This is so terrible. I hope this research will lead to programs to help children however, not remove children because of poverty. Often times the parents are struggling very hard to change their family's situation but not having any luck. I wonder what qualified as "poverty" in this study? Because you see, if you go solely by income levels, there are many children who would be considered to live in poverty but in actuality, don't. For example, right now, my income is far below the poverty level because I am a student (and am currently disabled due to illness so couldn't work if I wanted to), and my husband (due to lack of education) works jobs that aren't well above the minimum wage. Based on that alone, we would fit the criteria for poverty. However, because of sec. 8, we live in a nice apartment in a good area of town, with good schools, and a very low crime rate. We still struggle very much to pay our bills each month, but because of food stamps, our children do eat well. Education is big in our family and I make sure my kids are doing well in school and eating the right foods. No, we don't have any "extras" so my kids I guess to miss out on that, and we don't have expensive gadgets, or name-brand clothes, or a lot of toys, but we do at least have the basics. I wonder if it was a whole combination of factors that lead to kids having brain damage? Which brings me back to my original question: I wonder what made the families fit the criteria for "poverty", because there are so many other factors, like whether the family had adequate housing with utilities, the parenting styles (the stress of poverty can certainly have a large impact on parenting), nutritional factors, whether or not the family was having problems due to drugs or domestic violence (statistically, families who live in poverty are more likely to be affected by drugs and domestic violence, although of course there certainly doesn't mean every family living in poverty will be). I'm just saying that I don't think not having enough money alone can always have such a detrimental effect on children or any one effect of poverty alone, I think that it has to be a lot of factors working together. I think that specifically nutrition probably has a lot to do with it (probably a main causative factor, at least in my opinion), and probably stress. I would hypothesize a stressful environment, especially early in life, could probably affect cognitive development especially when combined with other effects.
