Beyond Vassar
A Journey of Discovery through the Teenage Brain
Mary Ellsworth
W
hen child development researcher and author Ellen Galinsky ’64 first became a parent, she was told something many new parents hear: “Just wait until he’s a teenager!” But are teens always so scary, difficult, and incomprehensible? Or can the teen years be filled with tremendous possibility for both parents and kids? In her new book, The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens, called a “superb contribution to science and society” by Richard M. Lerner, founding editor of the Journal of Research on Adolescence), Galinsky offers evidence of the latter. The project spanned almost a decade during which Galinsky conducted three original studies, surveyed 1,666 adolescents and their parents twice, and interviewed dozens of neuroscientists in depth.
Figuring out adolescence is a huge topic—where did you start?
I practice a form of research called civic science: I go out and ask the people who would be the subjects of a study what they want to know, what they think is important. Beforehand, I read more than 200 researchers on adolescent development but then went out to ask kids, “What do you want to know about your development? What do you want to tell adults about people your age?” I ask open-ended questions.
Why do parents and teens clash so much?
There are a number of reasons. One is that we have a protective instinct. We know more than they do, and so we worry that they’re going to be hurt. We’re afraid for them, and we want to protect them. A second reason is a cognitive bias called “the curse of knowledge.” Once we know something, it’s really difficult to unknow it. So, if we know from our greater experience that A might lead to B, we want to forewarn our kids. I’ll give you one example: Let’s say that your child is rejected, someone breaks up with them. So, we might just say, “Yeah, I felt that way but you’ll get over it.” And kids may feel that that’s diminishing the pain that they feel. [Instead] we might say, “You’re supposed to feel emotional about that. You’re biologically wired to react really strongly to this.”
Given the pandemic, school shootings, and negative pressures of social media, do you think today’s teens have it harder than past generations?
Yes and no. It’s always hard to figure out who you are and move out into the world. That said, the CDC data show that more kids are reporting anxiety and depression—those figures have gone from 21 percent to 42 percent in 10 years. That’s a big jump that started pre-pandemic. I think technology is different, parents’ work pressure has intensified as have school pressures. There’s a lot going on. One thing that helps kids, though, is to become not the helped but the helpers. Some of the young people I interviewed who had gone through huge mental health challenges became a helper for other kids going through challenges as they recovered. I think we need to give more young people opportunities to be helpers.
Is there anything from your Vassar years that you carry with you today?
I fell in love with child development, child studies, when it was a major at Vassar. [Former professors] Joe Stone, Joe Church, Henrietta Smith were shaping the research in the field. So they gave us things that were challenging them and asked us to research them. From Vassar, I got not only my love of child development but a way of doing it: asking questions, seeking answers. I also got from Vassar, “go to the source.” I don’t read about studies; I read studies. I don’t read about children; I ask children. Another thing that I got from Vassar is, it became quickly clear to me that teachers really valued students’ making unusual connections—creative thinking plus critical thinking. I’ve always tried to break the mold, not see things the way other people see them. You learn to trust yourself enough to think, ‘I’ll figure it out.’ And then you do!