June 22, 2018 – “While U.S. Immigration has halted the practice of separating families at the border, it remains unclear if or when reunification will occur for families separated prior to the implementation of the new policy,” said Linda Halgunseth, a co-author of the brief, Chair of the Latino Caucus, and Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies, University of Connecticut. “Detaining families indefinitely also is detrimental for children’s long-term adjustment.”
According to the brief, The Science is Clear: Separating Families has Long-term Damaging Psychological and Health Consequences for Children, Families, and Communities, parent-child separations lead to a host of long-term psychological, social, and health problems that are not necessarily resolved upon reunification. Policymakers must now turn to the reunification of these families and the ongoing well-being of the children who have been separated from their caregivers.
Statement of the Evidence
The Science is Clear: Separating Families has Long-term Damaging Psychological and Health Consequences for Children, Families, and Communities
Written by* Johayra Bouza, University of Miami, Daisy E. Camacho-Thompson, Ph.D., Reach Institute & Arizona State University, Gustavo Carlo, Ph.D., University of Missouri, Ximena Franco, Ph.D., Frank Porter Graham Development Institute & University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Cynthia Garcia Coll, Ph.D., Albizu University, Linda C. Halgunseth, Ph.D., University of Connecticut, Amy Marks, Ph.D., Suffolk University, Gabriela Livas Stein, Ph.D., University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Carola Suarez-Orozco, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, and Rebecca M. B. White, Ph.D., Arizona State University
* Authors are listed in alphabetical order
After the United States Department of Justice announced the “Zero Tolerance Policy for Criminal Illegal Entry,” Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE — an arm of the Department of Homeland Security) separated approximately 2,000 children from their parents in April and May 2018 as they approached the U.S. border. Children and parents were placed in separate facilities as they were being processed and were not told when or how they would be reunited. This policy and its consequences have raised significant concerns among researchers, child welfare advocates, policy makers, and the public, given the overwhelming scientific evidence that separation between children and parents, except in cases where there is evidence of maltreatment, is harmful to the development of children, families, and communities. Family separations occurring in the presence of other stressors, such as detention or natural disaster, only adds to their negative effects.
Evidence on Harmful Effects of Parent-Child Separation
The evidence that family separation is harmful dates back to studies on the effects of parent-child separations on children’s well-being during World War II. This research documented far reaching effects of these separations into adulthood, including increased risk for mental health problems, poor social functioning, insecure attachment, disrupted stress reactivity, and mortality (Pesonen & Räikkönen, 2012; Rusby & Tasker, 2009; Mitrani, Santisteban, & Muir, 2004). Other research similarly documents the harmful effects of parental separation on child well-being in a variety of other child populations including children in Romanian orphanages (Zeanah, Nelson, Fox, et al., 2003), children in foster care (Flannery, Beauchamp, & Fisher, 2017) and children of incarcerated parents (Geller, Garfinkel, Cooper & Mincy, 2009; Miller, 2006). More recent work has documented the increased mental health risk faced by both parents and children when they are separated in the immigration process (Suarez-Orozco, Bang, & Kim., 2011; Rusch & Reyes, 2013). Parent-child separation has long-term effects on child well-being, even if there is subsequent reunification. After being separated, reunited children can experience difficulty with emotional attachment to their parents, self-esteem, and physical and psychological health (Smith, Lalonde, & Johnson, 2004; Gubernskaya & Debry, 2017). For some children, time does not appear to fully heal these psychological wounds (Shonkoff et al., 2012).
Parents Buffer Children from Adverse Effects of Toxic Stress
Parental separation is considered a toxic stressor, an experience that engages strong and prolonged activation of the body’s stress-management system (Bridgman, 2014). The physiological and psychological toll of early life stress, including parental separation, changes how the body responds to stress in the long term, disrupting higher-order cognitive and affective processes as well as negatively altering brain structures and functioning (Lupien, McEwen, Gunnar, & Heim, 2009; Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011; Kumar et al., 2014). Such stressors put children at greater risk for a multitude of health and psychological impairments, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, lower IQ, obesity, immune system functioning, physical growth, cancer, heart and lung disease, stroke, and morbidity (Granqvist, Sroufe, Dozier, Hesse, & Steele, 2017; Heim & Nemeroff, 2001; Maniam, Antoniadis, & Morris, 2014; Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011; Shirtcliff, Coe, & Pollak, 2009; Taylor, 2010).
