Background: Zigler's Head Start Perspective and Challenges to Conceptualizations

It is critical to acknowledge that economics operates from a perspective of seeing the individual as a rational actor in not just the market place but in all realms of life. As a disciplinary analytic tool, it applies a theoretical perspective and empirical strategy, which frequently centers the “me” over the “we;” specifically and primarily, a person's utility is viewed in terms that are in-service to the market and capitalism more broadly. Edward Zigler's design of the National Head Start Program heralded a focus on economic status changed and supported given high quality and early initiated preschool programming. The parental engagement component underscores the different orientation of “we,” thus, serving a more critical role than the noted “me” orientation, as noted, generally favored by economics.

Human capital theories emanate from the conceptual orientation noted and have permeated the social sciences; hence and unfortunately they represent the evaluative framework for understanding what human value and developmental processes vis-à-vis skill development and acquisition represent. The rational actor denotation may under-estimate situations of normative and uniquely high-risk situations. Accordingly, the strategy may under-analyze the role of unique stressors which accompany everyday life choices as contexts experienced by impoverished communities and too many families and individuals of color in America. At the same time, the human capital theoretical orientation may ignore, as well, the heightened socioemotional impact of innovative supports. Situated in the middle of a pandemic, however, the national and global significant stress reaction to yet another public execution of an unarmed citizen of color in the United States laid bare the lack of individual-context fit experienced by marginalized youth and families. As such, the emerging acknowledgements of immutable truths regarding the nature and degree of risk that diverse youth of color and poor people encounter in their environments necessitates novel assessments regarding the role of context in shaping developmental trajectories broadly and healthy identity development, specifically. This evaluative review and analysis necessitates first considering the developmental purpose of childhood.

Meanings and Functions of Childhood

Given the impact and contributions of economics to thoughtful planning and implementing of programming innovations increases significance of Erikson's epigenetic model of development that centers identity development as an ever-evolving life course psychosocial process (Erikson, Reference Erikson1950, Reference Erikson1968). His theoretical framework acknowledges that human beings’ positive identity development depends on the resolution of the crises encountered at various stages across varied social milieu. The incorporation of an epigenetic approach to development necessarily motivates a framing of the function of childhood. Erikson theorizes “that anything that grows has a ground plan, and that out of this ground plan the parts arise, each part having its time of special ascendancy, until all parts have risen to form a functional whole.” (Erikson, Reference Erikson1968; p. 92 cited in Muuss, Reference Muuss1996). Childhood vulnerability is necessarily shaped by the contexts in which individuals’ carry out critical developmental tasks. The cultivation of stable coping mechanisms is essential for the crisis of resolution for positive identity development for all children.

Of note, the necessity to mobilize and act speaks to perspectives about perceived coping needs and every-day adaptation process requirements not evenly experienced across individuals. They include responses to normative developmental tasks and social–emotional needs requiring attention; also included are nonnormative events such as a global pandemic that are shared by all as well as the public lynching of yet another unarmed Black man for which the impact is particularly salient to communities of color.

Also contributing to the character of developmental contexts over the life course are normative policy and practice traditions. When resource deployment differences are unaddressed, the consequences reinforce the pattern of resource distribution inequality. In turn, unequal resource deployment strategy affects the framing of scholarship, policy, practices, and outcomes and function as normative traditions and contexts of development and coping. As illustrations, they are numerous and include, first, outcomes-centered research that generates broad media and scholarly reporting content (i.e., disseminated as victim-blaming gaps [e.g., income, wealth, and education]). Second are reports on individuals at different points of the life course attempting efficacy in response to specific developmental tasks (i.e., which function to problematize entire communities). Third are outcome gaps frequently framed and addressed in the literature as life course shortcomings of the victims of unequal conditions. Finally, disseminated group stereotypes function to legitimize the unequal resource deployment methods and treatment framed as systems of “intended support.” Human capital publicized “me” analysis solely emphasizing market utility versus implications for a human family and “we” orientation further discourages authentic interpretations. Accordingly, the stigmatized and disparate character of adaptive processes and patterned outcomes further contribute to under-acknowledged individual-context experiences for a nation's diverse citizens as groups navigate environments and attempt access to socially constructed supports constitutionally promised.

Highlighted is that life course access to supports and exposure to normative and nonnormative challenges serve as vehicles purposed for guaranteeing social inequality (i.e., no matter if the system of government touts the existence of a democratic state). Suggested is that legally designed and constitutionally assisted practices, as unquestioned traditions, and the structured character of “intended” social assets, in fact – no matter their lack of representation in the conduct of social science – matter profusely. This fact differentially influences everyday practices and the need for nuanced individual coping and adaptations as a function of group membership. In effect, there continues to be a hesitance to acknowledge the suggested inequalities – usually aligned with race and ethnicity – and patterned inequities that continue 400 years following the population of the “New World” by individuals escaping economic and social injustices. Requiring reflection is that the United States of America is within one-half decade of its formal 250-year birthday. It has carried forward the undeniable trauma and cost of discriminatory practices. Importantly, the lack of equity in actions concerning the tension between human capital and human developmental tasks requires robust theoretical interrogation and inquiry to effectively describe and address the needs of diverse youths. In fact, it was the human capital differential experienced by economically challenged families and communities, which spearheaded Edward Zigler's significant press for Head Start.

This article advances the discussion of engaging human development as a systems-informed, identity-focused, and theoretical stance relative to the developmental needs of diverse youth. We use a particular framing to draw attention to the specific needs of diverse youth; the strategy and its set of tenets allows an interrogation of how systems shaping the developmental environment must adapt to the needs of those persons situated within it. In short, it will be possible to theorize and then to build effective necessary empirical measures to evaluate the efficacy of systems to meet the developmental needs of children. This necessitates a dynamic, interactive framework undergirded by core tenets that highlight which components in a given context actually promote positive identity development for America's diverse youths (i.e., diversity due to resource access differences, race, ethnicity, gender, immigration status).

Zigler's Analysis of the National Head Start Impact Study: Vulnerability Status and Resiliency Matter

Zigler (Reference Zigler2010) provides critiques of the response to the longitudinal follow-up to the National Head Start Impact Study. Our analysis of his critique is that it indicates that an analytic strategy that emphasizes vulnerability-resiliency is critical (i.e., protective factors and supports matter as well as risk variables and steady challenges) (see Spencer, Reference Spencer and Taylor1995, Reference Spencer, Lerner and Damon2006, Reference Spencer, Damon and Lerner2008). Zigler (Reference Zigler2010) suggests that findings of the National Head Start Impact Study suggest a roadmap for improvement and examines a number of areas where the Head Start program, in fact, could be improved given the findings of the longitudinal study in relation to the larger body of literature on Head Start. Zigler's review also included its methodology and the magnitudes of the findings analyzed. In fact, and importantly, he was critical of the study's methodological limitations, noting its reliance on comparing Head Start's outcomes with a control variable that included “everything else” while also suggesting that the control samples were oversaturated with students with lower levels of risk. He was also critical of the way length of treatment for different students was measured, suggesting that students with very limited amount of exposure to the intervention should not be compared to the control groups in the study. Quite forcefully, Zigler argues that it is important to remember the goal of Head Start is to prepare lower-income children for school. Based on this criterion, Head Start demonstrated that it was successful while also pointing out the limits of Head Start programs when students go on to school. He describes the difficulty for Head Start students to maintain the momentum of their learning in their educational environments, which were not adequate. We would frame the dilemmas as one that insists that the adequacy of contexts continues to matter. Importantly, in fact, Head Start does not provide an inoculation against social and economic privation; development tasks requiring mastery and support are consistent with development and continue over time.

