Family History - Some Surprising Research

When life hits you hard, how do you respond? It depends, right? It depends on the situation, the circumstances, the context. But in general … when things get rough, what is your typical reaction? ​

You may be surprised to learn (as I was) that one important contributor to our resilience and our ability to ride the ups and downs of life is our knowledge of our family's story. I first read about this claim and the research that backs it up in a 2013 New York Times article by Bruce Feiler. The article, titled "The Stories That Bind Us," discusses the groundbreaking research of Dr. Marshall Duke, a psychologist at Emory University in Atlanta.

In the late 1990s, Dr. Duke began developing a hypothesis based on earlier research of his own as well as observations from other psychologists. He sensed that there was a connection between how much a person knows about their family and their ability to face challenges in their own life. ​

In his quest to test this hypothesis, Dr. Duke and a colleague developed a series of twenty questions that would provide a measure of how much a person knows about his or her family’s story. Example questions included: Do you know how your parents met? Do you know where some of your grandparents grew up? Do you know the source of your name? Do you know some of the lessons that your parents learned from good or bad experiences?

​In the summer of 2001, they asked these twenty questions of the children of almost fifty families and then compared the results to data from other psychological tests the children had taken. They were astonished by how clearly the data proved their hypothesis to be true. ​

As stated in the New York Times article, "The more children knew about their family's history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successful they believed their families functioned. The Do You Know? scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children's emotional health and happiness."

Just a few months after completing this research, the attacks of 9/11 occurred. Dr. Duke and his colleague followed up with their research subjects and again saw that the children with the most knowledge of their family's history tended to be more resilient to the stress created by this horrific event.

Why does knowledge of one's family history make such a difference? Dr. Duke believes it contributes to a child's sense of belonging, of being part of a larger family, and of understanding through their own family's narrative that everyone has setbacks. Knowing their family history helps children realize they are part of something bigger than themselves - and that realization, it turns out, helps them lead happier, healthier, more resilient lives.

To be a person is to have a story to tell.
​​~Isak Denison