Capacity to Work Learned in Childhood

60 Year Longitudinal Study Shows Value of Work in Childhood

Psychodynamic psychiatrists Valliant and Valliant (1981) reported that for underprivileged men the capacity to work learned in childhood predicted mental health and capacity for relationships at mid-life. It surpassed family problems and all other childhood variables in predicting success in adult life. 

Major reasons predicting the success of the men in this study in terms of mental health and capacity for interpersonal relationships were: a strong attachment to their parents; high-quality supervision, especially by their mothers; dedication to schooling; and the capacity to work, learned in childhood.  Their lives have demonstrated that after age 40, 'emotional IQ' is far more valuable than college degrees. Adaptation, not intellectual brilliance, leads to successful aging.

A sample of 456 inner city men was prospectively followed from age 14 until age 47. Rates blind to adult outcome assessed the men's childhood success at tasks reflecting Erikson's fourth developmental stage, industry versus inferiority. Childhood assessments were made on the parenting the men received and other psychosocial variables, including social class and IQ, and were compared with independent judgments of these men's mental health and career success at age 47. Capacity to work in childhood predicted the success of these underprivileged men at work in adult life and surpassed social class, multiproblem-family membership, and all other childhood variables in predicting adult mental health and capacity for interpersonal relationships.

"They have made lemonade out of life's lemons," notes George Vaillant, a Harvard professor of psychiatry who has been working with them since 1972. "Some modern sociologists, having followed their subjects for only a decade or so, believe that something called the 'underclass' dooms families for multiple generations. Following these men for 60 years shows such pessimism to be unjustified."

By the age of 47, men who were competent and industrious at age 14 were twice as likely to have warm relationships with a variety of people, five times more likely to be well paid for their adult work, and 16 times less likely to have suffered significant unemployment. Intelligence was not an important mediating factor.

Vaillant maintains that studying ways that people like the inner- city men overcome life's difficulties provides a key to psychological mechanisms people can use to cope with stress. "These findings have led to a better understanding of how people achieve a well-adjusted and contented mind" he said.

Valliant, G. E. & Valliant, C. O. (1981). Natural history of male psychological health, X: Work as a predictor of positive mental health. American Journal of Psychiatry, 138(11), 1433-1440.