The Importance of Attachment and the Science of Prevention in Child Development
In a recent podcast episode, Benjamin Perks, Head of Campaigns and Advocacy at UNICEF, shared profound insights about child development, attachment theory, and the global effort to end child maltreatment. His personal journey from growing up in residential care to becoming a leader in child protection provides a powerful narrative that underscores the importance of positive relationships in childhood development.
Ben emphasizes the concept of the “Four S’s” – secure, safe, seen, and soothed – as essential elements that every child needs to flourish. When children receive these four elements from their family, they develop resilience that protects them from adverse experiences in other environments. When family support is lacking, schools become the critical secondary buffer. The ideal situation, according to Ben, is having all three systems – family, school, and community – committed to ensuring every child experiences these four essential elements. What makes this particularly significant is that we are the first generation in history with the knowledge and resources to ensure universal access to these developmental necessities.
The podcast highlights the alarming prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their long-term impact. According to the Center for Disease Control in the United States, each adverse childhood experience significantly increases the risk of negative outcomes across 40 different well-being indicators, from addiction to poor mental health to involvement in crime. This intergenerational cycle of trauma creates what Ben refers to as “relational poverty” – the inability to form healthy relationships due to lack of early relational skills development. This pattern is observable not just in humans but across species, where similar patterns of attachment and development have been documented.
One of the most compelling arguments Ben presents is that child maltreatment can be ended through a public health approach similar to how child mortality was dramatically reduced globally. In the 1980s, when 14-15 million children died annually from preventable diseases, a targeted approach implementing four simple interventions (vaccinations, oral rehydration salts, growth monitoring, and breastfeeding promotion) reduced child mortality by 61% over a decade. Ben proposes that with similar determination and a few key interventions, we could achieve comparable results in reducing child maltreatment.
These key interventions include universal access to evidence-based parenting programs, extended parental leave, universal preschool from age three, and widespread public education about child development and trauma. According to the UN Special Representative on violence against children, while child maltreatment costs societies up to 12% of GDP through various social costs, implementing these preventative measures would cost less than 1% of GDP – making it not just a moral imperative but an economic one as well.
The podcast also explores the complex nature of intergenerational trauma, including collective trauma experienced by communities that have faced historical oppression. As Resmaa Menakem notes, people maladapt to contexts that are passed through generations; the context is forgotten, but the adaptations become culture. This perspective helps explain how trauma patterns persist in communities long after the original traumatic conditions have changed.
Ben’s’ own healing journey demonstrates that recovery is possible at any age. After recognizing the impact of his childhood experiences on his adult life, he underwent therapy that transformed his world “from black and white to color.” This personal transformation enabled him to break the cycle of insecure attachment with his own son, demonstrating that with appropriate intervention, intergenerational patterns can be disrupted. His book, “Trauma Proof: Healing, Attachment and the Science of Prevention,” combines scientific research with personal narratives of healing from around the world, offering both inspiration and practical approaches to addressing childhood trauma.
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About Ben:
Benjamin Perks is the Head of Campaigns and Advocacy in the Division of Global Communications and Advocacy at the United Nations Children’s Fund, based in New York. He leads public and policy advocacy on the development and protection of children. He previously served in human rights diplomacy roles as the UNICEF Representative and UN Resident Coordinator ad interim to both the Republic of North Macedonia and the Republic of Montenegro. In both capacities he advocated for reforms to fulfil international human rights commitments and realization of the Sustainable Development Goals. He has served in Georgia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, India and Albania. He coordinated the Back-to-School campaign in the Northern Afghanistan which brought 3 million children, including 1 million girls, into school-most of them for the first times in their lives. He has led work on demobilization of child solders, deinstitutionalization of children in state care, addressing child poverty, pre-school expansion and disability inclusion.
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Transcript:
Colby: 0:01
Welcome to the Secure Start podcast.
Ben: 0:04
This teacher took me under her wing and made a connection with me, and I say in the book that she’s the first adult that I think I really had a proper conversation with. If you grew up without family, your relational skill you have relational poverty. Your relational skills are poor often. Poverty, relational skills are poor often. So family is the primary buffer in that, when family is not able to provide that buffer, school is the next best option.
Ben: 0:34
And what’s really important in relation to my work is that we got the first generation history that can ensure that every parent is able to give the child the four S’s and that every school is able to do that too. But we now know that with three or four, similarly, with three or four simple interventions, we could dramatically reduce child trauma, child maltreatment, risk of trauma. I also think that child maltreatment is something that drives a number of social costs. According to the special representative of the Secretary General of the UN on violence against children, he says it costs us up to 12% of GDP, but the interventions I’m suggesting we make globally available will be less than 1% of GDP. We must be the last generation to see violence against children, maltreatment and trauma as being insurmountable social problems.
