The End of the Beginning: Evidence and Absences Studying Positive Youth Development in a Global Context

The study of resilience in development has overturned many negative assumptions and deficit-focused models about children growing up under the threat of disadvantage and adversity. The most surprising conclusion emerging from studies of these children is the ordinariness of resilience. An examination of converging findings from variable-focused and person-focused investigations of these phenomena suggests that resilience is common and that it usually arises from the normative functions of human adaptational systems, with the greatest threats to human development being those that compromise these protective systems. The conclusion that resilience is made of ordinary rather than extraordinary processes offers a more positive outlook on human development and adaptation, as well as direction for policy and practice aimed at enhancing the development of children at risk for problems and psychopathology. Show more

Variations in phenotype reflect the influence of environmental conditions during development on cellular functions, including that of the genome. The recent integration of epigenetics into developmental psychobiology illustrates the processes by which environmental conditions in early life structurally alter DNA, providing a physical basis for the influence of the perinatal environmental signals on phenotype over the life of the individual. This review focuses on the enduring effects of naturally occurring variations in maternal care on gene expression and phenotype to provide an example of environmentally driven plasticity at the level of the DNA, revealing the interdependence of gene and environmental in the regulation of phenotype. Show more