Zigler discusses the findings of the impact study in light of the several decades’ worth of previous work. In reviewing earlier evaluation work, he suggests that there are favorable impacts on parenting practices and child outcomes in the cognitive, socioemotional, and health domains. Students who have gone through Head Start demonstrate higher test scores, lower grade retention, and reduced criminal behavior as adults. These benefits had further monetary and economic benefits in the way of reduced criminal justice costs that outweigh the costs of administering the program. He further notes the benefits and savings found from Head Start's health and nutritional component with its participants having lower levels of obesity, premature death, and dental problems.

In addition, Zigler (Reference Zigler2010) highlights lingering issues in the Head Start program including a limited number of qualified staff and the lack of financial resources to support them. Additional constraints imposed by the financial burdens hampered the ability to expand to meet the needs of the targeted population, which made it difficult to provide greater length of time for intervention and responding to the realities of parents working outside of the household. Critical to acknowledge is that we agree with Zigler's analysis of the report and recognize the contributions of economic resources as well as parenting and the nature of the context as necessary considerations.

Poverty and Inequality: Theoretical Implications for Human Development

Glen Elder's seminal work, Children of the Great Depression, was a longitudinal investigation into the implications of the Great Depression on youth development. It framed the field of life course studies, centering human developmental processes as elemental to understanding life outcomes in the United States. Years after its publication, Elder acknowledged that the approach requires adjustment to accommodate the nonlinear pathways and realities of complex lives when he stated:

Elder and Caspi (Reference Elder and Caspi1988) built on Elder's earlier insights on the effects of economic shocks on youth development by acknowledging the importance of including precursor events and contexts that increase risk and create “deprivational effects” as families are able or unable to adapt to less income. They note that financial shocks create stress within familial relationships that inform how family members, collectively, shape developmental trajectories for children, either minimizing or exacerbating risk introduced by economic events. While Elder and Caspi acknowledge that the generalizability of the study findings are limited by a sample comprising solely White respondents, this insight reveals the dynamism of economic instability on relationships.

Diverse youths residing in under resourced contexts further experience exacerbated risks and challenges by virtue of where they live. Essentially, spatial inequality and discriminatory housing practices compound risk factors that inform development. Exposure to these types of environments raises the stakes for diverse youths to find sufficient supports to cultivate sufficient coping mechanisms necessary for positive identity development. Research by Allard (Reference Allard2009) and Rothstein (Reference Rothstein2017) indicates the nature and categories of discriminatory practices. Rothstein notes that decades of housing discrimination enforced by federal, state, and local policies engrained segregated housing patterns that became linked to segregated schools as families were forced “to move to segregated neighborhoods if they wanted education for their children” (Rothstein, Reference Rothstein2017, p. 122). In his study of the social safety net, Scott Allard documented the effects of spatial inequality (Allard, Reference Allard2009). He notes that sources of supports forming the fabric of social safety nets in a community are not optimally placed in high poverty areas where the need is the greatest. Residents from communities of color are disproportionately represented in these areas that lack resources. Allard's analysis of three large urban areas indicate that “mismatches in the spatial distribution of service providers can help to explain why many social programs experience low take-up rates, high rates of attrition, and less than optimal outcomes.” (Allard, Reference Allard2009, p. 86)

Since the launch of the War on Poverty in 1965, overall poverty has decreased while inequality has expanded as the population in the United States has grown more diverse. Reardon's macroanalysis of education longitudinal data revealed the critical truth of the effects of inequality – that is, it is far reaching and can cripple progress for US society overall. Reardon notes the failure associated with not interrogating the role of rising inequality as a key driver in education outcomes:

These documented patterns of inequality in the United States that are present in various sectors of society, notably housing, education, and the judicial system, play out against a backdrop of growing negative effects of health outcomes for people of color. These negative effects are apparent in unequivocal terms. Disparities in mortality rates by race and ethnicity in the COVID-19 pandemic suggest their presence. In fact, they accelerate an already sobering pattern of lower life expectancy among communities of color in the United States (e.g., Millett et al., Reference Millett, Jones, Benkeser, Baral, Mercer, Beyrer, Honermann, Lankiewicz, Mena, Crowley, Sherwood and Sullivan2020). These effects have been particularly acute in urban areas. The City of Chicago serves as an exemplar in several ways. They include observations that, first, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic, Chicago was the site of significant disparities in health outcomes; and second, based upon zip code, the term “mortality gap” describes the enduring effects of segregation in the city where the life outcome estimates between the wealthiest, predominantly white zip codes and the poorest Black zip codes has grown to a 30-year difference (Spoer, Thorpe, Gourevitch, Levine, & Feldman, Reference Spoer, Thorpe, Gourevitch, Levine and Feldman2019). Ultimately, the enduring effect of living in a poor, predominantly Black zip code in Chicago will bring about death for its residents 30 years earlier than a person who lives in a predominantly White, wealthy zip code. Ansell documents the stark reality of health inequality as “structural violence” with particularly virulent effects for communities of color in Chicago (Ansell, Reference Ansell2017). This highlights the importance of utilizing frameworks that engage the notion of “morbid risk” to account for these extreme effects of chronic economic inequality and racial discrimination on the life outcomes of diverse youths.

Taken as a whole, these empirical findings highlight the need for theoretically motivated social science research to account comprehensively for multiple dimensions of inequality and racial biases in institutional environments and residential contexts as they relate to the a priori status of vulnerability for diverse youth. By extension, it becomes critical to ascertain the unacknowledged biases in the systemic and institutional contexts delivering youth focused supports in order to assess accurately the ways that these actors increase risk levels encountered by diverse youths. In doing this, it is crucial to acknowledge, as well, the inherent strengths that diverse youths possess that support the cultivation of coping mechanisms commensurate with their developmental period, and to ascertain jointly those contextual drivers rooted in inequality that can undermine diverse youth's positive identity development processes. Spencer et al.'s (Reference Spencer, Lodato, Spencer, Rich, Graziul, English-Clarke, Henry, Votruba-Drzal and Miller2019) study of minority youth development support programming provides guidance on how to implement an empirical strategy to address these considerations. Parents play a frequently compromised role in light of social and economic challenges that grow more salient over time. However, as exemplified by Alexander (Reference Alexander2010) and described from a historical perspective by Hall (Reference Hall2020) and others, the criminal justice system abets the process of adult-criminal justice linkages.

The Implication of Parents in Youth Criminal and Violent Outcomes

The exacerbating role of criminal justice, systemic inequality, and parenting suggests the complexity which Zigler (Reference Zigler2010) infers in his critique. A Chicago-focused recent qualitative study by Hall (Reference Hall2020) affords definitive illustrations for Chicago as suggested by analyses provided by Spoer et al. (Reference Spoer, Thorpe, Gourevitch, Levine and Feldman2019) as well as Ansell's (Reference Ansell2017) analysis of the urban setting. In fact, Halls’ efforts provide an unfiltered illustration of the individual-context parent relevant perspective demonstrating the impossibility of evaluating Head Start from a perspective which infers an inoculation-type efficacy.