Colby: 1:33
Welcome to the Secure Start podcast. I’m Colby Pearce, and my guest for this episode is a global leader in child development and protection. Before I introduce my guests, I’d just like to acknowledge the Ngarrindjeri people of the Lower Murray Lakes and Coorong, on whose land that I’m coming to this podcast from, and I’d like to acknowledge the continuing connection the living Ngarrindjeri people feel to land, waters, culture and community. I’d also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. My guest this episode is Benjamin Perks, benjamin Perks.
Colby: 2:28
Ben is Head of Campaigns and Advocacy in the Division of Global Communication and Advocacy at the United Nations Children Fund, based in New York. He leads public and policy advocacy on the development and protection of children. Ben previously served in human rights diplomacy roles as the UNICEF representative and UN resident coordinator at interim to both the Republic of North Macedonia and the Republic of Montenegro. In both capacities he advocated for reforms to fulfil international human rights commitments and realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Ben has served in Georgia, kosovo, afghanistan, india and Albania. He coordinated the Back to School campaign in northern Afghanistan, which brought three million children, including 1 million girls, into school, most of them for the first time in their lives. He has led work on demobilisation of child soldiers, deinstitutionalisation of children in state care, addressing child poverty, addressing child poverty, preschool expansion and disability inclusion.
Colby: 3:47
Ben is Senior Fellow at the Jubilee Centre at the University of Birmingham in the UK, which researches education policy on character, social and emotional development of children, and he is an Associate Faculty Member at Oxford University Department of Social Policy and Innovation. Ben is recognised as a public speaker and campaigner on child development and protection. His book Trauma Proof Healing, attachment and the Science of Prevention is out now.
Ben: 4:22
Welcome, ben. Thank you very much, colby. It’s great to be with you, connecting from New York to you in Australia. I’m very glad to be on your podcast.
Colby: 4:34
Yeah, thank you, owen. Thank you very much for agreeing to be on, and I was just wondering and I give all my guests this opportunity is there anything that you’d like to add to that bio of your work?Ben: 4:48
yeah, a couple of other things. I I lead globally for the un on international day of play, which is a new ua, the outcome of a new un resolution, and obviously play is central to child development and child protection. So I’ll be talking about that, I guess, a little bit in the conversation today. But also just to add that everything I talk about today and everything that I’ve written in my book is in a personal capacity. I’m not speaking on behalf of the UN or UNICEF or anybody apart from myself today, so I just wanted to to be clear on that as well. Yeah, excellent.
Colby: 5:23
Terrific. So, ben, tell us how you got into this work that you’re, this really important work that you’re doing and have done across your career.
Ben: 5:34
I think there are three kind of major turning points. I think the first one is that I was in. I grew up the second half of my childhood in residential care in children’s homes. I was in. I grew up the second half of my childhood in residential care in children’s homes. I was in Birmingham and in London. I lived a lot on the streets, I ran away a lot, I was involved with gangs and other kinds of kinds of activities. And then suddenly at 16, I had the opportunity to become an activist in London for the rights of young people in care. And that’s my first job, my first serious job at the age of 16, a full-time activist. Um, so, so that was how I became a campaigner. That’s how a campaigner was born, I think.
Ben: 6:15
And then, secondly, a few years later, when I was at university, it was very rare for somebody from a children’s home to go to university in the UK. Uh, in those days it’s still quite rare, but it’s uh, the prospects are a little bit better now than they were back in my day. But I was really passionate at university about Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement and Gandhi. I read endlessly about their work to change the situation of segregation and structural racism in the United States. Also the effort of Gandhi to build a movement against colonialism, the passive resistance and all of this very well-disciplined campaign work, and that made me really think that I want to dedicate my life to real change, not performative work but real change that delivers outcomes. And one of my heroes in the civil rights history of the United States was a guy called Ralph Bunch who was a big figure, an African-American guy who became a big figure in the early days of the United Nations and he became kind of a hero to me and I then thought about a career in the UN.
Ben: 7:29
So at the end of my first year at university I somehow managed to organise to go to Croatia and there was a middle of a conflict Croatia and Bosnia and Croatia. I somehow went on the bus to Croatia and kind of talked my way in to a role, a temporary role, in UNICEF, and took a year out and worked on that and I was hooked. So I I had very much of like a bog standard UNICEF kind of career. I I did very well I, when I finished my master’s degree a few years later I went back to the organization and, you know, worked my way up towards being a head of office and all of that.
Ben: 8:12
But finally when, when I became a head of office, you know, in a formal diplomatic UN role I was at a meeting where there was a conversation about deinstitutionalization and somebody was talking about attachment research and I heard it for the first time. I was sitting there and I realized the guy who was talking, the professor, was talking about the outcome, the adult outcomes, of insecure attachment in childhood relationships. All of that and I saw myself in everything that he was saying. So I went into a period of therapy for a year and then I became a passionate campaigner on issues like child trauma, attachment, and that’s the journey that brought me to write the book and that added another very personal stream of work to the work I’d already been doing on children’s rights. Very long-winded answer, but those three points were crucial in bringing me to where I am now.
Colby: 9:13
Yeah, that’s awesome and I also am a little bit interested in attachment as well and written a bit about it. But do you remember the name of the fellow who who, um, first introduced you to attachment?
