Good health begins early in life. In the first years of childhood,
the family is charged with responsibilities for the care and development of the child. In healthy families, children learn that they
can count on the environment to provide for their emotional
security and their physical safety and well-being, and they acquire
behaviors that will eventually allow them to maintain their own
physical and emotional health independent of caregivers. From this
vantage point, a healthy environment for a child is a safe environment; it provides for a sense of emotional security and social
integration and it offers certain critical social experiences that lead
to the acquisition of behaviors that will eventually permit the child
to engage in effective self-regulation (Basic Behavioral Science
Task Force of the National Advisory Mental Health Council,
1996). Poor health also begins early in life. Research consistently
suggests that families characterized by certain qualities have damaging outcomes for mental and physical health. These characteristics include overt family conflict, manifested in recurrent episodes of anger and aggression, and deficient nurturing, especially
family relationships that are cold, unsupportive, and neglectful.