As a reminder, Hall (Reference Hall2020) reminds us that on a September afternoon in 2012, a teenager was shot to death while riding his bike in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. At the time of his death, Joseph “Lil Jojo” Coleman, was fielding multiple record label offers and had made a name for himself in the local music scene. His most famous song, “Black Disciple Killer” was a very clear and provocative message to a rival street gang in Chicago. Employing traditional hyper-masculine symbols of power and aggression in the “BDK” music video posted to YouTube, Coleman and his teenaged entourage point large assault rifles at the camera while rapping about their mission to kill Black Disciples. To date, this video has over 6 million views and, in fact, fans at his funeral sang the song in tribute.

Two months after his death, Coleman's mother appeared on a talk show to discuss his murder along with her older son (Smithberg and North, 2012). Robin Russell stated that she was using the national platform in an effort to find justice for her son, despite being afraid of public threats of retaliation. Halfway through the interview, the show host asked Ms. Russell pointedly, “Did you know your son was affiliated with a gang?”

Caught off guard and immediately defensive, Ms. Russell paused for a split second and responded flatly, “No. I did not.” Not satisfied and without missing a beat, the interviewer continued, “Umm, what are you gonna do moving forward to make sure that your other kids don't meet the same fate? Or do you feel powerless going up against the influence of the streets and of the peers that are around?” His message, left unsaid, was clear, “This is your fault.”

As described in Hall's study, a bit more bolstered, Ms. Russell responded more confidently, “Well I don't feel it's my fault because all I can do is raise my child. I can't hold his hand 24/7 when he goes in the streets. I teach him right from wrong but like I said, I have other kids. I can't be there with him 24 hr.”

If Ms. Russell had ever listened to her son's most popular song, it is almost certain that she was aware that he was in fact “affiliated with a gang.” Perhaps in the fraction of a second it took her to respond to the host's pointed question, she gathered that he was implicating her in her son's murder on national television. For his part, the host confirmed her suspicions with his follow-up question, “What are you gonna do to make sure that your other kids don't meet the same fate?” Embedded in this thinly veiled question was an accusation of negligent parenting at best and willful complicity at worst.

The talk show host was not the only member of the national media to have asked Ms. Russell about her knowledge of her son's gang involvement following his murder. In a Chicago Tribune article written just two days after her son's murder, it is documented that Ms. Russell refused to comment on whether Coleman was in a gang when asked by a reporter and she responded as such,

Ms. Russell's feigned lack of knowledge of her son's gang involvement can be read as an acknowledgement of and an attempt to shield herself from the negative judgment of mainstream observers who do not understand her family's circumstances. Further, Ms. Russell's seemingly contradictory statements that “all I can do is raise my child” and “I didn't get into what he did when he left my house,” suggest that in at least some ways she considers her parenting actions and her children's outcomes to be unrelated. Ms. Russell's concern that middle-class observers will judge her is accurate. Examples of poor Black mothers commonly vilified in popular media are plentiful. Social science data of the character described exacerbate the process of vilification and stereotyping.

In a 2010 Chicago Sun Times op-ed, “Ghetto Parenting Dooms Kids,” popular columnist Mary Mitchell tells the follow-up story to a 1994 murder of a 5-year-old boy who was pushed out of a fourteenth-floor window of a Chicago Housing Authority high-rise by two older neighborhood children while his 8-year-old brother tried to help (Mitchell, Reference Mitchell2010). Sixteen years later, the 8-year old brother who witnessed his younger brother's murder was 23 years old and himself convicted of murder. While Mitchell insufficiently accounts for the trauma he experienced at 8 years old, “I can only imagine the nightmares that he must have had after his brother's death,” she argues that it was the boys’ mother who was primarily responsible for the poor outcomes of her children. This mother, it seemed, had “failed her children in every way… the biggest share of the blame belonged to the mother who allowed her young sons to wander around the notoriously dangerous housing project unsupervised.” Mitchell then draws a connection between this mother and all poor Black parents who raise families in racially segregated low socioeconomic neighborhoods. These parents were guilty of a practice that Mitchell coins “ghetto parenting.” Mitchell writes,

To Mitchell, it is evident that undesirable outcomes experienced by Black youth in poor neighborhoods are willfully caused by their “ghetto parents” who “doom” their children to their fates through the sheer force of their ignorant and negligent behaviors. This narrative contends that if not for the immoral, selfish, and malicious behavior of individual parents, “ghetto children” would be better off. In short, their parents are holding them back from experiencing the success that is available to everyone else in a free society. This example, along with the media's handling of Ms. Russell, suggests that when poor Black youth become victims and/or perpetrators of violence and trauma, the root cause is always understood to be their bad “ghetto parents” and more specifically their mothers.

Like Ms. Russell, the parents included in this study maintain that they are doing their best given their circumstances but that much remains beyond their control and also, like Ms. Russell, see no contradiction in stating simultaneously “all I can do is raise my child” and “I didn't get into what he did when he left my house.” This understanding of parenting is an extension of parents’ understanding of their place within a broader social context as parents are acutely aware that they cannot control their own circumstances and therefore cannot control what ultimately happens to their children. As Hall's (Reference Hall2020) dissertation demonstrates and explores, Englewood parents expressed sadness and disappointment about undesirable youth outcomes while maintaining that though they have done their best to raise their children, children will ultimately do what they want. Hall reports in one frustrated participant's words:

Mainstream, middle-class society blames an imagined lazy, inept, and irresponsible “ghetto parent” for the undesirable outcomes of poor children. These parents, in turn, blame an imagined sense of excessive agency on the part of their children. However, neither conceptualization is accurate as both are ahistorical and devoid of the contextual realities in which poor Black families live.

Englewood Neighborhood Context

Consistent with Ansell's (Reference Ansell2017) economic analysis, Hall's (Reference Hall2020) study took place in the Englewood community on Chicago's south side. Her write-up of the context (Hall, Reference Hall2020) notes that Chicago has become a central talking point in the national conversation on urban violence and gun control. In fact, Chicago is sometimes referred to the “murder capital” of the US due to the national media's coverage of the high rates of violent crime within the city (Gramlich & Desliver, Reference Gramlich and Desilver2018). This is what Zigler (Reference Zigler2010) takes exception to as challenges and risks that Head Start programming has no control over. In fact, Hall (Reference Hall2020) notes that violent crime in Chicago is concentrated among specific groups in specific areas. Such crime within the city is overwhelmingly perpetuated by and against African-American male youth. In 2012, the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention reported that,

In Chicago, violent crime is a problem for Black youth who live in devastatingly poor and racially segregated neighborhoods on the south and west sides of the city. In fact, there are 23 Chicago police districts, but just two of them, the 7th and 11th, accounted for 25% of the city's violent crime (Annual Report: 2010 A Year in Review, 2011). One of these two, the 7th, is located in Englewood.

Englewood is spread out over three-square miles on the city's southwest side. At its peak in 1960, Englewood was home to over 97,000 people. However, Englewood, along with the rest of the city, has experienced a sharp population decline over the past 50 years losing more than half of its population, and today there are only 30,000 residents. More than 46.6% of neighborhood residents live in poverty, more than twice as many than the city average of 20% (US Census, 2014).