Ben: 9:28
but that’s yes, you know, I’m getting to an age where I think that I forget things, so it’s uh, it’s uh, it’s professor from uh university of nottingham, and it will come back to me during the course of the conversation and I’ll probably blurt it out when it comes back to me okay, awesome, so I’m just queuing your recall for that, perhaps at a later date.
Colby: 9:50
You’ve talked a bit about influences in terms of your circumstances and the roles that you’ve gotten into. Are there any people that really stand out for you as having played a role and been a big influence over your career development? And you’ve mentioned attachment. Maybe you can tell us why you think attachment is so important in your work as well so well in terms of, um, in terms of people that have influenced me.
Ben: 10:23
I write a lot in my book. My book tells lots of stories of different people, but I write a bit about my own as well, and one of the things that was transformative for me was I had a teacher when I was 15. I’d been thrown out of school. I had a best friend who’d been killed in a knife fight. I I had, uh, I was in a very tense inner city poverty care, you know situation, no parents or anything like that. But this teacher, um, somehow, in this, in his school for kids that have been kicked out of school, this teacher took me under under her wing and made a connection with me, and I say in the book that she’s the first adult that I think I really had a proper conversation with as a child.
Ben: 11:08
I was 15. And her name is Jan Report. And when I had this moment, when I listened to this professor from Nottingham giving this talk about attachment, at the end of it I went into this process of therapy. But I also tracked down my teacher in that process, because I wanted to go back and tell her what I’d done with my life and I would have done none of it without her. And so I went back and met her, having not seen her since childhood, and that was incredible. And now now every year when we go back to the UK, we go and see her. I took my son to meet her last year and so so that’s a really pivotal person.
Ben: 11:52
I also had a great social worker. At one point there was a good residential social worker in the children’s home. I had a couple of good friendships when I was young and also eventually also became kind of connected to a family that had reached out over some campaigning work that I was doing. I think that makes all the difference, because if you grow up in a without family, your relational skill you have relational poverty. Your relational skills are poor often and so you know, because you just don’t. It’s like a muscle. You have to grow relational skills and I hadn’t so many things that people learn in a family. I hadn’t really learned them.
Colby: 12:35
I grew up in a, in a survival mode, um, but somehow I managed to have these friendships and uh, attract this support and engagement, and I think all of it meant the world to me and I wouldn’t be here today without those people yeah, that’s an awesome story and it puts me in mind of two things the, the idea that comes from the one good adult research, that that all the child needs is one adult who believes in them, who’s’s there for them, who truly listens to them and helps them. And then there’s the other idea, which is that it takes a village. Now, I think both of those concepts they may be seen as being mutually exclusive, but I think that they sit comfortably alongside each other. The one helps the other, particularly the one good adult helps the other. I do think that when children grow up in adversity relational adversity the more good relationships they have, the better the outcomes.
Colby: 13:40
And I was speaking to someone relatively recently and apologies if you’re listening, and it was you and I can’t remember who it was, but he talked about that it takes a village. The construct at the very beginning was referring to, or at least meant to take into account, peer relationships, so that the important role of peers in children’s up, children growing up and and and I can see how that fits with with social learning theory, for example. So I guess, attachment theory what is it about attachment theory that has influenced your, your career since that introduction?
Ben: 14:24
I want to come back to what you were just saying about peers, community, trusted adult and then lead that into the conversation about attachment and how that influences my work. So I think that you know Dr Daniel Segal and Tina Penny Bryson have this brilliant expression of I think it comes from them the four A’s, sorry, the four S’s. So it’s to be secure, safe, seen and soothed. And the idea is that for children to flourish they need to have those four S’s. If a child has them at home with the family, that’s really important, particularly for early development, uh, early childhood development, to set that secure base and safe haven. We know that early experiences we don’t remember things that happened to us before the age of two, but they are disproportionately and massively influential on the way we see the world for the rest of our life and for the opportunities that we will have and the constraints that we will have.
Ben: 15:32
So that’s really important in the family.Ben: 15:34
But if a child is not safe, seen, soothed and secure in the family, then if they have the four S’s in school, that can help to some extent to heal and prevent them going on a trajectory that is driven by trauma and toxic stress and help them to build relationships and so on.
Ben: 15:58
That’s why the teacher was so important to me by reverse, if children are safe, seen, secure and suited at home and then they go to a rough school, that resilience that they get from the forest is at home will protect them from the trauma of the school or a war zone or a gang infested neighborhood. So family is the primary buffer um in that when family is not um able to provide that buffer, school is the next best option. Certainly it’s the community um. But the idea, the ideal world is you want to have all three of those things family, school, community, committed to, intentional about ensuring that every child is secure, safe, safe, seen and soothed. And what’s really important in relation to my work is that we are the first generation in history that can ensure that every parent is able to give the child, the four S’s, and that every school is able to do that too, and we know that that can be achieved for a fraction of what is lost by not doing it. That’s how it influences my work, yeah.
