Lives Across Time/Growing Up: Paths to Emotional Health and Emotional Illness from Birth to 30 in 76 People
Authors: Henry H. Massie, Nathan M Szajnberg
This book is for parents and professionals who are interested in child development. For parents it provides important information about the ingredients of parenting that lead to raising children well, as well as hazards to emotional health be aware of. For child development and child psychology specialists, the book details the findings of a 30-year prospective study that followed 76 children in collaboration with their parents, from the third trimester of pregnancy to their 30th year of life.
Lives Across Time is now over twelve years old. If it were one of our 76 children, it would be entering adolescence. But, like adolescence, one of the remarkable characteristics of human life is that while people change with time, mostly they feel inwardly the same person they have always been. We feel both enduring continuity in who and what we are, and difference over time.
As authors, we hope you, the reader, will gain new knowledge about how children grow emotionally and that this will have enduring value. We trust that Lives Across Time will offer substantial and intriguing assistance in raising children well. In the course of learning about the fascinating evolution of the children in this book into adulthood, readers may reflect on their own childhood and experience new insight into the roots of who they themselves are.
We are physicians and child psychiatrists who spent ten years studying these children who gave generously not just of their time but from their hearts with honesty. Dr. Massie summarized in the book’s introduction the multiple types of interviews and measures we used to learn about their emotional lives. But their personal stories remain most important, their words, mere air until heard by someone, to paraphrase the poetess, Sappho.
We found four subgroups, from infancy to adulthood: 1) Those with optimal parenting who have done well in life. 2) Those with less than skillful and less than thoughtful parenting who have done poorly in life. 3) Those who had good quality parenting but their outcome at age 30 went against the predicted expectation that they would be successful and psychologically sound. They had encountered later traumas such as personal illness, a parent’s severe illness, or losing a parent through a divorce (just 3 of the many kinds of traumas children some of the children faced). 4) Finally, a group of children had parenting that was lacking, but nonetheless prevailed and were enjoying life, psychological maturity, and success at age 30. In spite of severe challenges in early life, their resilience stood by them through the years.
We recognized seven core parental ingredients in infancy and early childhood that led to children having fine outcomes at 30.
- Parental dedication to their children from their earliest years on.
- Calm, reflective, and attentive caring. These parents considered their child a
person from infancy. - Maternal gentleness, warmth, and empathy.
- Parental pride in their child’s assertiveness.
- Parenting that fostered initiative and independence.
- Discipline rather than punishment.
- Mothers and fathers who were fond of and had respect for each other.
This book illustrates the details of these seven ingredients.
You will also see in the 30-year-olds reminiscences that “memory” is “clumpy,” around a nucleus of emotions that are often visual memories. You may find yourself reflecting on your own early memories and learn how they operate and affect your life today.