Englewood's story is similar to that of other segregated African-American urban communities (Wilson, Reference Wilson1990) which are frequently supported by Head Start programming assistance. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the neighborhood was a growing community with a strong economic pulse and a steady inward flow of European immigrants, primarily from Sweden, Ireland, and Germany (Roberts & Stamz, Reference Roberts and Stamz2002). Due to the neighborhood's proximity to the Chicago stockyards and industrial areas of the city, Englewood was an ideal residence for workers to travel to and from their working-class jobs. The first Black residents came to the area during the 1880s and 1890s as domestic workers but remained only 1% of the area's total population for many decades. This pattern changed during the Great Migration during the years immediately following the Second World War, which brought Black migrants from the US south to northern cities. As Blacks came to settle in Englewood, white residents began to flee to neighboring communities and suburbs during the 1950s. As white residents fled, too few Black residents replaced them, resulting in numerous neighborhood properties vacant and abandoned. A great deal of this surplus housing stock and abandoned buildings was eventually burned down to rubble or demolished, leaving large patches of vacant lots in their wake. Those abandoned properties that were not burned to rubble or demolished, simply remained unoccupied and unmaintained. Businesses ultimately failed as well due to the sharp population decline and left the neighborhood to start again in other parts of the city. In a matter of a few years, the population fell from its peak of 97,000 in 1960 to about 59,000 by 1980 (University of Illinois Great Cities Institute, 2019).

White flight and community divestment also coincided with the rapid de-industrialization of the national economy in the 1960s and 1970s in which menial jobs that were traditionally occupied by low-skilled Black workers were no longer available. Seemingly overnight, unemployment rates increased among Blacks throughout the country and the proliferation of a widespread drug economy developed in large part due to limited alternative economic prospects. The propagation of a drug economy in urban inner cities of the 1970s and 1980s meant that undereducated Black youth had unprecedented access to money and a livelihood that would not have been available to them in any other sector of the formal economy. However, because of the drug market's inherent illegality and its cutthroat competitive nature, participants are permanently under the threat of arrest or assault from law authorities and other drug economy participants. In order to participate in the only available trade market available to them, an increasingly violent gang culture developed to help ensure safety, coordination of effort, and protection of “turf”.

Infamously draconian “War on Drug” policies of both conservative and liberal government officials made the penalties of drug market participation increasingly harsher with mandatory minimum prison sentences in the 1980s. The result of this is that a whole generation of poor Black youth have spent at least part of their lives incarcerated. Pettit and Western (Reference Pettit and Western2004) note that nearly 60% of Black men who dropped out of high school born between 1965 and 1969 spent time in prison by 1999.

In 2003, over half of all prisoners released from Illinois state prisons reached Chicago – concentrated to just six communities out of Chicago's 77 delineated community areas. Englewood and West Englewood account for two of these six neighborhoods. In other words, roughly 15% of all exiting prisoners in the state of Illinois reach Englewood at some point in their re-entry process (LaVigne, Mamalian, Travis, & Visher, Reference LaVigne, Mamalian, Travis and Visher2003).

The Hyperghetto–Carceral Complex

Englewood families exist within a historical tradition of poor African-Americans in which family relations are disrupted and influenced by omnipotent social institutions with physically coercive power. Loïc Wacquant's theory to explain racialized marginality within the postindustrial city denotes four derivative and chronologically consecutive “peculiar institutions” that have historically defined the lives of the US Black poor – chattel slavery (1619–1865), Jim Crow (1865–1965), the northern ghetto (1915–1968), and the hyperghetto-carceral complex (1968–present). Each successive institution is informed by the previous one and each has not only worked to “recruit, organize, and extract labor” but also to “demarcate and ultimately seclude [the Black poor] so that they would not contaminate the surrounding white society that viewed them as irrevocably inferior and vile…” (Wacquant, Reference Wacquant2001). In Wacquant's theorization of the hyperghetto–carceral complex of the present moment, the prison and the hyperghetto become mere extensions of one another as the ghetto becomes increasingly violent, militarized, and surveilled and the prison becomes more residential and racially segregated. The prison and the ghetto form a symbiotic relationship, in which they feed off one another with frequent and recurrent cyclical movement between the two.

The hyperghetto–carceral complex is the context in which Englewood parents raise their children. They and their children experience unpredictable violence within their neighborhoods and the omnipresence of the carceral state, which militarizes schools, basic neighborhood establishments, and social services. The hyperghetto–carceral complex is a constant reminder that Englewood residents are operating under the authority of a coercive power that can be enacted upon them at any moment. This power stakes random claims upon their children and supersedes their own parental authority.

As Wacquant constructs a direct lineage connecting the ways the Black poor have historically been defined by an ever-evolving political economy, so, too, must we construct a direct line through the family relations that must exist within these systems. To fully understand the challenges and constraints of mothers such as Ms. Russell, we must interrogate what it means to be both a parent with a presumption of full authority over your children's lives while simultaneously being subjected to an all-encompassing coercive institutional power.

Contemporary Parenting Anxieties and Expectations

At the same time that Englewood parents must contend with the hyperghetto–carceral complex while raising children, all parents experience anxieties concerning their children's outcomes. Parents are members of a societal category and are subject to a set of societal expectations, some of which seem obvious and universal. Minimally, every parent must provide materially for their children to the best their resources allow and keep children out of immediate harm's way. Other parental expectations are, however, nuanced, unspoken, and reflective of the historical moment in which parents happen to exist.

In contemporary US society, to truly be considered a “good” parent, it must be recognizable to others that they ascribe to an ideology that places their children's experiences above all else, and much of that burden has traditionally fallen upon mothers. In a marked shift from previous generations that blamed social problems on over-involved mothers, and preferred regimentation and child conformity, the current expectation is that mothers must be involved in all aspects of children's lives (Coontz, Reference Coontz2010; Vincent, Reference Vincent, Apple, Ball and Gandin2009). In recent years, “the helicopter mom,” the “soccer mom,” and the “tiger mother” have become well-worn archetypes for an involved parent, again mother, who steers her child on the path to success. These archetypes are indicative of what Michaels and Douglas (Reference Michaels and Douglas2005) call “the new momism.”

One vital way that the concept of “the new momism” is operationalized into actual behaviors is through the cultural practice of “intensive mothering.” “Intensive mothering” is “child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive, and financially expensive” (Hays, Reference Hays1996). This exhaustive practice of intensive mothering has now become the standard by which all mothers are judged (Vincent, Reference Vincent, Apple, Ball and Gandin2009). These outward displays should also signal to others that one is anxious about their child's future and doing all they can to ensure their child's upward mobility.

In order to best prepare children to compete in a world of ever-increasing income inequality and a shrinking middle class, contemporary middle-class parents “cultivate” their children's childhoods in order to prepare their children to inhabit middle-class lifestyles (Lareau, Reference Lareau2011). Failure to meet this standard results in socially sanctioned scorn, sympathy for children, and demonization of parents who do not publicly live up to these increasing standards. In other words, if parents do not appear to use all their resources to ensure advantages for their children, they are thought to be remiss in their parenting role.

Since the late twentieth century, parenting standards have grown progressively higher and more encompassing. The result is that nearly all parents experience anxiety around parenting and child outcomes. As Michaels and Douglas (Reference Michaels and Douglas2005) note, all parents today receive pointed messages which make it clear “you are responsible for your child's welfare: The buck stops with you and you better be a rock star.” Contemporary parents are doing more and providing longer for children than in previous generations have in order to manage this precariousness (Miller, Reference Miller2018). This unprecedented resource provision and anxiety has resulted in an extended parenting period, known as emerging adulthood between the ages 18–25, as young people need longer periods of preparation and training (Arnett, Reference Arnett and Jensen2011). Middle-class parents now feel as if they must do whatever it takes to provide opportunities and advantages for their children.