Colby: 17:12
Awesome. I understand from your work you have a powerful belief that we can end child maltreatment. Tell us a little bit more about why you think that to be the case.
Ben: 17:27
Let me tell you another story that brings me back to this. In 1980, and I talk about this in the book in 1980, in University of Birmingham in the UK, an American public health professional delivered a paper in which he argued that we could I think 14 or 15 million children die every year from preventable disease that if we could just do four things if we could vaccinate every child globally, if we could provide oral rehydration salts to treat diarrheal diseases which can be deadly, if we could monitor the growth of children and if we could promote breastfeeding, then we could dramatically reduce that. Unicef and WHO got hold of that paper and had a really complex internal conversation with many people against the idea, but some of them championed the idea of making this a reality. And over the next 10 years they mobilized a coalition of royals, of heads of state, of community organizations, of religious leaders all around the world and they increased vaccine coverage, for example, from 15% of the world’s children to around 85% of the world’s children and in the decade that followed, child mortality under five mortality reduced by 61%. Everybody thought they were crazy in the beginning. Everybody thought that this was insurmountable, but they did it. And if you look back on every single um global achievement, whether it’s a massive expansion of education, whether it’s massive expansion of availability to um, to to clean water, or prevention of child labor or child marriage. There has been a really audacious drive to do that.
Ben: 19:21
Um, child maltreatment is something that is a problem everywhere. It’s not just in the global south, it’s a problem everywhere. But we now know that with three or four, similarly, with three or four simple interventions, we could dramatically reduce child trauma, child maltreatment, risk of trauma, toxic stress, all of that. Things like universal access to evidence-based parenting programs, a minimum package of parenting programs that we now know, through systematic review, can improve child outcomes, reduce risk and maltreatment and even improve parental mental health outcomes. Secondly, parental leave making parental leave a universal norm, dramatically increasing parental leave, recognising it as a public good. Thirdly, ensuring that children from the age of three in preschool are in schools where they are safe and secure and seen and soothed.
Ben: 20:22
And fourthly, making people aware. If you think about it, people are aware of influenza or the common cold or how to manage a knee injury. Right, they know this stuff. It’s part of family conversation, it’s something that’s common knowledge. Really, child maltreatment, trauma and all of that is no more complex than the transmission of influenza. It’s not more complex. It is shrouded in taboo and stigma and shame and myth. But we can break all of those myths. We can break all of those constraints and make it something where everybody’s aware of the basics to underpin those changes.
Ben: 21:01
With those interventions, I believe we could dramatically reduce child maltreatment. I also think that child maltreatment is something that drives a number of social costs, right From addiction to poor mental health, to risk of being a perpetrator or victim of all kinds of violence, from gang violence to political violence to domestic violence. It puts us at risk of poor health and poor learning outcomes. And all of that, according to the special representative of the Secretary General of the UN on violence against children, says it costs us up to 12% of GDP, but the interventions that I’m suggesting we make globally available will be less than 1% of GDP. So we lose trillions by not addressing problems before they occur at scale, and that’s something I think we’re the first generation to be able to do that, and I think, because of that, we must be the last generation to see violence against children, maltreatment and trauma as being insurmountable social problems.
Colby: 22:09
Yeah, yeah, that’s terrific. While you were speaking there, my mind was going to what the universal parental education would look like, what the intervention into schools might look like. I wonder if you would comment on each of those things.
Ben: 22:39
Sure. So in terms of the parental parenting programs, they can be delivered in a number of ways In some countries because they already are available in about 25% of countries targeted not universal Right and what? The most common format is a home visit. That home visit often it’s bundled with a health visit, and so a home visitor comes and talks to you about health things like vaccines and nutrition, but also talks to you about play, engagement, positive discipline and all of that, and often a minimum package of that. A few visits in early childhood and then, like booster sessions, critical milestones like before adolescence can make all the difference. You know as an attachment expert that Bowlby and Ainsworth said that when a parent is able to either process their own insecure attachment or come up with a strategy for parenting, they’re much less likely to transmit it. And who and oxford university and unicef and others have done a vast systematic review with um hundreds of random I think 460 randomized controlled trials all over the world and found that parenting programs really make a difference. So there should be a minimum package of visits, but then progressive, in the sense that those that need more support can get more visits. This can also be backed up by things like group sessions. In South Africa, for example, they have group sessions for parents, but also grandparents, to talk about how they can ensure the best outcomes for their children. Also, apps are beginning to show real breakthroughs. There are some apps. I think there’s an app in India that reaches 20 million people. Unicef has an app called Bebo. There are many different apps which are actually really helpful for parents who are trying to access evidence based information. So I think you can have an ecosystem that has all of these things, with quality control supported by organizations like UNICEF, who and others.
Ben: 25:11
In terms of parental leave, I think every country in the world should be having a very minimum WHO standard of six months for the birth parent and four months for the other parent, but it could be all foster parents as well, or adoptive parents. I think it should be much more. The Scandinavian countries are showing a really good model for that um. I think that’s really important. Then, having family-friendly workplaces attached to that is also a part of that, that package.
