It is usually difficult to separate influences of education from influences of intelligence—smarter individuals generally go further in school, are healthier, understand more about health, and live longer. So we thought it would be important to examine education and its effect among the Terman participants, all of whom were smart. Did the best-educated subjects live the longest?
Pretty much all of the Terman participants attended at least some high school and about two-thirds graduated from college, with many of them going on to get graduate degrees. That left many others who did not go to or finish college. In fact fifty-three men flunked out! They were all smart but lots of things in life mattered more than intelligence in determining who would become highly educated. Fewer than a third of those in college graduated with honors—given how intelligent they were, it seemed many did not try very hard.
We were surprised to find that level of education by itself was not a very good predictor of later health and longevity. The better-educated Terman subjects did tend to be healthier and live a little longer, but this was not an important factor compared to other personal and social predictors of health and long life that often went along with success in school. The better educated were more productive as they aged—they were more successful in their careers and more likely to continue to work, grow personally, be creative, and “do” things. But this was not primarily because of their education. Instead it was because they were the kind of persistent people who were better able and better motivated to navigate life’s personal and social challenges.
Those participants who went on to be better educated, more successful, and healthier had parents who were better educated and more successful themselves. Their parents valued the accomplishments of the highly proficient members of society. Such high expectations and supportive social environments then combined with inherent characteristics of certain children and helped push them down healthier pathways of life.
What It Means for You: Guideposts to Health and Long Life
By the time of his death in 1956, Dr. Terman and his study had discredited the stereotype of child prodigy as nerd, geek, or weirdo. Over 95 percent of these bright children were still participating in the study, and the majority continued to flourish and achieve in multiple domains. But despite their natural abilities, these people differed in their personalities, their perseverance, and the deeper education they achieved. Those who thrived in their schooling from childhood on and managed to apply their skills to interpersonal and social spheres did well not only in life but in health. Except they never did manage to polish their awful handwriting.
These days there is increasing attention to early life experiences and later life health. This is both good and bad. The good side is that health professionals are starting to recognize that many diseases of middle age have some very early origins. The bad side is that these risks are often seen as much more threatening and much less changeable than they really are. We have found that a number of important health-relevant patterns are usually launched in childhood and youth but also that these patterns can be altered and improved. In the coming chapters we’ll explore some of these in detail—patterns of marriage and divorce, good and bad exercise, career successes and failures, religions and congregations, and more.
A few aspects of school days had clear links to health and longevity: starting formal schooling at a very early age turned out not to be a very good idea for most. Many early starters strayed off the paths that would have led them to become well-adjusted adults who took care of their health. They were less likely to live a long life.
Nevertheless, not everyone was negatively affected by an accelerated academic schedule. Take, for example, Lee Cronbach. A publicly identified Terman participant, Cronbach later became well-known in the fields of educational psychology and psychological testing. When he was only four years old, Cronbach was overheard calculating the unit price of potatoes and comparing the value to be found at one market versus another.35 His mother was anxious for him to excel and enrolled him in second grade soon after his fifth birthday. At eighteen, when most boys were graduating from high school, Lee was graduating from college. Importantly, he went on to marry, have children, and build an illustrious career. He lived to be eighty-five years old. As we later found when we delved deeply into the lives, marriages, and careers of the Terman men and women, those who faced stresses early in life but who bounced back by young adulthood were able to overcome early threats to their later health.
What if you started first grade early, had a rough time in school, were kind of sickly, and never made it to graduate school? Is it time to see your doctor? Not necessarily. Many other factors turned out to be much more important on the paths to long life.
CHAPTER 7
Parental Divorce
Donna’s parents divorced in 1924, when she was thirteen years old. Donna had enjoyed her family life, and the split was hard on her. Although she went on to a successful career in advertising, she never fully recovered from the family breakup. It seemed eventually to affect her health, and Donna died in 1970, at the relatively young age of fifty-nine. We wondered if a story similar to Donna’s played out among other Terman children, and if so, what long-term paths might characterize Donna and the others. How could something that happened at age thirteen lead to death at age fifty-nine?
It is well established that divorce of parents can be harmful for the children, at least in the short term. But what about in the long term, across the decades? Could the child’s experience of divorce be related to mortality risk many years in the future?
Health researchers haven’t much considered or investigated whether divorce of one’s parents and related family problems in childhood would create a significant risk for later heart disease, cancer, and other health threats. Divorce of one’s parents is not a biological risk factor like having high cholesterol in one’s blood. Physicians generally don’t ask their adult patients about it, although pediatricians may worry about short-term threats in the teenage years.
It is very rare to be able to follow children from divorced families for many decades into the future. Little was known about long-term health effects until we began our studies of the Terman participants.
As with Donna, Patricia’s parents had divorced when she was young—only ten years old. James and fidgety Philip, too, came from families with dissolved marriages. Would outcomes be similar for all of them or would there be striking differences? When they grew up, would the divorce be relevant to their own marriages as well?
Parental Divorce and Longevity
Any parent contemplating divorce worries about how the change will affect their children. To gauge those effects on the Terman children, we looked at two events that shatter families—death and divorce. More than a third of the Terman children faced one of these circumstances before they reached age twenty-one.
The death of a parent is certainly traumatic for children, which is why communities and religious groups have developed various rituals and ways of cushioning the blow for survivors. Would the death of a parent have negative long-term effects? We were surprised to find that although the death of a parent during one’s childhood was usually difficult, it had no measurable impact on life-span mortality risk. The children adapted and moved on with their lives.
35
The Lee Cronbach details are from the “biographical memoirs” Richard J. Shavelson wrote up and published in the December 2003