Perhaps the most egregious recent example is the college admissions scandal in which wealthy parents illegally paid large sums of money, some more than a million dollars, to ensure their children's admission into Ivy League and other elite institutions. This scandal spurred a larger conversation about the amount of resources some parents expend legally to ensure their children's future success that are beyond reach for most. What became clear was that access to elite institutions, long considered the hallmark of upward mobility, was guaranteed through a “backdoor” by the extremely wealthy who can donate millions or pass along an inherited legacy placement to their children (Golden, Reference Golden2007). Furthermore. less wealthy middle-class parents are able to make investments, including buying homes in exclusive areas with better school districts, spending thousands of dollars on tutoring, relying on social networks for impressive internships and participation in expensive extracurricular activities (Bray, Reference Bray1999). Even with these increasing investments, however, wealthy parents are still anxious about their children's prospects. It never seems to be enough.

If ensuring a middle-class life for children requires large amounts of resources, then it is almost certain that poor Black parents with limited social and financial capital will never be able to provide the same for their children. In fact, some have been criminally penalized when they have tried to ensure their children access to good public education (Applebome, Reference Applebome2011). Why, then, are poor Black parents vilified for not being able to provide a middle-class lifestyle for their children? Similarly important and unacknowledged is why privilege denial is such a critical part of our lexicon. Does it serve to maintain the social hierarchy, which continues to define American interracial relationships?

Considerations of Theoretical Tenets of Human Development and Inequality Presence Denial

As described by historians of relevance (David, Reference David1975; Foner, Reference Foner1998) to the opening of the twenty-first century's second decade, the theoretical discourse on developmental needs and trajectories of diverse youth continues to be inadequate. Our approach necessitates acknowledgement of two principle points. The first is that all humans are vulnerable and need active supports in their contexts in order to cultivate stable coping mechanisms for positive identity development and productive life stage specific outcomes. The second is that the denial of the existence of structures, policies and practices that produce and exacerbate inequality limits the reach of research and practice that seeks to produce inclusive, positive developmental outcomes for all children.

The application of these two principles requires evaluating human development in context. They point to the need to shift perspectives to focus on the sources of support for diverse youth (i.e., by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), immigration status) as they carry out requisite developmental tasks to mature and pursue their ambitions for their lives. In particular, allowing for the interrogation of the ecology of supports and structured risks (i.e., presence or absence of significant challenges; quality of accessible supports; degree of risk considered “normative” that is in fact the source of trauma) in diverse youths’ contexts opens possibilities for novel theoretical and empirical insights anchored in the youths’ perspectives. When evaluating the sources of support in a context, it is also necessary to account for absence of the supports. Resources can be in the form of supportive adults, faith communities, or social service organizations, to name a few. Poverty-stricken contexts pose higher risks for development mainly due to the situation wherein the availability and quality of supports are not commensurate with or capable of overcoming the crushing realities of impoverished environments.

Professor Edward R. Zigler's groundbreaking innovating of the Head Start program sought to ameliorate the risk differential across diverse young children's lives by providing supports in context. Zigler understood clearly that improving outcomes for children living in poverty necessitated acknowledging the role of context in shaping outcomes. Specifically, he noted the limits of SES as an explanation for environmental impact although without regard for social supports (Zigler, Lamb, and Child, Reference Zigler, Lamb and Child1982) and that social competence was an important measure of choice in assessing levels of overall adjustment (Zigler & Trickett, Reference Zigler and Trickett1978).

Since the launching of Head Start, the United States has undergone significant demographic and social changes. The United States has endured the shocks of the Great Recession and, most recently, COVID-19 global pandemic, which have had a far-reaching impact on the citizens’ lives and exacerbated inequality. These events highlight the need for novel theoretical insights on the developmental needs and trajectories of diverse youths’ development, with an understanding that childhood status neither provides the same level of risk and challenge across race, ethnicity, gender, or immigration status nor accessible and equal quality supports given long-term systemic traditions of inequality. However, outcome evaluations across groups occur without acknowledgment of long-term untoward systemic practices. Accordingly, differences function at the various levels of the social ecology of development as problematic stereotyping. Specifically, then, it is imperative that research ameliorate the pernicious effects of inequality presence denial. The effects of not operationalizing the role of inequality in contexts, not accounting for those elements that are either difficult to measure or too costly to incorporate into a research design, are costly (see Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Lodato, Spencer, Rich, Graziul, English-Clarke, Henry, Votruba-Drzal and Miller2019). It is important to note openly that acknowledging inequality can be uncomfortable and unpopular. Nonetheless, the failure to acknowledge inequality can result in ascribing adverse outcomes to youths who, in fact, are the site of unmeasured effects from residing and being educated in high-risk contexts. The effects of inequality further add to the unavoidable status of human vulnerability. The point emphasized is that the outcomes of stable inequality is a no-win for diverse youths frequently viewed through the lens of their failure to “meet the mark.” Accordingly, our highlighting inequality presses for the use of a model for understanding childhood that reveals the interactions of human beings and their contexts as a composite variable. In our use of a vulnerability-resiliency framework, which accomplishes the framing, unique opportunities are unveiled. The use of PVEST (Spencer, Reference Spencer and Taylor1995, Reference Spencer, Lerner and Damon2006 Reference Spencer, Damon and Lerner2008) provides an opportunity for understanding variability of resource access and coping processes linked to life course ego identity development and patterned outcomes. This celebratory edited volume honoring Edward Zigler provides an opportunity to emphasize the variability in human vulnerability and to accentuate authentic strategies for effectively supporting what amounts to trauma exposed youths and particularly young children.

Maximizing Conceptual Opportunities: Diverse Perspectives Regarding Human Vulnerability

There are varieties of perspectives about human vulnerability status. For example, Cardona (Reference Cardona, Bankoff and Frerks2013) characterizes vulnerability as an internal risk and suggests that all forms of risk share a common division between reality and possibility. In other words, interpretable from Cardona's definition is that perception matters. Others have theorized vulnerability “as the risk of exposure and loss of control, as a construct through which to understand people's feelings of insecurity and unsafety” (Carlson, Reference Carlson2014; Killias, Reference Killias1990). Fineman (Reference Fineman2008) argues that vulnerability is perceivable as a universal, constant, and inherent part of the human condition. In contrast to the traditional model of equal protection, he proposes a “post-identity” inquiry concerned with privileges and structures that manage vulnerabilities and aims to move “toward a more substantive vision of equality.” (Fineman, Reference Fineman2008, p. 1). There are differences in the definitions and use of the construct, however, there are also overlapping “grains of commonality.”

Hurst (Reference Hurst2008) explores vulnerability in the context of research ethic and proposes a three-part taxonomy: consent-based, harm-based, or comprehensive. Consent-based vulnerability refers to those who are unable or limited in their ability to protect their own interests thus rendering them at risk to abuse by others. Harm-based refers to those social groups that are more susceptible to outside interventions (harms) because of physical or mental dispositions. Comprehensive-based vulnerability refers to a combination of the other two; emphasizing the limited ability to defend their interests as well as their own risks associated with group membership. Gilson (Reference Gilson2011) agrees on the universality and pervasiveness of vulnerability but suggests that it is neither positive nor negative. Instead Gilson suggests that vulnerability embodies conceptions of passivity, affectivity, openness to change, dispossession, and exposure. Taken together, Gilson argues that in contrast to seeing vulnerability negatively, it actually represents a condition that makes other conditions possible.

