Chapter 4. Early Experience and Triune Ethical Orientation

Child wellbeing in the USA is among the worst in the developed world. The American Academy of Childhood and Adolescent Psychiatry is now describing a “crisis” in children’s mental health: one in five children has a diagnosable psychiatric disorder and one in ten suffers from a mental illness severe enough to impair everyday life. A recent report found that all US citizens under age 50, regardless of background, were at a health disadvantage compared to the 16 other nations in the study. These epidemiological data, as well as recent psychiatric and neurobiological research, show signs of being linked to early life experiences and seriously challenge the status quo of modern American childrearing culture. Recently, attention has been drawn to the importance of early caregiving environments for setting development on a track toward wellbeing. Triune Ethics Metatheory postulates that experiences in early life, when brain circuitry and system thresholds are being established, influence how the brain’s functions will guide an individual throughout his or her lifespan. The capacity for agile moral functioning requires emotional self-regulation, physiological wellbeing and sociality. Emotional selfregulation involves many subcomponents such as the development of an affective core as well as the epigenetic controls of anxiety and vagus nerve function, which are critical for sociality. How well underlying physiology works in a particular situation impacts the function of higher order capacities, such as the give and take necessary for healthy, interdependent relationships. Emotional wellbeing is represented not only by secure attachment but by the repeated experience of a supportive emotional climate that encourages