Resourceful and Vulnerable Children: Family Influence in Hard Times

Abstract

Periods of drastic economic decline generally represent times of jeopardy for the welfare of children. In the Great Depression, observations pointed to a lost generation of young people. How would the large number of children growing up in families on public aid be able to withstand and possibly rise above their misfortune? Homeless, abused, and hungry children brought similar questions to mind. For all of the concern it is remarkable that we have so little evidence of uniform impairment among ‘children of the Great Depression’ (Elder, 1979). Even in the worst of times, some children manage to come through without undue strain or damage. But how is this achieved? What factors determine why only some children are adversely influenced by hard times? These questions are the orienting theme of our examination of factors that differentiate resourceful from vulnerable children in deprived families of the 1930s. In diverse economic situations, research on coping resources (Kasl, 1979; Kobasa, 1979) has brought greater appreciation for the resilience of individuals and their families. Within the field of developmental psychology, there is growing recognition of the need to identify and examine the adaptive and resilient individual and familial attributes that may condition the relationship of stress to children’s impairment (Garmezy, Masten, & Tellegen, 1984).

This study is based on a program of research on social change in the family and life course. Support from the National Institute of Mental Health (Grant MH-34172) and from the National Science Foundation (Grant SES82–08350) is gratefully acknowledged (Glen H. Elder, Jr., principal investigator). We are indebted to the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley, for permission to use archival data from the Oakland Growth and Berkeley Guidance Studies. We are grateful to Urie Bronfenbrenner for helpful discussion of this chapter.