Child's journey : forces that shape the lives of our young

The subject of this book began to consume my interest one dawn over twenty-five years ago, when a white-coated obstetrician introduced me to a new human being-our daughter, Rebecca. As a new parent and an only slightly less than new psychologist-I recall my sense of wonderment over the destiny of that infant.

What will she be like-tomorrow, next month, next year? What kind of personality will she have? Will she grow to be happy and well adjusted, or discontented and unable to cope? Has she already inher ited what she will become from her parents and forebears? Or will her fate be shaped largely by the world outside her still tiny brain and body?

In the two and a half decades since Rebecca's birth, research aimed at answering such questions has flowered steadily. It has long seemed to me that no subject warranted the attention of a mental health writer more than the outcome of such studies, describing the psychological fate of our children-how they are shaped, their personalities made whole or broken, by the forces at work from the instant of conception.

For many years, therefore, I have written magazine articles dealing with one aspect or another of childhood, hoping all the while one day to tell a more complete story of the forces that shape a child's develop ment. My aim was to produce neither a traditional textbook nor a "how to" manual of child rearing, but a resource-grounded on research tings for all of us who care about children and who want t to know more about why they develop as they do, and what we re cannot do to shape the outcome of their journey The opportunity to do did not emerge until five years ags, wh

two events converged in the persons of two dear friends No Game, professor of psychology at the University of Minnes began turning my long deferred goal into practical reality by serving matchmaker between me and the McGraw-Hill Book Company, and hi encouragement and wise counsel permeated the work thereafter. At the same time, Herbert Yahraes, a writer who has been my mentor and Inspiration for over twenty-five years, decided to reduce his long standing contractual commitments and devote a portion of his limited time and enormous talent to a collaborative effort.

The result is this book-the product of an exciting passage through the complex literature of child development, countless hours of inter views with authorities in the field, and the synthesizing ruminations that, throughout the years of this book's growth, swirled insistently in our heads

Our intent is to convey the major outcomes and implications of broad areas of research rather than to identify the specific findings of individ ual studies. The descriptions of research found in this book, therefore, are often based on a variety of publications by a given investigator. For each investigator cited, all sources used are provided, by chapter, at the close of the book together with a few general references where relevant.

This book is meant to be an account both of exciting scientific efforts and their significance. For the richness of their research and their willingness to discuss it, therefore, we are grateful to the members of the child development research community-a creative network of scientists working tirelessly to uncover the facts about the child's world, and to translate them into practical action.