The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later Life

by Jay Belsky, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt

After tracking the lives of thousands of people from birth to midlife, four of the world's preeminent psychologists reveal what they have learned about how humans develop.

Does temperament in childhood predict adult personality? What role do parents play in shaping how a child matures? Is day care bad--or good--for children? Does adolescent delinquency forecast a life of crime? Do genes influence success in life? Is health in adulthood shaped by childhood experiences? In search of answers to these and similar questions, four leading psychologists have spent their careers studying thousands of people, observing them as they've grown up and grown older. The result is unprecedented insight into what makes each of us who we are.

In The Origins of You, Jay Belsky, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie Moffitt, and Richie Poulton share what they have learned about childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, about genes and parenting, and about vulnerability, resilience, and success. The evidence shows that human development is not subject to ironclad laws but instead is a matter of possibilities and probabilities--multiple forces that together determine the direction a life will take. A child's early years do predict who they will become later in life, but they do so imperfectly. For example, genes and troubled families both play a role in violent male behavior, and, though health and heredity sometimes go hand in hand, childhood adversity and severe bullying in adolescence can affect even physical well-being in midlife.

Painstaking and revelatory, the discoveries in The Origins of You promise to help schools, parents, and all people foster well-being and ameliorate or prevent developmental problems.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Parenting, Self Help, Education, Science, Developmental Psychology

400 pages, Hardcover

First published June 9, 2020

Reviews

[Chase Rendall · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my opinion, the coverage of research findings presented in the book was excellent. The authors describe in extraordinary detail a variety of research findings, including ADHD in childhood, the effect of neighborhoods, bullying, stress and its role in genetics, biological aging, and more. I was not aware of many of these findings and this book is one of the best at summarizing such a wide body of modern research on childhood. My main critique is the style of writing. I found most of the chapters to be written too superfluously and would much have preferred a writing style more succinct and to-the-point. While it was interesting at first to hear the research methodology described in detail, I think once I began seeing it in detail in each chapter, I lost interest. I think most here would agree that such a style is much more interesting for the professional researcher rather than the general audience. Dissecting the research findings out of each chapter took a bit of effort, as I often waded through the sections describing the methodology before getting to the final point. So all in all, I gave this book two stars because I absolutely enjoyed learning about the research, but I would have enjoyed a writing style that bridged the divide better between a general audience with little prior knowledge and a professional audience concerned about the methodology.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and informative

5 stars for content deduct 1 star for poor editing. The message of the book is clear and gives me hope for future generations. It is a heavy read but please persevere. Longitudinal research of this type and the researchers who dedicate their careers to them need to be supported so they can continue their work.

[Clo Willaerts · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the story of an academic venture

The title had me think this was a book that helps people make sense of their ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences). Although it’s well-written and interesting, it is more the story of an academic venture into hypotheses like this one: “Because growing up under adverse conditions increases the risk of dying or having one’s development compromised before reproducing, adverse childhood experience should accelerate pubertal development and thereby sexual maturation and fertility.”

[Bryce Doty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased this book based on Tyler Cowan’s recommendation. Listening to Cowan’s podcast and browsing his blog, one, or at least myself, gets the sense that, not only is he a few standard deviations to the right from me on a raw intelligence distribution, but that he has developed an insane amount of discipline to use his endowment for the betterment of the world at large. So I take note when he plugs a book with a subject I find interesting. The Origins of You is a findings report from a couple longitudinal studies on human development. The researchers seem to do a good job at explaining just what the data says and how confident one should be when drawing conclusions from it. I say seems, because I don’t have a sufficient enough understanding of the science or statistics to understand without some hand-holding. Fortunately, the researchers do plenty of hand-holding on these matters, as well as other, more cultural matters which is frustrating at times.
My interest on human development is practical. I’m scheduled to have a kid this year and I want to align my expected parenting styles and decisions, with the best available science on human development in the hopes achieving my desired parental outcomes. I fully expect to get mugged by reality when thinking about parenting outcomes more robust than “we did a good-enough job.” And that is okay. A good-enough standard still captures responsibilities to understand a lot of issues, for example, the developmental outcomes of persistent adolescent pot use (not-the-greatest), which is just one finding presented in Origins of You. As this is my aim, I hunted around for topics of particular interest. I found this necessary largely because this is a very dry book. The findings are presented for a lay-persons understanding, but you’ve got to work for it. As it is a book about findings from a very large data set, perhaps there is little room for a more narrative feel; conclusions are drawn from datasets, not from individual case histories. As a result, it is a dry read.

Key Takeaways Based on My Reading Goals:

The power of childhood self-control: positive real-world functioning decades later proved to be related to self-control. From adult health to adult wealth, self-control in childhood casts a long shadow. Interestingly, this was not a binary finding; a little bit of self-control slightly improved outcomes just as a large amount of self-control forecasted even better outcomes. The author’s also point out, assuredly, that development is a dynamic, continuous process; there is not a magic window in which one must have acquired a level of self-control; it is a lifelong acquisition which should be fostered throughout all stages of life.