Ben: 25:29
And then schools really having um systems in place where teachers would create a system where where where children are seen and safe and secure, and where teachers are aware of trauma. They’re aware of the prevalence of trauma, because in an average classroom of 30 kids, half of the kids have experienced an adverse childhood experience, a risk factor for trauma and toxic stress. So you know, this idea from the past that you know it’s one or two kids in a class that are in touch with the social work system that are the really vulnerable kids is wrong, recognising that it is across the board and what we need to do is make sure that kids have a strong sense of belonging and uh, um and you know uh, connection with a teacher and, as you mentioned earlier, peers.
Colby: 26:28
the peers thing is really important in adolescence because, of course, in adolescence, it’s peer relationships that are the most important thing for children yeah, yeah, thank you, and um, have you had an opportunity to observe or otherwise get a sense of what the uptake of these measures might be across Western and non-Western countries, jurisdictions, western and non-Western?
Ben: 27:01
countries, jurisdictions. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of enthusiasm, very little resistance to parenting programs, which is interesting because a parenting program often is like going into the house, going into the home, but there’s a lot of hunger for parenting skills. You know, I think increasingly the world is talking about the fact that many of us grow up with intergenerational issues of trauma or or neglect at home. Um, and then even people that haven’t got that want to know what’s the best way of securing the best future for their kid. So I see a lot of um support and interest and very little resistance. I I speak to people that I interview, people in the book that are receiving parenting programmes, people that deliver them, for example, and there’s a lot of interest and I think it’s just a question of making it a normal thing, normal part of childhood, a normal part of parenting, the way that vaccines is or the way that schools are.
Colby: 28:02
Yeah, sometimes I talk about how birds don’t have bird parenting experts that teach them how to raise their birds, and neither do wolves or, you know, even the other great apes. So there is that view that parental advice and guidance is really not necessary, that we are meant to be the most sophisticated, uh, of at least of the great apes, if not of the whole entire animal kingdom, on this. How, why, why can’t, why do we need parenting experts? We, we’ve, you know, we’ve been parented ourselves. We’ve learned from the things that our parents do well and the things that our parents don’t do so well. Um, and we, we must have a, an inbred instinct, just like other members of the animal kingdom. Do what? What would you say to that?
Ben: 29:14
well, they do research on rats I think it’s. My community does research on rats and what they do is they see the same patterns of poor attachment in other animals and they see that those that are licked and groomed by their parent have much better outcomes, are much more likely to go out into the world and be a success by rat standards, right, and so it’s the same as humans. You know it’s the same as humans. We know that humans that don’t grow up with a strong sense of being safe and loved are more likely to have poorer interpersonal relationships, are more likely to do poorly in school, to be addicted, to have all of these problems.
Ben: 30:03
You know the Center for Disease Control in the United States, the major public health institution, has an index of 40 different well-being indicators, from suicide to osteoporosis to addiction, everything, everything, and there’s almost a step increase every risk of negative outcome for every adverse childhood experience a person has had. So somebody that has been suffered emotional neglect emotional via verbal violence, for example, and physical violence and witness domestic violence, for example these are four things quite common, all of them very common is multiple times more likely to have a poor outcome across all of those 40 well-being indicators. So that’s why really I think we do have an instinct, that’s why really I think we do have an instinct, but for maybe at least 40% of us, that instinct is driven by intergenerational trauma, toxic stress, neglect and violence.
Colby: 31:18
And we, now that we know because we didn’t know throughout history, now that we we know, we should be able to stop that cycle and make people you know, ensure that people can flourish yeah, it put me in mind of when you were talking about the rats, because when I’m delivering training, I’ll uh, I will talk also about another group of rats, the rats that were in skinner’s operant conditioning experiments. And people go oh, aren’t you supposed to be an attachment person rather than a behavioural person, when, in actual fact, there should be a lot. In my view, and this is what Bowlby did there should be a lot more cross-fertilisation of ideas and theories and knowledge, rather than siloing of ideas and theories and knowledge, rather than siloing Skinner with his rat experiments and the operant conditioning paradigm. It was really quite interesting because, though he didn’t go down that path at least not that I’m aware of there is a group of rats and pigeons in his research that are very much like our children, who’ve experienced grossly inadequate care, and they’re the rats and pigeons who are in an inconsistent reinforcement paradigm. They got their needs met inconsistently in response to a gesture, and the gesture was to either peck a button or push down on a lever, and the operant conditionings paradigm teaches us a lot about learning and adjustment in those circumstances. So and I also, while you were talking, I was thinking about a conversation I had with a previous guest. It may actually have been a YouTube video, I’m not sure which.
Colby: 33:07
But talking about these now, I’m hoping I’m not going to butcher it, but I think they were mosquitoes. You can put mosquitoes into a jar and they try to get out of the jar. You put all these, but if you, and if you so, they kind of go up and down in the jar. Now, if you put some clear film halfway up the jar, that prevents them going all the way to the top and and getting out after a while, you can take the clear film away and they’ll never try and jump out of the jar. They just go up and down, and that’s really interesting, I guess, until and you think, well, you know, they’ve just learnt that that’s as high as they can go.
