How Childhood Family Relationships Impact Health Over Time

An article in the American Psychologist summarizes various studies that look at childhood family relationships and health. Key findings noted in the article are included here.

Studies suggest that where high levels of family conflict threaten children’s feelings of emotional security, children may develop difficulties regulating their emotions, including the development of hostility and mistrust which manifest behaviorally as aggressive actions. As these childhood interactions recur, children begin to create more pervasive interactional styles or ways of responding that get perpetuated into adulthood, and affect not only how they interact with their parents but also interactions with peers and romantic partners.

Biologically, exposure to negative parenting, family conflict, and parent psychopathology are all associated with short-term changes in the release of the hormone cortisol. Over time, the chronic activation of the stress response and release of cortisol results in allostatic load, the cumulative wear-and tear on the body that puts us at risk for cardiovascular disease and many other diseases and illnesses.

A second model—the biological embedding model—proposes that stress that occurs at specific points during development (such as early in childhood) can calibrate how physiological systems operate going forward in time. Stressors experienced early in life may program how certain cells of the immune system function and respond to threats, and this type of programming of biological systems may remain in place even if the stressor ends. Thus when a child experiences adversity early in life, their monocytes and macrophages (types of white blood cells) become calibrated to respond to future threats with a heightened proinflammatory response.

Over a lifetime, this proinflammatory response results in a persistent state of low-grade inflammation that drives forward both disease mechanisms such as atherosclerosis, eventually contributing to the development of cardiovascular disease and allostatic load.

In addition to inflammatory pathways, early life adversity may have effects on the activity of hormonal systems that regulate organs and tissues in the body. For example, the hormone cortisol (released by the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis) is an important regulator of monocytes and macrophages, and at high doses conveys antiinflammatory signals to these cells. However, upon repeated exposure to stress, these cells become less sensitive to cortisol signaling, which in turn allows chronic inflammatory states to persist. Cortisol also has effects on other biological systems that have implications for health, including the cardiovascular, metabolic, and neural systems.

Similarly, the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine (released by the sympathetic nervous system as part of the fight-or-flight response to threats) are known to upregulate the expression of proinflammatory genes in monocytes and macrophages. These hormones also have direct effects on cardiovascular, pulmonary, and other systems relevant to health.

Another biological hypothesis is that stressors experienced early in life “weather” individuals’ physiological systems, resulting in a premature aging of cells, and eventually leading to a shortened life expectancy.


Source

Childhood Close Family Relationships and Health
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-amp0000067.pdf