There are growing levels of chaos in the lives of American children, youth, and families. Increasingly, children grow up in households lacking in structure and routine, inundated by background stimulation from noise and crowding, and forced to contend with the frenetic pace of modern life. Although widespread, chaos does not occur randomly in the population. We document that low-income adolescents face higher levels of chaos than their more affluent counterparts and provide longitudinal evidence that some of the adverse effects of poverty on socioemotional adjustment are mediated by exposure to chaotic living conditions.

Cumulative environmental risk exposure among low-income families may contribute to bad health, beginning in early childhood.

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You can never plan a week or a day ahead... one minute you're fine and the next you just can't deal.-Low-income mother describing daily life (Roy, Tubbs, & Burton, 2004, p. 174) There are many reasons why the lives of children from low-income households are more chaotic than are those from middle-and high-income households. Lowincome parents suffer from a plethora of physical and social stressors. Poor parents juggle overlapping time obligations and have fewer resources than do wealthier parents to deal with the multitude of demands and obligations they face. Low-income parents are less likely to have a dependable car; they cannot afford reliable flexible child care or after-school care; their children are enrolled less often in structured child or youth programs; and low-income parents are less likely to have a partner, who could share household management and parenting responsibilities. Residential and school relocations, which erode social networks, are more common, and family disruptions and turmoil are more frequent among low-income families (Evans, 2004). In this chapter we document linkages between poverty and low socioeconomic status (SES) and chaos, review studies examining chaos as a mediator of poverty's impacts on children, and offer preliminary thoughts about why chaos is problematic for children's development. Chaos, Poverty, and Socioeconomic StatusComponents of chaos associated with poverty and SES include household crowding, noise levels, household routines and rituals, residential and school relocation, and parental partner instability. For each of these components of chaos, we have constructed a summary table. These tables are not included because of length restrictions but can be found at http://www.macses.ucsf.edu/Research/ Social%20Environment/notebook/chaos.html. Chaos is operationalized in a few studies as a composite variable, with these results summarized in Table 7. Herein 225

This study investigated the relationship between child maltreatment and the early onset of problem behaviors in the Elmira Nurse Home Visitation Program. Participants were predominantly low-income and unmarried mothers and their first-born children who were randomized either to receive over 2 years of home-visitation services by nurses or to be placed in a comparison group. Data were drawn from a follow-up study that took place when the children were 15 years of age. Results demonstrated that, in the comparison group, child maltreatment was associated with significant increases in the number of early onset problem behaviors reported by the youth. For the youth in the nurse-visited group there was no relationship between maltreatment and early onset problem behaviors. We suggest that this finding was due to the effects of the intervention in reducing the number as well as the developmental timing of the maltreatment incidents. Results suggest that prenatal and infancy home visiting by nurses can moderate the risk of child maltreatment as a predictor of conduct problems and antisocial behavior among children and youth born into at-risk families.