Colby: 33:58
Well, this is where it gets really interesting, which is that their offspring also only jump as high. So their offspring don’t go out of the, notwithstanding that there’s no longer a clear film to stop them from getting out. They only go as high as their parents do, and I think that’s. You’ve spoken a little bit about the cost of child maltreatment, but that seems to bear quite significantly. Uh as well. Uh, on that, that issue, that, um. You know, what are we transmitting down through the generations?
Ben: 34:39
the, the positive psychologists, I think, would describe what you’ve just described as learned helplessness, seligman would. That’s what happens. I think that happens often with communities already beaten down. Yeah, I think that. Yeah, I guess that it’s obvious now from psychology, from neuroscience, from population level data, that a lot of these things are intergenerational, that you know they are acquired characteristics from you know that are transmitted through the culture of families.
Ben: 35:28
And, of course, resmei Mannequin, who’s a leading scholar on mental health and race in the United States, says it really well. He says that you know that people respond. He’s talking often about racism and slavery in the United States, but people respond. He’s talking often about racism and slavery in the United States, but people respond they maladapt to a context that’s passed on through generations. The context is forgotten and it becomes the culture, and I think that’s something that is often seen in communities that have been oppressed and affected by collective trauma, if they don’t have the, the holocaust and slavery and also the situation of the native American Indians and the boarding schools, which would have a lot in common with um, with with the um, aboriginal, uh and Torres Strait Islander community in Australia I hope I’m saying that correctly in Australia, um, I think, I think there’s a there’s also. We think, as well as thinking about individual, um trauma, we also need to think about communal trauma.
Colby: 36:48
Yeah, yeah, and I think the the other thing that was, I guess. Well, the thing that was going through my mind as well in relation to the, the mosquito story is I is that we can’t do nothing If we do nothing. It just gets, as you say, transmitted, transmitted through the generations. But if we can but it might be too simplistic to say this but if you can change the course or the trajectory of one generation, then you end up with perhaps a multi-generational change of trajectory. So when you talk about we had the opportunity to end child maltreatment, and the impact of doing that and the importance of that endeavour really is not just for those children and young people who otherwise would have had quite an adverse experience growing up, but you’re changing the trajectory for their life partners, their children and their grandchildren. So yeah.
Ben: 38:06
So if you look at an issue like crime, if you go to most juvenile justice facilities, the young people that are involved in crime continuously, and serious crime, over 90% have four or more adverse childhood experiences.
Ben: 38:29
If you could, um prevent adverse childhood experiences before they occur, um, from what we can see, it would have a dramatic increase on propensity to commit crime, to be involved in violence, to take risk, because risk is related to the adolescent brain.
Ben: 38:49
You know it’s adolescent brain development, right? So you have. If you have this toxic combination of poor attachment and trauma in early childhood crashing against the really complex process of adolescent brain development, you have this really high risk and almost all children at very serious risk of being exploited or being involved in crime or violence are coming from those kind of backgrounds. If you speak to people that dealt with the Epstein case the girls that were targeted or if you look at radicalisation, or look at the kind of people that end up in far right groups or people that end up addicted or victims of grooming, almost exclusively coming from very high ace backgrounds, if you could eradicate most forms of adversity by ensuring that children have the four S’s in both the family and school and community early on, then you’re going to completely transform all of those risks across society, making society a much better place for the future and for future generations.
Colby: 40:08
Yes, yeah, and one of my earlier guests was Graeme Kerridge, who has had perhaps a not dissimilar career history, as you have, except in other organisations, but he was very interesting. We’ve had a number of people who have an economics background on this on this podcast, who, um, who moved into the, this social care, uh, into the social care arena and but anyway he, graham carriage, was very interested in human capital as part of his economic background and again, this really ties in with what we’re talking about. This idea of human capital is the human capital gains of reducing or eliminating the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences is significant. Yeah, yeah, you’ve mentioned your book. Well, I mentioned it first, but then you mentioned your book a few times Trauma proof, and let me read the healing attachment and the science of prevention. And let me read the Healing Attachment and the Science of Prevention.
Colby: 41:33
I think I’ve butchered it every single time. I’ve tried to say it. But tell us about your book. Tell us. You’ve mentioned stories. I’m getting really excited about reading it now. So there you go. I haven’t read it yet, but I only just recently learned that it was already out, so I’m looking forward to it. But tell us a bit about your book and who you think it would be of most interest and usefulness to.
Ben: 42:07
Well, the first thing is I probably need a new title if it doesn’t slip off the tongue so easily, because it won’t get that kind of contagion, don’t worry about it.
Colby: 42:18
It’s not unusual for me to struggle with verbal fluency. It’s pretty, it’s a bit embarrassing being both verbose and not particularly verbally fluent.
