Walking Uphill Both Ways in the Snow

 

We joke about the stories of perseverance shared with us, long ago, by the older generations in our family. "We had to walk to school"—for miles, they would claim—"In the snow." 

"Uphill. Both ways," we would snicker under our breath. Yet, the message was clear: those generations had to pay a price for whatever benefits they derived.

Not so much any more. Our moment in history has birthed Karens qualified to complain about slights and oversights which people of previous centuries could only dream about enjoying. In exchange, our decade's stories of hardship and endurance pale in comparison.

It was a little more than a decade ago when The New York Times columnist Bruce Feiler published an article he called "The Stories That Bind Us." In short, he cited psychology studies which demonstrated that, even in the wake of distressing situations, young people who know about their family's past experiences prove to be more resilient despite additional stressors.

That brief article in the Times back in 2013 became Feiler's most-read piece of writing in the next decade. One of the psychologists he cited in the article—Robyn Fivush, Ph.D., by then a professor at Emory University—noted in Psychology Today ten years after the 2013 article a recap of the studies she and colleague Marshall Duke, Ph.D., had been working on since 2001. Simply put, 

If adolescents knew more about their family history, where their grandparents went to school, how their parents met, and even difficult events such as a terrible illness that a family member suffered, they showed more positive outcomes.

The key was family stories—the kind we gather as we chase those elusive ancestors to the far reaches of our pedigree charts. The Emory University researchers compiled a list of twenty questions from their Family Narratives Lab which they dubbed the "Do You Know?" list. Most of the questions focus on immediate, first-hand knowledge of relatives personally known by the adolescents in the studies—siblings, parents, grandparents—but some questions reached further. Ethnic or national heritage featured in one of the questions, as well as this peculiar gem: "Do you know about a relative whose face 'froze' in a grumpy position because he or she did not smile enough?"

One can imagine recollections of grand-uncles or great-grandmothers seeping into memory for respondents answering such questions, recalling family stories of relatives who served in a world war or endured the Holocaust. But as the generations move onward to brighter times, our stories seem to lose their vigor. Immigration to the "New World" doesn't now entail the baggage of past centuries' difficulties. We don't have loved ones succumbing to diseases which, pre-advent of penicillin, once meant a death knell. We don't even walk to school any more. In the sunshine.

We live in an era now which, for the most part, does not produce the stories of overcoming hardship which shaped past generations—and became the psychological legacy of grit and determination which shaped their descendants. What, then, happens to the source of endurance for the next generation?