Grit

by Angela Duckworth

  Whether these skirmishes could have been handled more skillfully is an open question—Alex believes he could have done a better job explaining to his young daughter why he was so insistent. That may be so, but what really strikes me about this aspect of Francesca’s childhood is the notion that an affectionate, follow-your-dreams parent can nevertheless feel compelled to lay down the law on matters of discipline. Suddenly, the one-dimensional view of Alex and Tina as hippy-dippy parents seems incomplete.

  It was telling, for example, to hear Alex, who is a writer, talk about the work ethic he modeled for his children: “To finish things, you have to put the work in. When I was younger, I’d meet many people who were writing stuff. They’d say to me, ‘Oh yeah, I am a writer as well but I’ve never finished anything.’ Well, in that case, you are not a writer. You are just somebody who sits down and writes things on a bit of paper. If you’ve got something to say, go ahead and say it and finish it.”

  Tina agrees that as much as children need freedom, they also need limits. She’s a tutor as well as an environmental activist, and she’s watched a lot of parents engage in what she calls begging-and-pleading negotiations with their children. “We taught our children to live by clear principles and moral guidelines,” she said. “We explained our reasoning, but they always knew where the boundaries were.

  “And there was no television,” she added. “I felt it was a hypnotic medium, and I didn’t want it to replace interactions with people. So we simply didn’t have a television. If the children wanted to watch something special, they would walk over to their grandparents’.”

  * * *

  What can we learn from the stories of Steve Young and Francesca Martinez? And what can we glean from how other grit paragons describe their parents?

  In fact, I’ve noticed a pattern. For those of us who want to parent for grit, the pattern is a helpful blueprint, a guide for making the many decisions we must grapple with while raising our children.

  Before I say more, let me repeat the caveat that, as a scientist, I’d like to collect many more data points before coming to firm conclusions. In a decade, I should know a lot more about parenting for grit than I do now. But because there’s no pause button for parenting the people we care about, I’ll go ahead and tell you my hunches. In large part, I’m encouraged to do so because the pattern I’ve observed matches up with dozens of carefully executed research studies on parenting (but not grit). The pattern also makes sense, given what’s been learned about human motivation since John Watson dispensed his Don’t Coddle ’em advice. And, finally, the pattern I see matches up with the interviews of world-class athletes, artists, and scholars completed by psychologist Benjamin Bloom and his team thirty years ago. Though parenting was not the explicit focus of the Bloom study—parents were originally included as “observers to verify” biographical details—the importance of parenting ended up as one of its major conclusions.

  Here is what I see.

  First and foremost, there’s no either/or trade-off between supportive parenting and demanding parenting. It’s a common misunderstanding to think of “tough love” as a carefully struck balance between affection and respect on the one hand, and firmly enforced expectations on the other. In actuality, there’s no reason you can’t do both. Very clearly, this is exactly what the parents of Steve Young and Francesca Martinez did. The Youngs were tough, but they were also loving. The Martinezes were loving, but they were also tough. Both families were “child-centered” in the sense that they clearly put their children’s interests first, but neither family felt that children were always the better judge of what to do, how hard to work, and when to give up on things.

  Below is a figure representing how many psychologists now categorize parenting styles. Instead of one continuum, there are two. In the upper right-hand quadrant are parents who are both demanding and supportive. The technical term is “authoritative parenting,” which, unfortunately is easily confused with “authoritarian parenting.” To avoid such confusion, I’ll refer to authoritative parenting as wise parenting, because parents in this quadrant are accurate judges of the psychological needs of their children. They appreciate that children need love, limits, and latitude to reach their full potential. Their authority is based on knowledge and wisdom, rather than power.

  In the other quadrants are three other common parenting styles, including the undemanding, unsupportive approach to raising children exemplified by neglectful parents. Neglectful parenting creates an especially toxic emotional climate, but I won’t say much more about it here because it’s not even a plausible contender for how parents of the gritty raise their children.

  Authoritarian parents are demanding and unsupportive, exactly the approach John Watson advocated for strengthening character in children. Permissive parents, by contrast, are supportive and undemanding.

  When psychologist Larry Steinberg delivered his 2001 presidential address to the Society for Research on Adolescence, he proposed a moratorium on further research on parenting styles because, as he saw it, there was so much evidence for the benefits of supportive and demanding parenting that scientists could profitably move on to thornier research questions. Indeed, over the past forty years, study after carefully designed study has found that the children of psychologically wise parents fare better than children raised in any other kind of household.

  In one of Larry’s studies, for example, about ten thousand American teenagers completed questionnaires about their parents’ behavior. Regardless of gender, ethnicity, social class, or parents’ marital status, teens with warm, respectful, and demanding parents earned higher grades in school, were more self-reliant, suffered from less anxiety and depression, and were less likely to engage in delinquent behavior. The same pattern replicates in nearly every nation that’s been studied and at every stage of child development. Longitudinal research indicates that the benefits are measurable across a decade or more.

