Childhood causes and consequences

One of my strong interests during my retirement is childhood trauma and adult life outcomes.  Many of us know about PTSD, which stands for post traumatic stress syndrome. Well, kids living in poverty and trauma are often (but not always) exposed to continuous traumatic stress. Consequences can include learned helplessness, impulsivity, and decreased attention and concentration.

The way kids are setup from birth to age 5 can set them up for success or difficulties that are far reaching.

Several books and studies have informed my understanding. The ACE, adverse childhood experiences survey is a big one. I first learned about it in the book The Body Keeps Score. A general overview of stress for lay people is Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Both those books deal with stress overall, but have chapters that link to early childhood.

The surprising thing is that the consequences of this early stress to lifetime outcomes is something like 10X worse than cancer or drunk driving or cigarette smoking, some of the larger debilitators of our day. But it is a third rail, of sorts. People don't want to be told how to raise their kids.

On Kanopy (web video service via my library), I happened on the 5 part web series: www.raisingofamerica.com. Several fascinating things.

1. The US military has affordable sliding scale child care for all service member families. It's low cost and high quality.

2. The "pro-family" lobby is ideological, starting in the Nixon Era. Ostensibly aimed at keeping government out of the family, it often harms family. It often does so with an air of fiscal conservatism and anti-welfare arguments. Nevermind that these things reduce late-life poverty and other social ills (i.e. positive return on investment)

3. Child care often costs $10,000 a year to $16,000 a year per child. This is a burden or way out of reach for most middle class families.

4. The hardest are those families with nonstandard work schedules. Nurses who work split shifts or drivers who sometimes have mandatory overtime.

Alot of the policies aim for a national or state-funded program, funded via tax dollars. This could be beneficial, but is a big political fight. I'm curious what social policy labs could be done to introduce incremental change.

Putting on my policy brain, the startup costs of child care are very high. The business has to set up with various background checks, licensure, and training requirements. These can easily be on the order of 5k to 20k. While this isn't a big deal for larger centers, it is for a place that might want to only run a summer program.

I'm curious about whether Buddhist centers can venture into child care. Many catholic centers or schools do this. I did find a few centers that run in the Los Angeles or Denver areas. I don't know if these are run just for congregants/members of the religion, of if they serve a broader community.

In general, it may not be legal to informally babysit for more than 1 family and accept pay. Like, it may be technically illegal if I watch the kids of 3 families for a day at my house, unless I certify several things.

I think good programs like Boys and Girls Club or Big Brothers/Big Sisters understand a lot about the screening requirements.  Certainly, keeping kids safe is vital. But are there other ways than pretty onerous screening? It seems to be the case that, just to volunteer for a day, you technically are supposed to be screened. This then means organizations have to look for volunteers that are worth the cost of screening, so they demand up front commitments that are pretty large.

Cameras may be a big solution to the problem. If the kids are recorded and there are rules (like two adults in the area at all times), this can avoid sexual misconduct or neglect.

Crisistextline does an interesting thing. They provide crisis counseling via text. Everything is via text, so they are monitored in real time (the text-based analog to cameras) and logged.

I worry about barriers to entry for helping.

Lastly, who really wins from childhood trauma? Who is against wiping it out? Nobody is really against it. But some people feel like the nuclear family should solve it individually and without interference (even help is interference). And others feel like it's a waste of money.

There's not a ton of common ground, unfortunately. I don't see a grand bargain. And as long as states keep the costs of screening on businesses (and states CAN choose to pay for the background checks!) innovation will be stifled.