Stress and deprivation during childhood have lifelong consequences on health, as well as school and job performance, a new study has found.
The small-scale study from Drexel University suggests a strong relationship between exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and household food insecurity among mothers of young children.
"This is brutal stuff," said Mariana Chilton, from the Drexel University School of Public Health, who was lead author of the study published in the journal Public Health Nutrition.
"The causes and realities of hunger and poverty are complicated and difficult to unravel. We are seeing one component of them is that, for many people, experiences of hunger have trauma and adversity at their core," said Chilton.
The Childhood Stress study, led by Chilton with several Drexel graduates in the School of Public Health, used both quantitative and qualitative methods to gather information about 31 Philadelphia mothers' experience with deprivation, abuse, violence and neglect, as well as their experiences with hunger, education and employment and more.
The findings, Chilton and colleagues say, show that trauma and chronic stress are a largely overlooked part of the picture of why one in five American households with young children live with food insecurity.
They say it indicates a greater need for public assistance programmes to provide support for families' emotional needs in addition to their material needs.
While the team's quantitative surveys were small in number, the results still point clearly to a value in considering adverse childhood experiences as a contributor to food insecurity.
Higher scores on the adverse childhood experiences survey, for instance, were significantly associated with the severity of participants' household food insecurity.
In interviews, the study participants relayed their perceptions of how emotional and physical abuse in childhood affected their lives, including physical health, school performance and ability to maintain employment - all factors directly linked to household income and ability to afford enough healthy food for their own children.
Participants described experiences of physical neglect, household drug abuse, exposure to violence at home and in their communities and other adverse experiences in childhood.
Many said they felt these experiences affected their lifelong abilities to succeed - although many simultaneously expressed strong feelings of resilience and hope to change the story for their own young children.
"This study has been difficult for us, because examining the relationship between food insecurity and adverse experiences in childhood may simply add more stigma to families already stigmatised and blamed for the hardships that they face," said Molly Knowles, a Drexel MPH graduate, research coordinator at the centre, and a co-author of the study.