Ben: 42:34
Oh, you’re doing fine, yeah. So I wanted to write a book that would present this argument that you could end child maltreatment, and you bring all the data together, the economics of it and all of that and all the science. So I talk about the history of attachment theory and, and, uh, the evolution of aces and our understanding of toxic stress, um, some of the economic arguments about return on investment. That comes from james james heckman at university of chicago. Loads and loads of science, but I also do lots of storytelling. Um, when I went to the agent and the publisher and said I want to do a book about how you end child maltreatment, they said that’s great, but you need to include something else as well, which is you’ve got something to say about how people heal, right, how you healed and how others heal. So it has to be about healing and prevention and attachment. So the book, in addition to putting forward the idea that we can end child maltreatment, it also argues the case that we can heal at any age. Almost everybody can go through some kind of healing process and, as a result of that um have a much better quality of life. So every chapter tells a story of somebody and the stories are from all over the world, um. So the first part of the book is really focused on kind of the, the, the, the prevalence of uh, child maltreatment, the parameters of it, what we know about it. The second part is really focused on parenting and talks about parenting programs and parental leave, but through stories. So, for example, the one on parental leave. I do a comparison between two different families, one in Alabama in the United States, where they have really harsh policies on parental leave, and one in Estonia where they have the most progressive policies in the world, and looks at what happened to the parents through both different processes. Then there’s a part about schools and community and crime. And then there’s a part about collective trauma, societal issues like myth and stigma and taboo. And the final part is really my call to action on what we should be doing about all of this. And it tells something of my own story as well.
Ben: 45:06
My own story about intergenerational the issue of healing and intergenerational trauma is kind of this you know, I lived most of my life as an outwardly successful person who was really not having um. You know the quality of life I would have because of the way that I felt inside, which is completely normal if you grow up without parents. You know, viol, the quality of life I would have because of the way that I felt inside, which is completely normal if you grow up without parents. You know Viola Davis says you grow up with this sense that you’re wrong Not that you’ve done something wrong, but that you are wrong and living with that inside me the whole time, while being outwardly successful and doing well and suppressing it. You know, it was something that I kind of thought was normal and then, when I realized that I lived with all of that trauma inside of me, um, I went through a transformation, through healing, uh, seeing a therapist and changing my life. It felt like the world went from black and white to color, and then when to colour. And then when I got married and we had our son, I held my son in my arms and I just instinctively knew or felt that what happened to me as a child was completely unimaginable to myself. The cycle had just broken. I got what you experts would call an insecure attachment, like I would walk to the end of the earth to protect, love, nurture my son. And that’s something that I thought very consciously of because I’d had to go through a lot of work to become, to become the kind of person that could instinctively feel that um.
Ben: 46:56
So that’s my healing journey, but I talk about lots of other people’s healing journeys as well. There’s a guy that was a gang member in Glasgow who was in prison and went through a process of change. There was a, a woman here from new york that was born into um to a crack affected family. Her parents died, which is very young, um, and she had a teacher that helped her and now she’s a big-time campaigner in washington dc for disadvantaged kids.
Ben: 47:23
All these amazing people, scottish member of parliament, um, who had post-natal depression, who talks publicly about it. All these different, amazing people. I got to interview them also on the Holocaust and slavery and other things, all of that. There’s a famous saying by the writer James Baldwin and I can’t quote it exactly, I’ll probably butt-tread. But you think your suffering and pain is personal, pervasive, pervasive, permanent, personal to you. But then you read dostoevsky or tolstoy and you realize that a couple of hundred years ago elsewhere in the world, people going through the same thing and like putting together these different stories of healing and trauma from all around the world, completely different cultures, but people going through broadly the same thing, I think was really cathartic for me and I think for the people I interviewed as well, and hopefully it’s uplifting for people that would read it.
Colby: 48:21
Awesome. Where can you get a copy most easily?
Ben: 48:26
Well, you know, it’s on uh. It’s on uh kindle audible audio and a hard copy. It’s available, I think, through most good bookshops where you are in australia. I get feedback from people that read in australia and in most places there is a different version in North America because there’s a different publisher. There’s a different audible audiobook in North America and the one in North America went through a second round of editing, came out a bit later, so it’s slightly different, but they’re probably the same thing. So it’s available everywhere, I think.
Colby: 49:07
I hope yeah, if it’s not, let me know you haven’t gone on done what I did. I mean, not long after my first book came out, I was on the internet to look where it was coming out and what people were saying about it.
Ben: 49:20
Yeah, yeah, I do do that. You know it generally had good reviews so far. This has been a very busy year in my regular job with the UN. You know the UN’s gone through a lot of changes and so I haven’t had as much time as I wish to promote it. But I’m going to be doing a bit more of that now. I hope it just came out at the beginning of this year. It came out in April in North America, so it’s relatively new, yeah, yeah terrific.
Colby: 49:51
It’s been awesome to have you on and have a chat to you, Ben, about your life and work. I’ve asked you a lot of questions. Is there anything you’d like to ask me before we wrap up?