Children depend on their primary caretakers to successfully navigate stressful and traumatic events. Children’s physiological responses to stress can be significantly reduced by access to their primary caretaker (Hostinar, Sullivan, & Gunnar, 2013). The separation of the family unit under extreme conditions of stress worsens the psychological and physiological ramifications of that stressor on children, especially younger children (Masten & Narayan, 2012). Conversely, ongoing contact with primary caregivers under conditions of stress can protect against risk (Rodriguez & Margolin, 2015).
Child-Separation from Parents Impacts Children at All Ages
Much of the research on family separation has focused on the impacts on children early in development. However, puberty is also an especially vulnerable time of rapid change (Doom & Gunnar, 2013). Stressors during adolescence can have lasting impacts — the effects of which may not become evident until adulthood — (Humphreys, Gleason, Drury, et al., 2015; Lupien, McEwen, Gunnar, & Heim, 2009). Further, the effects of traumatic experiences are cumulative; children and adolescents who have already faced previous adversity are particularly susceptible to long term further negative consequences (Brown, Anda, & Tiemeier, et al, 2009; MacKenzie, Bosk, & Zeanah, 2017). Thus, the research shows that across infancy, childhood, and adolescence, child-family separations can be related to negative outcomes across the lifespan.
Impact of Border Family Separations on U.S. Citizens
There is also evidence that family separations harm U.S. citizens whose family members experience border detention or deportation. Parental separation increases the risk for these U.S. children’s mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, behavior problems, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (Allen, Cisneros, & Tellez, 2015; Rojas-Flores, Clements, Hwang Koo, & London, 2017; Zayas, Aguilar-Gaxiola, Yoon, & Rey, 2015). U.S. citizens of Latino descent also report heightened worries and concerns for their families and their communities as a result of changes in implementation of immigration policies such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy (Roche, Vaquera, White, & Rivera, 2018). Moreover, countries with supportive integration policies are more likely to have child populations with better overall health and mental health indicators than those with less supportive approaches (Marks, McKenna, & Garcia Coll, 2018). Thus, there is evidence that policies about parental separations can negatively affect American citizens.
The Policy Implications are Clear
The scientific evidence is conclusive. Parent-child separations lead to a host of long-term psychological, social, and health problems that are not necessarily resolved upon reunification. In particular, the disruption of biological stress regulation mechanisms in the body induced by the need to seek refugee or asylum status are further taxed by the absence of parental support. The science is clear: policies that separate immigrant families upon entry to the U.S. have devastating and long-term developmental consequences for children and their families.
We thank the SRCD Latino Caucus for their contributions.
Endnotes / References
Allen, B., Cisneros, E. M., & Tellez, A. (2015). The children left behind: The impact of parental deportation on mental health. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(2), 386-392. doi:10.1007/s10826-013-9848-5
Bridgman, A. (2014). How abuse and neglect affect children’s minds and bodies. Social Policy Report Brief, 28(1).
Brown, D. W., Anda, R. F., Tiemeier, H., Felitti, V. J., Edwards, V. J., Croft, J. B., & Giles, W. H. (2009). Adverse Childhood Experiences and the Risk of Premature Mortality. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 37(5), 389-396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2009.06.021
Doom, J. R., & Gunnar, M. R. (2013). Stress physiology and developmental psychopathology: Past, present, and future. Development and Psychopathology, 25(4), 1359-1373. doi:10.1017/S0954579413000667
Gubernskaya, Z., & Debry, J. (2017). US Immigration Policy and the case for family unity.
