Adolescent Development and the Impact of Childhood Poverty

Introduction: Poverty and Disrupted Adolescent Development

Adolescents growing up in poverty experience a fundamentally different set of environments and conditions than those in a middle-class school setting. They experience classmates and close friends who die from AIDS and various forms of violence. They live in environments where gang violence and street abuse — as well as abuse from within their own families, hunger, and often homelessness — are common. Their experiences are far removed from those that children their age should ordinarily encounter while growing up. Though young, they face circumstances that would be difficult for any adult many years their senior.

The stages of child development prescribed by psychologists such as Erikson are designed for children developing under relatively normal conditions. For children raised in poverty, these stages are either arrested at specific points or collapsed entirely — leaping from the earliest stage of infancy (if that stage was experienced at all) to adolescence. Having had their developmental progression disrupted in this way, one would expect their psychological passage to be skewed, and consequently their personality as well. Indeed, study after study — and lived experience itself — shows that a significant proportion of adolescents from such backgrounds end up incarcerated. Ayers's chapter implies as much, describing a class standing vigil for peers from Chicago's South Side who have been involved in crime and arrested.

Assessment of the typical juvenile offender (Martin et al., 2008) shows many of them to be depressed, as well as to have experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, and the full range of adversities that come from growing up in an impoverished background. The children in Ayers's chapter are fortunate in that they appear to have caring teachers — particularly Mr. B — but poverty delivers a heavy package of insufferable circumstances beyond simply depriving children of an effective education, denying them access to the resources they should ordinarily receive in life.

Health, Education, and the Absence of a Social Safety Net

Children born into poverty are not afforded the same opportunities as wealthier children. They receive inferior education, and sometimes no meaningful education at all. They are raised in impoverished urban environments where drugs and gang activity are widespread. Living below the poverty line does not only mean being poor in a material sense — it means being burdened with compounding disadvantages that do not merely reduce one's chances but actively drag a person below the threshold from which they might otherwise climb, reach out, and help themselves.

Childhood poverty affects the child in numerous ways from the very beginning, placing out of reach the basic necessities required to meet fundamental needs and reach full potential. The very foundations of health are compromised, including adequate nutrition, a safe and protected environment, and access to health coverage, as well as the social and academic opportunities that enable a child to develop and thrive. The absence of this social safety net often — though not always — encourages crime and incarceration, which further reduces the chances of meaningful employment, transmits poverty to the individual's own children, and thereby intensifies and perpetuates the cycle.

It is well established that success often breeds further success: through confidence, social skills, knowledge of how to navigate the world and interact with others professionally. As Niobe (1998) indicates, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are frequently more vulnerable to racist and sexist discrimination — in addition to, of course, the discrimination that their economic status already brings.

Neurological and Psychological Consequences of Poverty

It is no wonder, then, that children growing up in poverty have far higher rates of academic failure and mental health problems. They have limited exposure to developmental stimulation and greater exposure to stress in both physical and psychosocial environments. These conditions breed problems such as aggression and hyperactivity, as well as chronic health difficulties that only serve to aggravate social-emotional development and undermine self-esteem, confidence, and expectations of competence or self-efficacy. Children born into poverty consequently have very little chance of escaping their circumstances.

Compounding this situation is the fact that experience actively shapes the brain. Environmental conditions — in this case, low socioeconomic status — have a measurable neurological impact. An impoverished and stressful childhood diminishes both health and cognitive function in countless ways, not least in terms of one's capacity for learning and memory. Stress targets and destroys neurons, diminishing the brain's power. Barren environments withhold the stimulation necessary for enhanced development. Among other factors, poverty can also deprive children of the parental affection and presence so essential to healthy growth (Stirtzinger et al., 2002).

Adolescent girls from impoverished backgrounds are not only deprived of necessary nurturing but also frequently appear to lack the empathy, sensitivity, and responsiveness with their own children that healthy mothering requires. A diminished upbringing thus sets in motion a spiraling sequence of consequences. The psychological effects of adversity are further illustrated by Lichter, Shannahan, and Gardner (2002), whose study found that children from impoverished backgrounds are far less likely to engage in volunteer work than those from more privileged ones. Turned inward, they exhibit a narrowed social concern that reinforces the self-centered climate characteristic of contemporary America — a tendency that, as Tocqueville warned, is detrimental to the progress of the nation.