Temperament: Temperament is real. One's relative skills in child-rearing are not responsible. Temperament is a machine which designs another machine which influences development. For children (aged three at any rate) there is strong temperamental continuity throughout life for under-controlled and inhibited temperaments. So what to do about that? No conclusions to draw as a parent-to-be, except to understand and appreciate that temperament is real and that one’s relative skills in child-rearing are not entirely responsible.

Daycare: There are conclusions to draw that quality of daycare modestly improves cognitive abilities; however, quantity of daycare is associated with greater social and behavioral issues. Daycare is unavoidable in our situation, which means we are going to have to rely on the fact that, in comparison to the developmental significance of the kind of family one is raised in, daycare effects are rather modest in magnitude. I find this comforting, common-sense, and challenging all at the same time. Family effects are significant, it is nice to know that daycare is not a long shadow comparatively.

[Bat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most clearly explained and convincing popular science book I have ever read. The authors followed large groups of children across decades of their lives to understand how childhoods influence adult lifes: a complex and contentious subject matter. Each bad thing happening to a child brings additive risk, but human development remains probabilistic rather than deterministic. 


The book meticulously journeys through data explorations, correlation vs causation, multiple alternative explanations, and steps of logic - somehow without becoming boring or pretentious or preachy. The authors show their personalities enough to bring some character but do not over-storify the science. 


I have just made the book sound incredibly boring but that is in fact very far from my reader experience. Would recommend a clear head and an uninterrupted attention span to appreciate it. 

[Margo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intense, dense, informative but not much lessons for parenting sadly, look elsewhere if you want more practical advice

[Jasmine Lo · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF-ed the book: So rich in research and information on developmental psychology/ childhood studies, but found it really dry and soooo hard to read. Would recommend people read Robert Plomin's Blueprint instead if you want a genetics/psychology research book

[Danielle C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The hardest to read book on a subject that was intensely interesting to me. A collection of 'developmental scientists' present their life's work on how exposures and personality in childhood and adolescence affect your later life. Sort of a combination of nature + nurture = who you are. These authors use three long-term longitudinal studies on human development to support their findings. Each chapter covers a specific topic that they investigate, from the effects of child care on later rule-breaking, to the effect of childhood stressors on sexual maturation, to adolescent cannabis use to mental and physical health at middle age. Like I said: super interesting stuff. But the book is a little of a bore - it rides the line between scientific paper and mass produced book. Each chapter is like a mini scientific paper, laying out the hypothesis, the procedure and method, discussing the results, then concluding with application of findings to practical use. There is a fair amount of repetition from chapter to chapter, as well, which does not help. Even though the authors try to spice it up a bit with personal stories, it reads very dry and was hard to read in chunks longer than half an hour or so, which is why it took me so long to get through this one. That all said, I think that some of the information in here is relevant, interesting, and in some cases surprising and ground-breaking. I would only recommend it to you if you have a particular interest in human development AND have the spare brain power to devote serious focus on this book.

[Robert Patterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essentially argues that child hood personalities by age three correlate strongly with lifelong adult personalities and character. Explores the way in which parental, societal and genetic factors intersect to influence or not influence outcomes.

Scholarly exploration written in an informal conversation between writers that serves no real purpose.

Overly long to get to the meat of the matter. Would have preferred just their chapter conclusions as an abstract with exploration followed by analysis.

Still I recommend for parents, social scientists, psychologies and about how childhood (and our societal policies, parenting do and do not) shape adults.

[Dan Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting findings from longitudinal observational studies in developmental psychology, some which are obvious (bullying is bad), and some which are more surprising (even quality day care is slightly harmful). About 100-200 pages too long just due to wordiness. It's hard to know how seriously to take these findings because the underlying data is often left pretty vague, and not much is said about replication or how they fit in with the literature.

[Ocean G]

I was reading this purely from a practical, personal point of view (I have a 4 year old and we're trying to raise her well). I confess that, although this was created for the layperson, I found myself skipping to the conclusion of the chapter for several of these, since I wasn't all that interested in the nitty gritty of the study methodology (I'm in no position to reject or accept any of their findings, regardless).

Some of the most interesting takeaways have to do with self-control of the child, and how important this is later in life, and has more on a bearing on their life than raw intelligence.

The findings on daycare were interesting too (possibly one of the few positives of Covid, then, may be that our daughter didn't have nearly as much daycare as she would have otherwise). While quality of daycare matters somewhat, pure quantity is much more important (broadly put, the more the worse).

I'm not really in a position to give it a rating, but I found it mildly to just a little useful, and moderately interesting.

[alybro · Rating 4 out of 5]

did i fangirl throughout this whole book? ohh yeah. i have long admired this group of scientists and thought this overview of their DECADES of impactful science was awesome. i also loved some of the contextual information about their careers and the origins of the Dunedin and E-Risk studies.

i will say that for being geared toward the general public, it was still pretty dense, particularly the chapters on genetics (i.e., brief overviews of quantitative genetics, GWAS, and GxE lol). this book is great for someone with an interest in the science of human development. 4 stars because of how dense it was, and also because i really wanted them to bring in literature from other scientists to provide more info about some of the topics (even though i know they wanted to focus on JUST their work)

[Joe Flynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid science, tiresome writing.