Journal on Migration and Human Security, 5(2) 417-430. doi:10.14240/jmhs.v5i2.91
Heim, C., & Nemeroff, C. B. (2001). The role of childhood trauma in the neurobiology of mood and anxiety disorders: Preclinical and clinical studies. Biological Psychiatry, 49(12), 1023-1039. doi:10.1016/S0006-3223(01)01157-X
Hostinar, C. E., Sullivan, R. M., & Gunnar, M. R. (2014). Psychobiological mechanisms underlying the social buffering of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical axis: A review of animal models and human studies across development. Psychological Bulletin, 140(1), 256-282. doi:10.1037/a0032671
Kumar, A., Behen, M. E., Singsoonsud, P., Veenstra, A. L., Wolfe-Christensen, C., Helder, E., & Chugani, H. T. (2014). Microstructural abnormalities in language and limbic pathways in orphanage-reared children: A diffusion tensor imaging study. Journal of Child Neurology, 29(3), 318-325. doi:10.1177/0883073812474098
Lupien, S. J., McEwen, B. S., Gunnar, M. R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 434-445. doi:10.1038/nrn2639
MacKenzie, M. J., Bosk, E., & Zeanah, C. H. (2017). Separating Families at the Border—Consequences for Children’s Health and Well-Being. New England Journal of Medicine, 376(24), 2314-2315. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1703375
Maniam, J., Antoniadis, C., & Morris, M. J. (2014). Early-life stress, HPA axis adaptation, and mechanisms contributing to later health outcomes. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 5(MAY), 73. doi:10.3389/fendo.2014.00073
Marks, A. K., McKenna, J. L., & Garcia Coll, C. (2018). National immigration receiving contexts: A critical aspect of native-born, immigrant, and refugee youth well-being. European Psychologist, 23(1), 6-20. doi:10.1027/1016-9040/a000311
Masten, A. S., & Narayan, A. J. (2012). Child development in the context of disaster, war, and terrorism: Pathways of risk and resilience. Annual Review of Psychology, 63(1), 227-257. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100356
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Roche, K., Vaquera, E., White, R. M. B., & Rivera, M. I. (2018). Impacts of Immigration Actions and News and the Psychological Distress of U.S. Latino parents raising adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 62, 525 – 531. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.01.004
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On the subject of separating children from their parents…
The recent articles on the removal of children at the border show that kids ARE DAMAGED FOR LIFE when removed from their parents.
Studies from removals to foster care show that about 1/4 were unnecessary and another 1/4 could/should have stayed home with family services. Another 1/4 of removals may not have been necessary if preventative services had been in place to prevent the problem in the first place.
Our nation puts over 200,000 kids in foster care a year, and given the above data, PERHAPS 100,000 COULD/SHOULD HAVE STAYED HOME!! CAPTA has been in effect for over 40 years, so that’s 4 MILLION kids that have been shipped to foster care unnecessarily!!!
Why is no one outraged for them? Look at all the foster / adoption agencies! Their focus is to help foster kids and then offer services for adoption. There are few/no services to help a child’s parents so they can keep their child at home.
For those that say kids are removed for ‘horrible abuse’, children are removed for abuse 17 percent of the time. 80 percent of removals are for ‘neglect’ – which can be anything from severe drug use to allowing your child to play outside to getting behind on your utility bills.
Why is this? Could it be that there is SO MUCH MONEY involved in the foster / adoption system?
There’s the money that comes from the feds when kids are put in foster care. There is more money from the feds if a child is adopted. To the tune of over 8 BILLION a year. Services for family preservation? Perhaps 500 MILLION.
Then there are all the employees that require kids ‘in the system’ for their jobs. Not just caseworkers, but support staff, therapists, even attorneys! Then there are foster / adoption agencies. Yes many are non profit but they have employees that are paid.
It would all be well and good if the perception of kids always being removed for horrible abuse and sent to loving foster homes was true all the time, but it is too often not. Any child that spends much time in foster care will be abused in some manner. Some of these foster homes have up to 12 kids at one time. Imagine a 13 year old girl thrown into a home with multiple teen age boys..
ANY child removal should only be if there is a real threat of danger. This ‘to error on the side of caution’ is child abuse! If every child that is removed from their parents suffers trauma then EVERY CHILD that is put into state custody suffers damage!
To be clear I am not saying that children should stay in abusive homes. But it’s time that we as a society recognized that removing children from their homes is not trivial and it should only be done if there is a threat of danger. And folks, playing outside is not real danger.
It’s time that, instead of pushing for more foster care, the push was for mentors to help families so they can keep their children at home. States need to focus on family service programs, not pushing for more foster care!
So while we are outraged over the 2000 kids at the border that have become separated, why does no one care about the 4 million kids that have been separated unnecessarily from their family by our own child welfare system??
Sadly, our nation’s children have become bounty for money and no one cares….