Ben: 50:03
What do you think about? You’re an attachment expert. What do you think about the idea that we could be the first generation to end child maltreatment if we have a public health approach to it?
Colby: 50:18
I think, in considering my response, I think we live in slightly different worlds, and what I mean by that by saying that, is that I think where I live and work and I’m not talking about here in Adelaide, south Australia, I’m talking about the level of where I sit in terms of exposure to child maltreatment I think it can be really hard for people to think and believe or even consider that what we’re dealing with every day, what we’re seeing, what we’re immersed in, I would say, can be ended or at least significantly reduced in some way. I think we all believe that if that happened and that happened and that happened, you know we’ve all got ideas about how you could end it. I think the benefit of the argument that you’re making is that it’s a bit like the difference between thinking and metacognition. So thinking is just thinking, as we always do, the thoughts that come into our head, and those thoughts are very much linked to what’s happening, you know, to our experience of ourselves, of our surroundings, of our life, that our thoughts are very much linked to emotion. Metacognition is thinking, about thinking, and it’s that higher order thinking where we’re noticing what we’re thinking, where we’re noticing what we’re experiencing, and at that level, we are less emotionally attached to what we’re noticing as such, and this is the foundation of certain therapeutic traditions that exist now, the foundation of certain therapeutic traditions that that exist now. And so I think the benefit of what you are advocating and talking about is perhaps, um, you’ve had, you you’ve had direct personal experience and I think direct parent personal experiences is very important but you’re able, you, you’ve risen above in a way. You’ve risen above and been able to take that more, that meta view, um, and I think so, I think probably a lot of people in who work in it, in this, in those systems, I think if they had time to be able to go to a metacognitive place, to be able to, and maybe your book will help, maybe your book will be a source of tremendous comfort and inspiration for the workers on the ground.
Colby: 53:32
That’s who I’m really referring to and who I count myself one amongst, is the workers on the ground. I think the book, as you describe it, perhaps will present some hope that there are things that can be done at a systems level or a government level, a country level, an international level, that can make a meaningful impact on child protection. So that’s how I would say it is that I think. I think it’s. It’s probably hard for the people at the coalface to, but uh, but necessary for them to feel like something can be done, because when you’re at the coalface you just think, oh, it’s very hard, yeah that’s a brilliant point.
Ben: 54:31
I gave a talk recently at oxford and do a lot of practitioners there and I was describing this public health approach that I’m promoting. They said, well, what about the family that doesn’t respond to parenting? Or what about this? You know this or that, and they won’t get it? And I think it’s not.
Ben: 54:49
I think what you’re doing with the public health approach is a long-term process. Yes, right, like you, you started off in like 1980 where people thought it was normal, insurmountable, that millions of children died and then, gradually, as pieces were built on the audacity of saying that we can end this, there was a whole system, a public health system in place. Uh, that could protect you, I think. I think it’s like that. I think that you’re, you’re gonna, you know you’re gonna have, with a kind of really public health approach, you can have improvements across the board over time, but you’re always going to have those hard to reach kind of parts of the community that need more work. And I think it’s a long-term process where you change the whole culture of society around the issue over a generation. Yeah, I think that’s the approach, but we have to start the work.
Colby: 55:41
Yeah, look, and I think that in my own jurisdiction here and many jurisdictions, people at the coalface who are on the ground doing child protection work all the time. Morale is often compromised and there is a risk of people becoming quite cynical about the work, and I think it’s and that’s a shame. It’s a shame for them, but it’s also a shame for the people who come into contact with them and you know the families that are struggling, the children who can’t, for a period of time, be safely cared for at home, and I think everyone gets involved in this, wanting to make a difference. We all want it, but sometimes there’s a risk that it can seem like it will never end and there’s a degree of hopelessness.
Colby: 56:49
I think one of the power, powerful thing, messages of what you’re talking about is we’ve done it, we’ve done it before, we’ve done it in other, in other ways, in another, in other areas.
Colby: 57:02
Of course, we haven’t reduced it to zero, we haven’t eradicated all diseases, but we have had a. We have had a good and sustained crack at a number of things and seen a global, a significant global reduction, if not elimination, of um certain ills that that beset us in this life and why not? Child protection as well. And the other thing I think about that message and I often ask guests this later in the podcast I’ve avoided asking you any questions that might come hard up against your role in the UN and not wanting to be seen as speaking on behalf of the UN and not wanting to be seen as speaking on behalf of the UN. But I think a book like yours should be inspirational at multiple levels of the work and in particular, I would say, at the level of the policymakers, the level of government, the level of the policy makers, the level of government. So I think, hope, hope in a direction to get us out of, away from and towards a better future for our children, their children and grandchildren as well.
Ben: 58:27
Thank you very much and, on the back of what you just said, can I just end by saying massive gratitude to all the people that work in the child protection workforce, both in Australia and all around the world. Yeah, terrific.
Colby: 58:43
Thanks, ben, and hope to speak to you again at another time.
Ben: 58:49
Absolutely Thank you. It’s been a real pleasure. Thank you very much, Colby.
