004). The environment of childhood poverty. American Psychologist, 59, 7792.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Evans, G. W., Li, D., & Whipple, S. S. (2013). Cumulative risk and child development. Psychological Bulletin, 139 , 13421396.Google Scholar
Gershoff, E. T., Aber, J. L., Raver, C. C., & Lennon, M. C. (2007). Income is not enough: Incorporating material hardship into models of income associations with parenting and child development. Child Development, 78, 7095.Google Scholar
Glueck, S. & Glueck, E. (1930). 500 Criminal Careers. New York: A. A. KnopfGoogle Scholar
Gunnar, M. R. (2016). Early life stress: What is the human chapter of the mammalian story? Child Development Perspectives, 10(3), 178183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutman, L. M., Sameroff, A. J., & Cole, R. (2003). Academic growth curve trajectories from 1st grade to 12th grade: Effects of multiple social risk factors and preschool child factors., Developmental Psychology, 39(4), 777790.Google Scholar
Hareven, T. K. (1982). Family Time and Industrial Time: The relationship between the family and work in a New England industrial town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Havighurst, R. J., et al. (1951). The American Veteran Back Home. New York: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Holmes, A. & Wellman, C. L. (2009). Stress-induced prefrontal reorganization and executive dysfunction in rodents. Neuroscience Biobehavioral Review, 33(6), 773783.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huston, A. C. & Bentley, A. C. (2010). Human development in societal context. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 411437.Google Scholar
Larsen, M. F. et al. (2015). War and marriage: Assortative mating and the World War II GI Bill. Demography, 52, 14311461.Google Scholar
Leerkes, E. M. & Parade, S. H. (2015). A psychobiological perspective on emotional development within the family context. In Calkins, S. D. (Ed.), Handbook of Infant Biopsychosocial Development (pp. 206231). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Macfarlane, J. W. (1963). From infancy to adulthood. Childhood Education, 39 , 336342.Google Scholar
Macfarlane, J. W. (1971). Perspectives on personality consistency and change from the Guidance Study. In Jones, M. C. et al. (eds.), The Course of Human Development: Selected papers from the Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Human Development, the University of California, Berkeley (pp. 410415). Waltham, MA: Xerox College Publishing.Google Scholar
McLaughlin, K. A. & Lambert, H. K. (2017). Child trauma exposure and psychopathology: Mechanisms of risk and resilience. Current Opinion in Psychology, 14, 2934.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McLaughlin, K. A., & Sheridan, M. A. (2016). Beyond cumulative risk: A dimensional approach to childhood adversity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 239245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLoyd, V. C. (1990). The impact of economic hardship on black families and children: Psychological distress, parenting, and socioemotional development. Child Development, 61(2), 311346.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McLoyd, V. C. (1998). Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist, 53, 185204.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meaney, M. J. (2001). Maternal care, gene expression, and the transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity across generations. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24, 11611192.Google Scholar
Mettler, S. (2005). Soldiers to Citizens: The GI Bill and the making of the greatest generation. New York: Oxford University.Google Scholar
Mistry, R. S., Vandewater, E. A., Huston, A. C., & McLoyd, V. C. (2002). Economic well-being and children’s social adjustment: The role of family process in an ethnically diverse low-income sample. Child Development, 73(3), 935951.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (2005). Duration and developmental timing of poverty and children’s cognitive and social development from birth through third grade. Child Development, 76, 795810.Google Scholar
Robins, L. N. (1966). Deviant Children Grown Up: A sociological and psychiatric study of sociopathic personality. Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins.Google Scholar
Rutter, M. & Madge, N. (1976). Cycles of Disadvantage: A review of research. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Ryder, N. B. (1965). The cohort as a concept in the study of social change. American Sociological Review, 30, 843861.Google Scholar
Sampson, R. J. & Laub, J. H. (1996). Socioeconomic achievement in the life course of disadvantaged men: Military service as a turning point, circa 1940–1965. American Sociological Review, 61(3), 347367.Google Scholar
Sheridan, M. A., Peverill, M., Finn, A. S., & McLaughlin, K. A. (2017). Dimensions of childhood adversity have distinct associations with neural systems underlying executive functioning. Development and Psychopathology, 29, 17771794.Google Scholar
Shonkoff, J. P., Boyce, W. T., & McEwen, B. S. (2009). Neuroscience, molecular biology, and the childhood roots of health disparities: Building a new framework for health promotion and disease prevention. Journal of the American Medical Association, 301, 22522259.Google Scholar
Sroufe, L. A., Coffino, B., & Carlson, E. A. (2009) Conceptualizing the role of early experience: Lessons from the Minnesota longitudinal study. Developmental Review, 30, 3651.Google Scholar
Stouffer, S. A. et al. (1949). The American Soldier: Combat and its aftermath, Vol. 2: Studies in Social Psychology in World War II. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, R. A. (2015). Relationships, regulation, and early development. In Lerner, R. M. (Ed.) Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, Vol. 3: Social and Emotional Development (7th ed., pp. 201246). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Tottenham, N. & Sheridan, M. A. (2010). A review of adversity, the amygdala, and the hippocampus: a consideration of developmental timing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 3, Article 68, 118.Google Scholar
Ursache, A., Blair, C., & Raver, C. C. (2012). The promotion of self-regulation as a means of enhancing school readiness and early achievement in children at risk for school failure. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 122128.Google Scholar
Vernon-Feagans, L., Cox, M., & The Family Life Project Key Investigators. (2013). The Family Life Project: An epidemiological and developmental study of young children living in poor rural communities. Society for Research in Child Development Monographs, 78(5), 1150.Google Scholar
Votruba-Drzal, E. (2006). Economic disparities in middle childhood development: Does income matter? Developmental Psychology, 42(6), 11541167.Google Scholar
Wilson, W. J. (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Waller, W. W. (1940). War and the Family. New York: Dryden Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×