Some have divided discussions of vulnerability into two broad categories: social and physical (Rader, Cossman, & Porter, Reference Rader, Cossman and Porter2012; Skogan & Maxfield, Reference Skogan and Maxfield1981). Physical vulnerability refers to physical characteristics that increase one's feelings of being vulnerable to victimization. Gender, age, and health are the most notable examples of this form of vulnerability. In contrast, social vulnerability involves social characteristics that enhance feelings of vulnerability at different levels. Contextually this can include environmental hazards including neighborhood crime/violence (Rader et al., Reference Rader, Cossman and Porter2012) or areas prone to natural disasters or the impact of climate change (Carmalt, Reference Carmalt2014). On the individual level, this can also mean race and SES. There are, of course areas, where these forms of vulnerability overlap as in for example the elderly during natural disasters (Gilson, Reference Gilson2011).

Highly significant is that Zigler's (Reference Zigler2010) feedback regarding the Head Start Impact study is quite correct. That is, following Head Start program completion, there are risks and challenges potentially significant for increasing human vulnerability and later achievement and social progress levels that early Head Start enrollment can neither prevent, decrease, nor neutralize. Rader et al. (Reference Rader, Cossman and Porter2012) suggest the importance of this interplay noting that neighborhood conditions “may lead to an increased perception of social vulnerability which may, in turn, lead to increased levels of fear of crime. Likewise, existing physical vulnerabilities are likely to negatively affect the existence of neighborhood disorder. Therefore, focusing on individual level vulnerability within a neighborhood disorder context is an important aspect of fear of crime research.” (Rader et al., Reference Rader, Cossman and Porter2012, p. 135). They explore this idea in a nationally representative sample of Americans using self-reported feelings of being unsafe as a proxy for fear of crime. They found that physical vulnerability and social vulnerability are directly related to fear of crime, but the mediating effects highlight a relationship among the social and physical vulnerability indicators. They also suggest that the “effects of social vulnerabilities, in relation to their association with fear of crime, work indirectly through some physical vulnerability indicators and likewise the effects of some physical vulnerability indicators are directly linked to social vulnerability indicators.” (Rader et al., Reference Rader, Cossman and Porter2012, p. 140).

As described elsewhere (e.g., see Spencer, Reference Spencer and Taylor1995, Reference Spencer, Lerner and Damon2006, Reference Spencer, Damon and Lerner2008; Spencer, Swanson, & Harpalani, Reference Spencer, Swanson, Harpalani, Lamb, Coll and Lerner2015), the conceptual strategy used in this article is informed by James Anthony (Reference Anthony, Anthony and Koupernik1974). It promulgates that human vulnerability suggests a tendency toward apprehension and fearfulness and is universally present. It implies the presence of conditions of risk and protection. As such, Anthony refers to highly vulnerable individuals as those who might not be indelibly injured as long as the environment is safe, responsive and predictable (e.g., one may be highly impoverished but psychological and physical safety serve as buffers). That said, PVEST capitalizes on Anthony's (Reference Anthony, Anthony and Koupernik1974) perspective and also represents elements of the previously reviewed perspectives referenced (also see Spencer, Reference Spencer, Lerner and Damon2006, Reference Spencer, Damon and Lerner2008; Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Swanson, Harpalani, Lamb, Coll and Lerner2015; Spencer, Dupree, & Hartmann, Reference Spencer, Dupree and Hartmann1997; Spencer, Fegley, & Dupree, Reference Spencer, Fegley and Dupree2006a,Reference Spencer, Harpalani, Cassidy, Jacobs, Donde, Goss, Wilson, Cicchetti and Cohenb). As a synthesis developmental systems life course theoretical framework, PVEST provides a heuristic device for understanding and demonstrating the unique and undergirding coping and adaptive processes that matter for an individual's stable identity process. The latter becomes associated with particularly patterned outcomes given the developmental tasks confronted at the various life course stages. Using PVEST as a template, it is also useful, then, to engage the role of privilege for making meanings and the contributions of critical race theory (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, Reference Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas1995; Delgado & Stefancic, Reference Delgado and Stefancic2001; Roediger, Reference Roediger1994) for appreciating differences in human vulnerability.

Meaning Making in Identity Development

Centered on the premise that all humans are vulnerable as a function of shared humanity status, Spencer's PVEST engages the dynamic nature of development, (Spencer, Reference Spencer, Lerner and Damon2006; Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Lodato, Spencer, Rich, Graziul, English-Clarke, Henry, Votruba-Drzal and Miller2019). With a particular eye on the contextual risks and protective factors, the strategy unpacks factors that can undermine or strengthen developmental trajectories for diverse youth (i.e., human variation as a function of gender, race, immigration status, ethnicity variation). Particularly informed by context-sensitive insights by early ecological psychologists, Robert Barker, Paul Gump, and Herbert F Wright (e.g., see, Barker & Gump [Reference Barker and Gump1964]; Wright [Reference Wright1967]), clinically oriented psychologists such as James Garbarino (Reference Garbarino1982), and most significantly contained in Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, it provides a robust conceptual and empirical framework. With the critical goal to understand a given context's dynamic and interlinked components (Bronfenbrenner, Reference Bronfenbrenner1986), Spencer's PVEST describes the meaning-making or perceptual dimension of how diverse youths’ identity develops – that is, who they are, is determined by their experiences and understanding of the risks and supports in their environments. PVEST is a system-based, identity-centered theory of human development that holds, as highlighted previously, that all humans are vulnerable. The reinforced perspective is that basic humanity makes vulnerability unavoidable; the status transcends racial, ethnic, SES variation. PVEST also accounts for what Spencer has termed “the downside of privilege.” It is illustrated in youths who experience high supports (e.g., material wealth and social status by virtue of membership in a dominant racial group, Whites, in the case of the Unites States) may not have had the opportunity to develop coping skills to engage high risks. The dilemma results in the adoption of maladaptive coping which, in extreme cases, can be harmful to both self and others. Of course, as a cultural norm, White privilege is not the only link between identity, learning, and culture but also represents as global exemplars (e.g., see Spencer, Bertrand, Harris, & Velez, Reference Spencer, Bertrand, Harris, Velez, Nasir, Lee, Pea and Royston2020). Particularly salient to the United States, given the nation's under-acknowledged history of slavery, dehumanization practices, and systemic oppression, there are contemporary residuals made evident with the concerns of the Black Lives Matter Movement's demonstrations noted which have extended around the globe. White privilege is one down-sided manifestation of the stable and uneven privilege status phenomenon (see Ansary & Luthar, Reference Ansary and Luthar2009, Spencer, Dupree, & Fegley, Reference Spencer, Fegley and Dupree2006). Of course, one question salient for early childhood programming is the character, form, and onset of the particular mindset of concern.

The yawning social and economic inequality present in US society lays bare in the devastating social impacts of COVID-19, revealing the elemental risks of applying an efficiency-driven rather than human-driven approach in theoretically motivated social scientific research, and any ensuing empirical strategies that can drive additional research and policy priorities. As the United States looks ahead to a post-COVID-19 era, and evaluates effective approaches to support early childhood development based on Zigler's Head Start accomplishments, new modelling is required. Specifically, theoretically informed research and policy interventions will find success by actively avoiding the denial of the presence of inequality and alternatively engaging youth development from a strengths-based perspective centered on context awareness and the cultivation of stable coping mechanisms that promote positive identity development of diverse youth. PVEST-motivated inquiry centrally positions the incorporation of the dynamic interplay of human vulnerability status with the context, enhancing the empirical and explanatory value of research and policy interventions.