A story of an ongoing and remarkable scientific project. A longitudinal study on human development. Informative, always true to the data and with some important results. I can't knock the science one bit.

In the introduction one of the authors says he waited for a writer to come along to tell this story, but alas none came so they did it themselves.

You can tell, some aspects are repeatedly over explained - I may go nuts if I ever see "data 'pantry'" again. Yet there is also a lot of dense science writing too. Unsure of the target audience. Some of it was a true trudge to get through. The structure, of almost independent chapters, helps the casual reader but not those who read the whole book.

[Fernando Hoces de la Guardia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only was able to listen to the first third. It makes sweeping statements regarding behaviors or environments of children and their effect in adulthood but never discusses magnitudes. Lots of “if you have trait x” during childhood then “you are more likely to do worst/better on y” during adulthood. But how much more likely? Throughout the book treats 0.0001% more likely the same as 200% more likely. And the only way it caveats each claim is with the cheap excuse that the relationships are “probabilistic, not deterministic”, you can justify anything with the approach above, and they can of do.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I did not finish this book. Despite the fascinating topic matter, I couldn't get past the style of the writing which is pretty painful in a trying-too-hard kind of way. This book is effectively a retelling of a number of academic studies on childhood development that attempts to make them approachable for a broad audience. I fear the author may have missed the mark, as it is still a fairly thick and dense book for the casual reader, but at the same time does not go into enough detail for someone interested in the wonky detail.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book draws on some fairly interesting source material in terms of longitudinal studies, but offers little insight into how data could/should be interpreted and applied. I guess that’s the point though - the authors labour the point that they are here to provide data without bias, but they nevertheless steer the discussion toward supposedly contrarian conclusions about how the data ‘sadly’ doesn’t support conventional wisdom, without actually taking the gutsy move to put their own values overtly on the table. Still, if you can wade through the pseudo-objective presentation of data you can gain a fairly enlightening view of the interplay between genetics, psychology, and environment.

[Mizuki · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a long and detailed explanation of the cohort study and some points are easy to understand but some are not as straight. The important points that are repeated in the book are, human development is probabilistic, not deterministic, and not a single factor determines the future of the child. There are a lot of things to learn from this book to raise kids better - or rather to avoid too much risk.

[EmelineB · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book dives in the findings of longitudinal studies examining human development and the interplay of genes, environment and life events. The discussion of the scientific process is excellent, although it may rebuke people less curious about methodology. However, it's far better informed than other books about children, including those emphasising how well grounded in data they are such as Cribsheet.

[Julia Wise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting material if you wade through all the stuff to get there. At first I appreciated the detail about how the research came about, the pros and cons of different ways to address a research question, etc. But each chapter had too much of this. It could have presented the research findings much more directly.
Despite dealing with touchy subjects of genetics, upbringing, class, etc, it didn't feel like the authors bent over to avoid offending people.

[N · Rating 3 out of 5]

The distribution of results in this book that age well and replicate might be as good as darts on a board, but the Dunedin study is a landmark human pursuit idiosyncratic enough to be fascinating and made obnoxious only because we live in an age of peak-status for WEIRD academics. So when the authors get a Nobel, the sincere investigative tone of the book makes for a good memoir, regardless of its replication or lack thereof.

[Gus Hebblewhite · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really interesting research obscured by dry, pedantic and sometimes patronizing writing (e.g. reminders every other chapter that observed relationships in social science are not deterministic. OK.) I would have also liked a more consistent effort to outline the actual magnitudes of effect sizes, though this was at least done sometimes.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic of how and/or if our childhood selves become part of our adult selves interests me a lot. I found those findings interesting. It was difficult to follow easily while listening (and it's a long one!), because of the extensive data results given. Glad I read the book, but think maybe literally reading it rather than listening would have been better.

[Alexandra Yarborough · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating subject matter. I didn't love the writing. Kind of hard to get through. The kind of book that you feel like you should finish, because the information is really great, but it becomes drudgery much too early on in the book.

[Adrian Pedroza · Rating 4 out of 5]

a really unique book about how our early experiences shape our lives in the future. can be a little dry at times bc it’s co written by academics but the content is good and the main study they use is based on data collection from an entire population of an area of new zealand

[Nicolas Martorell · Rating 2 out of 5]

"La correlación no es causa pero hagamos como que sí". Da datos interesantes pero no está escrito de una manera atrapante y la ciencia no es rigurosa.

[Guanhui · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read parts of it. Authors could do with tighter editing to make the writing more concise.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

more like a textbook than I expected but well-written and presented. Interesting topic and assumptions.

[Chun Ying · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite dry but impressive and ambitious research

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

My sense is that there is a lot of interesting substance in here, but the exposition was so bad that I lost interest before it came to the substance, and I couldn't bring myself to pick it back up.

[Ipshita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very useful to learn from the longitudinal Dunedin study, however the book takes a more academic rather than an everyday user language style that makes it difficult to read in a book format