American Lives: Looking Back at the Children of the Great Depression

Examines how adult lives are shaped by the development of self-confidence, dependability, and an interest in intellectual matters during adolescence

This solid report attempts to assess what makes happy, successful lives. Based on the 60-year Berkeley Longitudinal Studies, involving residents of Berkeley and Oakland, Calif., Clausen argues that adolescents who exhibit "planful competence," who know generally what they want, assess their abilities realistically and consider the consequences of their choices, are more likely to do well. He offers many details about the organization of the project, which is funded by the National Institute of Health and the MacArthur Foundation, and which he has directed since 1960, and provides several lengthy case studies of individuals who seem planfully competent. There are few revelations, although Clausen observes that among his respondents, occupational shifts tended to occur before age 35, a finding that calls into question the work of Gail Sheehy and others who emphasize mid-career crises. Of interest primarily to experts.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Six in-depth life histories--plus much ancillary material-- drawn from the Berkeley Longitudinal Studies and illustrating Clausen's theory that choices made in youth determine the courses of our lives. In 1960, upon becoming director of the University of California's Institute of Human Development, the author inherited three separate Bay Area studies begun in the late 20's and early 30's, each study having its own purpose and duration. The 300 subjects of "the largest long-term inquiry into human lives ever conducted" were almost all Caucasians and hardly representative of the population-at-large. Pooling data from the studies, Clausen formulated his theory of "adolescent planful competence"--defined here as a combination of self-confidence, intellectual investment, and dependability--as a predictor of life development. But there are inherent problems in the disparate methods of the studies: The six men and women discussed in depth here were interviewed at different intervals and, because of the original study designs, not at all during their 20s and 30s--and retrospective interviews, Clausen concedes, can't substitute for timely ones. Furthermore, each of the studies used different measurements, and--since during the Depression "wise" choices for male adolescents differed radically from those for females--sex-engendered bias abounds in the life histories. Yet all are fascinating to read, reflecting not only changing mores but also 60 years' worth of traumatic national events: the Depression, WW II, the Korean War, and--perhaps most devastating in its effects on families--the Vietnam War. The lives make up about two-fifths of this lengthy work and, except perhpas to other behavioral scientists, are much more readable than the voluminous commentaries, charts, graphs, and tables with which they're interspersed. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In Berkeley in the late 1920s, a group of children were recruited into a study on child and adolescent development that would last more than 60 years and be the subject of at least five books and countless journal articles. Clausen, director of the Institute for Human Development, which oversees this study, has contributed this final volume. He contends that the degree to which adolescents exhibit "planful competence"--a combination of dependability, intellectual involvement, and self-confidence--is highly predictive of their success in later life. Despite this clear thesis, Clausen spends too many pages on the life histories of several participants and presents all manner of data not directly related to his main argument. The resulting book is too long by half yet still provocative enough to deserve a place on the shelf of academic social science collections.
- Eric Hinsdale, Trinity Univ. Lib., San Antonio
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.