The actions to take would appear to depend upon whether one wishes to have fewer adults with lifetime ADHD symptoms, or more*.

The childhood adversities to affect either way are from [RutterQuinton77] and listed in TFA's Table S1, abbreviated here:

  *Low educational level  parent with neither school nor training
  *Overcrowding           more than 1.0 person/room or housing<=50m2
  Parental disorder       moderate to severe DSM-III-R
  Parental history        insitutionalised/deliquent/changes of parental figure
  Marital discord         low partnership in 2 of {harmony,communication,warmth}
  *Early parenthood       a parent <=18 (birth) or relationship <6 months (conc)    
  *One-parent family      (at birth)
  *Unwanted pregnancy     an abortion was seriously considered
  *Poor social network    lack of friends & help in child care
  Severe chronic probs    affecting a parent for more than 1 year
  Poorly coping parent    with stressful events of past year

EDIT: TFA uses different measures, discussed in the section "Definition of Rutter’s indicators of adversity (RIA)":

  low social class     both parents
  marital discord      parents not at same address
  large family size    4+ children
  paternal criminality
  maternal disorder    ICD-8: 290–315 or ICD-10: F00-F99
  foster placement

I don't know what the solution is but using government to replace or supplement the kind of support that people traditionally got from their family, friends and network has only reduced the strength of those support streams over the decades.

To call out one well studied example, you can't just do first order stuff like extend bennies to single moms because then people won't get married in the first place and it's easier to split up if you're not married then you've got a legit single mom on your hands with all the poorer outcomes that entails. You can play whack a mole refining the rules forever but that has its own problems.

It's logically possible this doesn't reduce single and early parenthood (although I bet someone had measured), but even in that unlikely event I don't see how it would adversely affect family, friends, or networks either.

Who says that the welfare programs exacerbate the problems?

Perhaps it is the lack of welfare programs (particularly in the US, the richest country in the world) that causes so much social problems (compared to less rich European countries).

Refusing to provide support to an person who wants to leave a relationship leads to several other factors, some on this very list. Indeed, staying in a dysfunctional, unwanted, potentially abusive relationship, just because finances force you to, is worse than the alternative.

It's better for society if people get married, (or perform some other socially agreed upon ritual that both requires investment and signals future investment) BEFORE they start cranking out the crotchfruit. Extending more aid to people who skip this step than those who go through it leads to predictable outcomes.

I get that it's really easy to play this off as some sort of pro-woman thing and try and send the discussion careening off into left field by bringing up domestic violence but we both know that's a red herring.

Edit: It was a mistake to reply to this comment at all. This is all a side discussion (ironic considering the subject of TFA). My point wasn't that you can't have government do things. The point was that you can't just pick a metric and turn government loose trying to address it. The goal of historical welfare was to subsidize basic necessities with certain groups getting priority that was generally accomplished (the programs exist, they doll out bennies pursuant to the rules) but it didn't yield the expected improvement on other fronts as intended and in the process we minted a class of people who are all but trapped in a multi-generational cycle of dependance upon the welfare system.

The children of dysfunctional, unwanted, and potentially-abusive relationships speak for themselves: Given a couple with a kid, in a dysfunctional, unwanted, potentially-abusive relationship (marriage or otherwise), it's better for them to end the relationship. Raising a child in such an environment leads to all sorts of disorders (as described in this very article), and is worse than a single parent or separated parents properly raising the child with adequate support, financial and otherwise.

Unfortunately we cannot hand-wave away dysfunctional relationships, unwanted relationships, abusive relationships (to say nothing of domestic violence), and all that comes with them, no matter how easy it is, how much we wish we could, or which fish you wish to change the subject to.

Maybe... just maybe... the US does not have enough social policies to assist the most vulnerable?

While you are being all edgy and misanthropic and childfree or whatever, you do realize that you are included in this definition?

Also arguing that government support reduces the strength of family networks really needs some serious citation to back it up.

there's a lot of assumption of causation with no backup.

in particular I'd mention that there are countries with far more extensive welfare programs with measurably better social outcomes, so maybe there's something else going on

kinda like autism numbers are going up, but that might simply be because of increased diagnosis. or how "gay" isn't a new thing that's just trending -- the romans and greeks (and ottomans, and the tang dynasty, etc.) were also pretty damn gay too.

all super common stuff, just not logged as much

Reduce early life adversity.

Though popular reporting on these types of papers will often have speculation from the journalist