can, where they collect like gloomy refuse in the basement of her mind.
School is a welcome respite from the tension of her home life. Sophie excels in her studies, chats with her friends, and though she is sometimes teased for her ratty clothes and scuffed, oversized sneakers — hand-me-downs from an older cousin — she’s never really been bullied.
At the end of the school day Sophie’s teacher hands out parent notices. Her class is going to a museum next Friday and in order to attend Sophie needs 10 dollars to cover the cost of admission. On her way out of the building Sophie pauses by a waste basket and, with a sigh, tosses the pink paper away. She knows better than to ask her parents for money.
As Sophie grows, she learns more and better ways to avoid conflict with her family. She joins the school soccer team and the drama club, and plays at her friends’ houses. At 14, she starts her first part-time job. She uses her newfound cash to buy a CD player with which to drown out her parents’ squabbles. Her cousin, with whom she is fairly close, has an apartment downtown, and when problems at home escalate Sophie sometimes stays with her. She sees her friends often, though always at their houses or around town. No one hangs out at her place. She has never offered and her friends know enough not to suggest it.
In high school, Sophie starts talking back to her parents and staying out later and later. Occasionally one of her friends gets a hold of a bottle of gin or wine and together they drink it greedily. Sophie becomes known as a partier. Some nights, when the desire overtakes her, she drinks with the urgency of a drowning woman, filling her belly and struggling madly against a riptide of drunkenness. After such binges, she feels ashamed. Memories of her father’s drunkenness, his reeling and aggression and clownish behaviour, flood her mind. Disgust fills her mouth with its bitter taste and she fears and loathes with equal measure the thought that she may be like him. To compensate, she throws herself into her studies, spending long hours at the library and enrolling in as many extracurricular activities as she can handle.
At 18, Sophie graduates, applies for student loans, and moves away to attend university. Bills are a constant struggle, and she has to work two jobs while studying full-time, but she stays afloat by earning scholarships that take her, fully funded, through to graduate school. She earns her Masters of Education and lands a job as a teacher. She is a warm, talented, and outgoing educator, and her students love her.
Sophie is “resilient.” She is the American Dream made manifest, a testament to the ability of talent and drive to overcome the most seemingly insurmountable odds. Hers is a story from which we as a society draw immeasurable comfort. We love meritocracy. We love to be the authors of our own destinies, to believe the outcomes of our lives are governed by our actions, and not by the indifferent hands of chance. This belief populates our modern stories and our most enduring fables, from Harry Potter to Cinderella to Oliver Twist. We embrace underdogs, cheering their successes, lamenting their failures, and assuring ourselves that their virtues, and not their social standing, are the basis on which they will ultimately be judged. It is a pleasant thought, and, better still, not solely the product of Hollywood fantasy.
For more than 30 years, researchers Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith chronicled the lives of 505 children from the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Beginning in 1955, the children were interviewed at multiple stages from infancy to adulthood. In the early years, their parents were interviewed as well. Participants answered a range of questions about their home lives, worries, memories of childhood, and plans for the future. Approximately one-third of the children involved in the study were considered to be from vulnerable homes, meaning they grew up in families suffering from chronic poverty, marital discord, a disorganized family structure (their mother or father leaving for prolonged periods, etc.), and/or substance abuse problems. Some of these children were beaten, berated, and belittled by their parents.
Unfortunately, these adverse environments often took their toll. Two out of three children in the vulnerable group developed serious learning or behaviour problems by 10 years old, and accumulated a record of delinquencies and mental health problems by age 18. A sad statistic, but one with a silver lining: though two out of every three children succumbed to the negative aspects of their environments, one out of three flourished in the face of these challenges. Like Sophie, they adapted to their environments and developed ways to thrive despite being denied the picture-perfect family life to which every child should, and in a better world would, be entitled.
A child’s resilience can be the product of many factors. There is no golden attribute that, if possessed, can protect every child from the emotional fallout of a tumultuous or abusive childhood. But many small things can, together, make a big difference in children’s capacity to shield themselves from the consequences of an ailing home life. Werner and Smith noted three clusters of factors commonly possessed by resilient children: 1) a robust intelligence coupled with other attributes generally correlated to success, such as toughness, drive, and a sociable temperament; 2) strong ties with a non-parental guardian figure, such as a teacher, older sibling, or other relative; 3) some kind of external support system, be it school or church or an organized sports team, that offered the child a sense of purpose and achievement. Not every resilient child will necessarily meet all three categories, but each one improves her chances.
Consider Sophie from our story at the start of this chapter. She was certainly a bright, well-liked, and driven child. She had a network of friends that she could rely on for support, and an older cousin who provided her with a much-needed emotional outlet and a safe space. Her job, her schoolwork, and her extracurricular interests gave her a sense of agency and independence from her parents. And her mother tried her best under difficult circumstances.
If one of these three supports had been taken from her — if she’d been less bright, or if her friends had shunned her, or if she’d not been allowed to take a part-time job or join clubs at school — would she have fallen, or could she have balanced effectively on the remaining two? It’s impossible to say for sure, though her access to all three forms of support certainly helped her. The more legs a person stands on, the harder they are to topple.
The Dark Side of Resilience
Sophie loves being a teacher. Her days are full and gratifying; it’s the evenings that get to her. When she is home at night, a low and looming anxiety wells up in her chest. She thinks about commitments she’s made throughout the day, promises to co-workers, students, and parents, some of which she’s not sure she can fulfill. Saying no does not come naturally to Sophie; in the moment it can be almost impossible for her to do so. The urge to please is simply too overwhelming to deny.
Though most nights she comes home exhausted, Sophie finds it difficult to sleep without music playing, and the smallest creak or groan makes her jump. She often has a glass of wine with dinner to calm her nerves, and sometimes the glass becomes a bottle. Sometimes her teenage thirst for oblivion returns to her and one bottle becomes two. Her doctor complains about her blood pressure, and though Sophie is active and eats well, she can’t seem to make it go down.
Dating is a bewildering and painful affair. She wavers between promiscuity and guilt-fueled promises of celibacy. She has trouble trusting men, and after a few dates, all of which end in sex, she inevitably pushes them away. The cycle continues until she meets David, a kind, patient man she can’t help but trust. Fighting her subconscious spasms of panic in the face of commitment, she continues to see him. His relaxed, easy-going nature sooths her, and he eventually earns her trust. Over time, her panic withdraws, and she finds herself less and less in thrall to it.
Sophie and David move in together. She is reluctant to get too serious, but David makes her happy and she feels more at ease with him than she has ever felt with anyone. They buy a house, get married, and after a couple of years of trying, have a baby girl. They name her Elizabeth. Hers was a difficult birth, requiring a Caesarean section, but both Sophie and Elizabeth pull through well. David rises to the occasion, taking on the bulk of the household chores, feeding and changing Elizabeth, and catering