Stable Status, Dynamic Contexts

Spencer's PVEST holds as a foundational tenet that all humans are vulnerable and, as such, in examining the development of youths and their identity development processes, the theory ascribes an a priori status of vulnerability that is intrinsic. A dynamic environment presents a variety of risks of varying levels in which the coping skills required may or may not be developed sufficiently to meet developmental tasks. It is here that the protective factors available in the form of supports can aid in cultivating emergent adaptive coping skills in service to positive identity development.

Given Spencer's PVEST acknowledges that identity development processes do not occur in a static context, variability and the multileveled nature of vulnerability set the context as a key agent that can affect identity development outcomes. In addition, the cultivation of adaptive or maladaptive coping strategies when encountering risks is critical to positive identity development. Children of color – too frequently designated as the “other” – therefore may be denied entitlement to fundamentally human developmental processes; this can exacerbate risks these children encounter. For example, Goff, Jackson, Di Leone, Culotta, and DiTomasso (Reference Goff, Jackson, Di Leone, Culotta and DiTomasso2014) find that there is a dehumanization of Black boys; the pattern permits a form of “moral exclusion” regarding what is considered appropriate treatment of Black boys, in which they are dehumanized and “treated with adult severity” (Goff et al., Reference Goff, Jackson, Di Leone, Culotta and DiTomasso2014). Epstein, Blake, and Gonzalez extends Goff's findings on Black boys in revealing the deleterious effects of the “adultification” of young Black girls; accordingly, “Black girls [are viewed] as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers, especially in the age range of 5–14…Black boys are more likely than their white peers to be misperceived as older, viewed as guilty of suspected crimes and face police violence if accused of a crime.” (Epstein, Blake, & Gonzalez, Reference Epstein, Blake and Gonzalez2017, p. 1). In addition, Spencer et al. (Reference Spencer, Fegley and Dupree2006) note the physical health challenges experienced by Black girls due to the higher expectations placed upon them (see Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Fegley and Dupree2006a). The separation of young children from their families at the US–Mexico border also constitutes dehumanizing treatment of immigrant youths due to a denial of their vulnerable status as human beings. These examples of extreme risk for which youths do not have adequate coping or sufficient supports can have consequences for development that can endure over the life course. PVEST holds that processes underway (i.e., cultivating of adaptive coping mechanisms to address encountered risks) should be the priority for all children, with supports in service to positive identity development. This shifts the discussion toward a more inclusive model that acknowledges humanity of all children.

That said, the seminal contributions of Zigler's groundbreaking work on early child development has been elemental in driving prescriptions for policy and research priorities engaging the unique needs of children in poverty. PVEST builds on this research tradition by offering insights on how to engage the needs of diverse youths from a strengths-based, rather than deficits-centered, frame of analysis. “Gap analyses” have limited explanatory value as they rely on depicting diverse youths as the “other” in relation to White youths who are the demographic majority. These are not new insights as Zigler's critique suggests; however, there appears to be somewhat of a motivated forgetfulness in the social science community that remains specifically associated with economics, sociology and traditional developmental psychology efforts, as previously referenced. The proclivity as a conceptual shortcoming – once more redundantly commented on by Spencer (Reference Spencer2019) and may be inferred from Zigler's (Reference Zigler2010) analysis – is illustrated by this statement that is often attributed to Einstein:

Head Start alone is an early childhood programmatic experience and opportunity that does not function as a life course inoculant; thus – even with supportive parental training – it cannot insure individuals against subsequent systemic and adverse encounters of children and resource-thin supportive adults.

Psychohistoric Moment: The Launch of Head Start and the War on Poverty

As a source of empirical insights on the effects of a nationwide initiative focused on children's development, Head Start is a policy program deeply rooted in a unique moment in US history. Launched on May 18, 1965, Head Start was a part of a seminal suite of programs created by President Lyndon B. Johnson to eradicate poverty. A key program within Johnson's War on Poverty, Head Start was envisioned to “Break the cycle of poverty, providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs. A key tenet of the program established that it be culturally responsive to the communities served, and that the communities have an investment in its success through the contribution of volunteer hours and other donations as nonfederal share.” (Office of Head Start, 2019). Initially enrolling 560,000 children in 1965, by 2019 Head Start served over 36 million children across 50 US states and territories. Over the years, the program has moved from a summer program to a full-day program, evolving its focus and expanding its reach to reflect population trends so it is inclusive of diverse constituencies in need of its services. Within five years of its launch, the program made one of its significant refinements by requiring parent participation in order to enhance parenting skills. Between 1976 and 1980, the program developed a bilingual curriculum for Spanish-speaking children and issued guidance to include children with disabilities. Based on its 1991 report Multicultural Principles for Head Start Programs, in 2010 Head Start refined its recommendations to individual Head Start centers on practices and procedures that embrace cultural diversity and English language acquisition. (Office of Head Start, 2008). While the program acknowledges increasing cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity within the programs, recommendations for updates continue to prioritize language acquisition as a key enhancement, framing these changes as predicated on the concept of culture as “dynamic and complex” (Office of Head Start, 2008, p. 41) and, without mention of racial or ethnic discrimination, centers are encouraged to realize the presence of negative stereotypes and avoid them (Office of Head Start, 2008, p. 27). Of course, given the continuation of systemic racial and class bias, the attenuation of authentic support but significant and increasing threats to well-being (e.g., a global pandemic), there remain added and unacknowledged threats to the efficacy of Head Start, making Zigler's insights (Reference Zigler2010) more poignant, in need of additional supports and not sources of misinterpretation.

Unfinished Work and Fragile Achievements: From Brown v. Board to the War on Poverty

Sixty-six years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, and 56 years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act, the United States continues to struggle with realizing the ambition of an equal and just society. Societal shocks over the last 10 years, notably the Great Recession of 2008 and the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, have revealed deep cleavages that require a reassessment of the key assumptions that govern theoretically motivated social scientific research broadly, and developmental research more specifically. The Great Recession was an historic shock that resulted in job losses and disastrous economic effects not experienced since the Great Depression with implications for human development (Nichols Lodato, Reference Nichols Lodato2018). While it was declared over in 2012, the recessionary effects endured for many years after with the loss of economic security felt greatest among African American and Latinx communities. The Global Pandemic COVID-19 has become both a health and economic crisis of epic proportions for persons around the globe, with African American and Latinx communities in the United States suffering particularly lethal consequences. Compared to their White counterparts, members of these communities have job losses at higher rates and have suffered higher rates of infection and mortality, with death from the virus six to seven times higher than White in some areas (see Laurencin and McClinton, Reference Laurencin and McClinton2020; Yancy, Reference Ancy2019). For youths who already experience high levels of risk because they live at or below poverty level in lower-resourced environments, many encounter morbid risks as they navigate lives in which sources of supports found in their families, schools, and communities are significantly reduced, disrupted or eliminated altogether.

