The developmental psychology literature has linked childhood adversities to detrimental development outcomes that can undermine labor market participation and performance. In contrast, emerging entrepreneurship studies raise the possibility that childhood adversities may positively affect entrepreneurial action with some diverging findings. We reconcile these opposing theoretical perspectives in their effects on entrepreneurial entry by theorizing that childhood adversities are a mixed blessing for entrepreneurship and affect entry through two countervailing theoretical mechanisms. Childhood adversities increase the likelihood of entrepreneurial entry by promoting rule-breaking tendency and simultaneously decrease the likelihood of entry by negatively impacting individual ability (self-efficacy and educational attainment). We further theorized that childhood adversities have different implications for different types of entrepreneurial entry (incorporated and unincorporated) and for men versus women. We tested our hypotheses on a longitudinal sample of 4222 individuals from the NLSY79 child and young adult cohort data, which tracks the development of children born to a representative sample of U.S. young women from childhood through youth to adulthood. Our study offers new insight into the effects of childhood adversities on entrepreneurship, including gender-specific manifestations and outcomes of childhood adversities.

发展心理学文献将童年逆境与可能破坏劳动力市场参与和绩效的有害发展结果联系起来。相比之下，新兴的创业研究提出了童年逆境可能对创业行为产生积极影响的可能性，但有一些不同的发现。我们将这些对立的理论观点调和在它们对创业进入的影响上，将童年逆境作为创业的喜忧参半并通过两种相互抵消的理论机制影响进入。童年逆境通过促进违反规则的倾向增加创业进入的可能性，同时通过对个人能力（自我效能和教育程度）产生负面影响来降低进入的可能性。我们进一步推断，童年逆境对不同类型的创业进入（公司和非法人）以及男性和女性有不同的影响。我们对来自 NLSY79 儿童和青年队列数据的 4222 名个体的纵向样本测试了我们的假设，该样本追踪了美国年轻女性代表性样本从童年到青年再到成年所生子女的发育情况。我们的研究为童年逆境对创业的影响提供了新的见解，包括特定性别的表现和童年逆境的结果。我们对来自 NLSY79 儿童和青年队列数据的 4222 名个体的纵向样本测试了我们的假设，该样本追踪了美国年轻女性代表性样本从童年到青年再到成年所生子女的发育情况。我们的研究为童年逆境对创业的影响提供了新的见解，包括特定性别的表现和童年逆境的结果。我们对来自 NLSY79 儿童和青年队列数据的 4222 名个体的纵向样本测试了我们的假设，该样本追踪了美国年轻女性代表性样本从童年到青年再到成年所生子女的发育情况。我们的研究为童年逆境对创业的影响提供了新的见解，包括特定性别的表现和童年逆境的结果。