CHILD-DEVELOPMENT - VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE

Many of the challenges facing children now are a function of changing times, including increase in urbanization, political violence, changin g family forms, and in some areas decreased supplies of adequate food. This review focuses particularly on those changes in which children a re the victims and which induce new threats for them, rather than on p roblems such as child disability or mental illness. The outcome variab les of interest in this paper are dimensions of children's psychosocia l development, including cognitive development, psychological adjustme nt and aggression, whereas the companion paper in this issue (Caldwell P., Child survival: vulnerability and resilience in adversity in the European past and the contemporary Third World, Sec. Sci. Med.) [1] fo cuses on physical aspects of children's development. The risks that ar e hurdles in the process of development of a young child begin from co nception and carry on into later life. To address them all would be im possible; thus, in order to do justice to the issues at hand, we have chosen those risks that, in our view, are important in a child's psych osocial development in developing countries. This paper will thus prov ide a discussion of the concepts of risk and resilience, then apply th ese concepts to the analysis of three examples of risk faced by childr en today: nutritional threats (e.g. malnutrition due to decline in bre astfeeding); family dynamics and types of family forms (e.g. child fos tering and non-traditional families); and experiences of violence (dom estic or political). In each case, the same four questions will be add ressed: what are the consequences of the risk factor for children, wha t are the etiologies and conditions of risk, are there any children wh o seem to cope with the risk Factor successfully and what are some of the protective factors, and what interventions or programs would help support these children? Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.