From the re-emergence of school segregation (see Frankenberg, Ee, Ayscue, & Orfield, Reference Frankenberg, Ee, Ayscue and Orfield2019) to challenges passing a federal anti-lynching law (Fandos, Reference Fandos2020) to racial health outcome disparities noted above – further compounded by the COVID-19 virus – the negative effects of discrimination and economic inequality matter deeply. They continue to be modeled based upon hypothetical scenarios that assumed systems as (a) functional and (b) neutral are now contradicted by the growing set of descriptive statistics showing patterned effects of these shocks by race and income level and SES. Furthermore, the assumed conditions of equality in access to education, health care, and housing are frequently revealed as fragile in many cases and, in some cases, illusory (see Rothstein, Reference Rothstein2017 for discussion of how discriminatory housing policies affected schooling policy). John Hope Franklin, in reflecting on the unfinished work in education 50 years after the Brown decision, stated:

“America's birth mark” permeates understanding of developmental processes of children of color as “othered” and, thus, distinctive from “standard” developmental processes observed among majority members of society. This dissonance between the aspirations for and realities of equality is undeniable. That said, the following question is proposed to engage the effects of inequality on developmental processes:

Specifically, ascertaining the interacting effects of economic inequality, educational deprivation, wage depression, jurisdictional discriminatory practices (i.e., levels of adverse and positive encounters with police; incarceration rates by geography; familial exposure to the judicial system) are salient to the development of nuanced, comprehensive investigation of the developmental trajectories of youths. It is important to note that the measurement of SES is a multifaceted construct comprising varying factors. (NCES, 2012

• • If a geographic context has historically engaged in policies that actively discriminated against groups based on race, ethnicity, or other characteristics, what is the empirical strategy to account for measuring effects?

• • How are the meaning making processes accounted for when modeling developmental trajectories?

PVEST provides guidance on its empirical applications to derive robust insights on the risks and the cultivation of coping in high-risk environments (Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Lodato, Spencer, Rich, Graziul, English-Clarke, Henry, Votruba-Drzal and Miller2019). Involving the considerations noted above supports building measures that incorporate the realities of inequality and captures the phenomenological perspectives of youths to reveal clear and robust findings on how diverse youths engage with developmental tasks.

Dimensions of Vulnerability and Risk: Interplay of Race, Ethnicity and Conceptualizations of Poverty in US Context

“Othering” of children of color that denies that inherent strengths and humanity consigns them to a status that does not properly interrogate the absence of supports for positive identity development to offset exacerbated risk. The historic moment defined by pandemic, economic insecurity and acknowledged racial strife dictates inclusion of a category of risk beyond high risk that diverse youths must engage: morbid risk. When considering the lethal implications of combined risk of racial and ethnic discrimination along with living in poverty, marred by extreme paucity of supports and resources, the advantages granted certain groups by virtue of skin color, bring into stark relief privileges that neutralize risks that diverse youth living in less resourced areas face on a regular basis.

The particular insights of Spencer et al. (Reference Spencer, Harpalani, Cassidy, Jacobs, Donde, Goss, Wilson, Cicchetti and Cohen2006b) around the saliency of White privilege in the theorizing of human development, particularly in evaluating the developmental trajectories of diverse youth, merits focus, as noted earlier in this article. Social scientific theoretical frameworks – in general – frequently fail to interrogate the role of structural racism and discriminatory practices at work in the lived contexts of youths and their families. For example, Bronfenbrenner's macrosystem, exosystem, and ecosystem that infer racism and discrimination as emanating from a neutral-functioning sets of systems miss the opportunity for a more robust assessment of those dimensions that expand the conceptualizing of normative developmental pathways. Alternatively, Spencer et al. note, “…by ignoring the fact of race and ethnicity linked negative social structural conditions and associations with resiliency, the omission further compromises individual coping and allows the continued interpretational liberties about youth of color that frequently and narrowly label their lives and efforts as suggesting solely deviancy, pathology, deficits and problems.” (Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Fegley and Dupree2006a, Reference Spencer, Harpalani, Cassidy, Jacobs, Donde, Goss, Wilson, Cicchetti and Cohenb, p. 629)

Human Development and Human Capital

Studies have evaluated the effects Head Start and other early childhood programs utilizing theories of human capital to motivate their empirical strategies (e.g., Johnson & Jackson, Reference Johnson and Jackson2019). In their work, Heckman and Mosso link the purpose of early child development for the development of skills that can prompt social mobility (Heckman & Mosso, Reference Heckman and Mosso2014). Evaluating the objectives of life course developmental in creating skills, Heckman and Mosso state:

Human Capital theory, which has matured as a central, motivating framework throughout the social sciences (for example, see Tan, Reference Tan2014 for a discussion of human capital theory in education research), centralizes the importance of human beings as rational actors in a market economy. As the construct has radiated throughout the social sciences, the dimensions of the identity developmental processes in context need to be interrogated for the explanatory value they can bring to expanding how to support healthy human development in all its facets.

Using education as a site of skill development, Nichols Lodato (Reference Nichols Lodato2018) highlights the evolution of human capital theory's encounter with education, accounting for how educational attainment has been used as an index of how a person's role in society is defined and actualized. Dewey's call for an education system that develops productive workers clearly situated education as an elemental force in developing ideal citizens for society, with the students emerging from their educational training poised to assume their appropriate roles in a rapidly advancing society undergoing a technological revolution in the early twentieth century (Dewey, Reference Dewey1915). While Dewey held primary interest in the development of citizens in a democratic society, Schultz, in framing investment in human capital, highlighted the significant returns in the form of higher earnings for workers who pursue additional education (Schultz, Reference Schultz1961). Becker's work further expanded the notion of human capital, posting that citizens are of value to the market and play a central role in the generation of profits that can improve their overall well-being by improving their skills (Becker, Reference Becker1964). Bourdieu seeks to bridge the sociological and economic perspectives by describing various forms of capital, identifying other categories of capital, such as embodied capital and cultural capital, that can accrue to an individual and impact their success in a broader labor market (Bourdieu, Reference Bourdieu and Richardson1986). Coleman's theorizing of social capital, on the other hand, sought to repair deficiencies he observed in sociology's conceptualization of the role of social systems which deprived individuals of an “engine of action” and economics’ theorizing about human capital which assumed unrealistically atomistic motivating factors governing individual behavior (Coleman, Reference Coleman1988).

A human development lens that considers meaning making in context in support of identity development expands the terrain for theoretical reasoning beyond a rational actor's utility to the market. The investigation of an individual's dynamic relationship with the context, as advanced by PVEST and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory (EST), stages investigation into the explicit and nuanced components driving identity development. Accordingly, as noted by PVEST, identity development processes are intrinsically shaped by how individuals make meaning of the risks encountered, supports available, and coping strategies cultivated over the life course. This occurs in a series of systems and contexts. When the systems and contexts where individuals and supports, such as family, schools, organizations, reside are undermined by the presence of unequal distribution of resources – that is, inequality, based on racial and ethnic discriminatory practices – then the sources may cease to deliver the full complement of support as intended or described. In addition, PVEST holds that if a support is not understood as such it can be rendered effectively inaccessible. As such, if programs designed to promote development are evaluated through the lens of their efficacy in the cultivation of human capital rather than the complexity of identity development processes, without accounting for dimensions of inequality and racial and ethnic discrimination, then the explanatory value of the findings will be consistently limited.

The study of inequality by the work of economists such as Chetty, Saez, and Pikkety highlights inequality as an empirically proven economic phenomenon worthy of study and inclusion in models of economic behavior, acknowledging the effects on life outcomes of individuals. Here, the study of inequality as a measurable variable that can produce negative effects creates the conceptual space where economics and human development find common cause in de-centering human development as a process of maximizing utilization of human capital, but rather can situate inequality as a factor impacting the systems and networks where individuals reside. Furthermore, acknowledging that inequality exists as an empirical fact then necessitates consideration of the violent effects of poverty on development for all children, with particular virulent effects on youths of color who are also impacted by the heightened, morbid levels of risks owed to discriminatory practices in the education, health, and judicial systems in the United States