Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood

Front Cover
Cornell University Press, 1992 - Education - 280 pages

Overcoming the Odds looks closely at the lives of an ethnically diverse group of 505 men and women who were born in 1955 on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and who have been monitored from the prenatal period through early adulthood by psychologists, pediatricians, public health professionals, and social workers. Werner and Smith trace the impact of a variety of biological and psycho-social risk factors and stressful events on the development of these individuals, most of whose parents did not graduate from high school and worked as semiskilled or unskilled laborers. Incorporating vivid case study accounts with statistical analysis, the authors focus on both the vulnerability and the resilience of those who overcame great odds to grow into competent and caring adults. They trace the recovery process through which most of the troubled adolescents in the cohort--those with histories of delinquency, teenage pregnancy, and mental health problems--emerged with improved prospects in their twenties and early thirties. Identifying both the self-righting tendencies that enable high risk children later to adapt successfully to work, marriage, and parenthood, and the conditions under which professional and volunteer care is most beneficial, Werner and Smith offer concrete suggestions for effective intervention policies.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
The Context of the Study
17
Ordinary People
37
The Resilient Children in Adulthood
55
Teenage Mothers in Later Years
82
Delinquents with and without Records of Adult Crimes
103
Troubled Youths Grown Up
129
Stressful Events in Childhood and Youth and Adult
154
Protective Factors and Adult Adaptation
173
Summing Up
189
Appendix I
196
males at age 3132
214
Means and standard deviations on Rotters Locus of
221
Appendix II
247
Scoring System for Ratings of Adult Adaptation
258
Copyright

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Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood
Emmy E. Werner,Ruth S. Smith
Limited preview - 2019

Common terms and phrases

1955 birth cohort activities Adjustment reaction adolescence adult adaptation age 31/32 continued alcoholic or mentally ambivalent behavior problems boys canonical correlation caregiver child childhood and adolescence Chronic conflict correlation criminal records Delinquency record developed developmental deviant behavior Disruption of family early 30s EAS Temperament Survey emotional support Father absent follow-up friends girls handicap Hawaii high risk males high school interpersonal relationships interview Kauai lives Locus of Control long-term low risk peers majority Marital marriage married mental health problems mentally ill Number of stressful percent perinatal stress PMA IQ positive adjectives poverty pregnancy problems by 18 protective factors quality of adult records by age relationship remarried remedial education reported resilient men resilient women risk High risk satisfied schizophrenic scores separated ages serious coping problems social Sources of support spouse status age stressful life events Stressors Survey for Adults Table teachers teenage mothers teenage pregnancies teens Vineland worries

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Bibliographic information

TitleOvercoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood
AuthorsEmmy E. Werner, Ruth S. Smith
Editionillustrated
PublisherCornell University Press, 1992
ISBN0801480183, 9780801480188
Length280 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Education / Special Education / Developmental & Intellectual Disabilities
Psychology / Developmental / Child
Social Science / Children's Studies
Social Science / Sociology / General
  
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