Naughty by Nature?

It is hard to read any article or book about what ails children today without encountering a discussion of "ACEs," or "adverse childhood experiences." Doctors, teachers, therapists, and pundits now regularly talk about ACEs—which include parental divorce, alcoholism, poverty, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, death of a parent, etc.—with what sounds like the same kind of biological certainty as, say, blood pressure or cholesterol levels. We can just add these factors up and then spit out a "score," which will then tell us the likelihood that you will become a functional adult. If your score is too high, we can take a "trauma-informed" approach to fixing you.