Birmingham Karen, Iles-Caven Yasmin, Golding Jean
Centre for Academic Child Health, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Oakfield House, Oakfield Grove, Bristol, BS8 2BN, UK.
Wellcome Open Res. 2022 Jun 14;6:115. doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16732.2. eCollection 2021.
There is evidence that childhood stresses or traumas influence individuals' descendants' health and wellbeing through epigenetic mechanisms. However, few longitudinal studies have details of such ancestral data. Nearly 7,000 parents of the original Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) cohort completed questionnaires concerning their parents' and grandparents' childhoods. As part of a questionnaire validation exercise we conducted recorded interviews with 100 of these parents. Here we describe some of the vivid accounts from these interviews of stresses encountered by the parents' ancestors. The interviews provided insights into the childhoods of two previous generations of this cohort, most of whom had lived through one, if not two, World Wars. Many children were brought up, not by their parents but by relatives or acquaintances and/or left home very young to 'go into service' or start work. A few interviewees had wealthy relatives with nannies and governesses and attended expensive boarding schools but by far the most frequent accounts were of poverty, often severe, with related lack of education and illiteracy, alcoholism and violence, alongside devastating effects of the World Wars. Although the interviews focussed on stresses in childhood and therefore the accounts seemed somewhat negative, many interviewees described their relatives as having secure, stable childhoods. Of the many struggling families though, the predominant impression was their remarkable resilience; all went on to have children or grandchildren who are stable enough to participate for three decades, entirely altruistically, in ALSPAC.
有证据表明，童年时期的压力或创伤会通过表观遗传机制影响个体后代的健康和幸福。然而，很少有纵向研究能获得此类祖传数据的详细信息。在阿冯父母与儿童纵向研究（ALSPAC）队列最初的近7000名父母中，有近7000人完成了关于其父母和祖父母童年的问卷调查。作为问卷验证工作的一部分，我们对其中100位父母进行了录音访谈。在此，我们描述这些访谈中一些关于父母祖先所遭遇压力的生动叙述。这些访谈让我们深入了解了该队列前两代人的童年，他们中的大多数人都经历过一场甚至两场世界大战。许多孩子不是由父母抚养长大，而是由亲戚或熟人抚养，和/或很小就离家去“服役”或开始工作。少数受访者有富裕的亲戚，有保姆和家庭教师，还上过昂贵的寄宿学校，但到目前为止，最常见的叙述是贫困，而且往往很严重，同时还伴随着教育缺失和文盲、酗酒和暴力问题，以及世界大战带来的毁灭性影响。尽管访谈聚焦于童年时期的压力，因此这些叙述似乎有些负面，但许多受访者形容他们的亲戚有安稳、稳定的童年。不过，在众多苦苦挣扎的家庭中，最主要的印象是他们非凡的复原力；所有人都有了足够稳定的子女或孙辈，他们完全出于利他主义，参与了长达三十年的ALSPAC研究。