  * * *

  One of the major discoveries of parenting research is that what matters more than the messages parents aim to deliver are the messages their children receive.

  What may appear to be textbook authoritarian parenting—a no-television policy, for example, or a prohibition against swearing—may or may not be coercive. Alternatively, what may seem permissive—say, letting a child drop out of high school—may simply reflect differences in the rules parents value as important. In other words, don’t pass judgment on that parent lecturing their child in the supermarket cereal aisle. In most cases, you don’t have enough context to understand how the child interprets the exchange, and, at the end of the day, it’s the child’s experience that really matters.

  Are you a psychologically wise parent? Use the parenting assessment on the next page, developed by psychologist and parenting expert Nancy Darling, as a checklist to find out. How many of these statements would your child affirm without hesitation?

  You’ll notice that some of the items are italicized. These are “reverse-coded” items, meaning that if your child agrees with them, you may be less psychologically wise than you think.

  Supportive: Warm

  I can count on my parents to help me out if I have a problem.

  My parents spend time just talking to me.

  My parents and I do things that are fun together.

  My parents don’t really like me to tell them my troubles.

  My parents hardly ever praise me for doing well.

  Supportive: Respectful

  My parents believe I have a right to my own point of view.

  My parents tell me that their ideas are correct and that I shouldn’t question them.

  My parents respect my privacy.

  My parents give me a lot of freedom.

  My parents make most of the decisions about what I can do.

  Demanding

  My parents really expect me to follow family rules.

  My parents really let me get away with things.

  My parents point out ways I could d
o better.

  When I do something wrong, my parents don’t punish me.

  My parents expect me to do my best even when it’s hard.

  * * *

  Growing up with support, respect, and high standards confers a lot of benefits, one of which is especially relevant to grit—in other words, wise parenting encourages children to emulate their parents.

  To a certain extent, of course, young children imitate their mothers and fathers. When we have nothing else to go by, what other choice do we have, really, than to mimic the accents, habits, and attitudes of the people around us? We talk like they talk. We eat what they eat. We adopt their likes and dislikes.

  A young child’s instinct to copy adults is very strong. In a classic psychology experiment conducted more than fifty years ago at Stanford University, for example, preschoolers watched adults play with a variety of toys and then were given the opportunity to play with the toys themselves. Half of the boys and girls watched an adult quietly play with Tinkertoys while ignoring a child-size, inflatable doll in the same room. The other half of the children watched the adult begin assembling the Tinkertoys and, after a minute, turn to viciously attack the doll. The adult pummeled the doll with his fists and then a mallet, tossed the doll up in the air and, finally, while screaming and yelling, aggressively kicked the doll about the room.

  When given an opportunity to play with the same toys, children who’d seen adults play quietly followed suit. In contrast, children who’d watched adults beat up the doll were likewise aggressive, in many cases so closely imitating violent adults they’d seen earlier that researchers described their behavior as virtual “carbon copies.”

  And yet, there’s a world of difference between imitation and emulation.

  As we grow older, we develop the capacity to reflect on our actions and pass judgment on what we admire and disdain in others. When our parents are loving, respectful, and demanding, we not only follow their example, we revere it. We not only comply with their requests, we understand why they’re making them. We become especially eager to pursue the same interests—for instance, it’s no coincidence that Steve Young’s father was himself a standout football player at BYU, or that Francesca Martinez, like her father, developed an early love of writing.

  Benjamin Bloom and his team noted the same pattern in their studies of world-class performers. Almost without exception, the supportive and demanding parents in Bloom’s study were “models of the work ethic in that they were regarded as hard workers, they did their best in whatever they tried, they believed that work should come before play, and that one should work toward distant goals.” Further, “most of the parents found it natural to encourage their children to participate in their favored activities.” Indeed, one of Bloom’s summary conclusions was that “parents’ own interests somehow get communicated to the child. . . . We found over and over again that the parents of the pianists would send their child to the tennis lessons but they would take their child to the piano lessons. And we found just the opposite for the tennis homes.”

  It’s indeed remarkable how many paragons of grit have told me, with pride and awe, that their parents are their most admired and influential role models. And it’s just as telling that so many paragons have, in one way or another, developed very similar interests to those of their parents. Clearly, these exemplars of grit grew up not just imitating their parents but also emulating them.

  This logic leads to the speculative conclusion that not all children with psychologically wise parents will grow up to be gritty, because not all psychologically wise parents model grittiness. Though they may be both supportive and demanding, upper-right-quadrant moms and dads may or may not show passion and perseverance for long-term goals.

  If you want to bring forth grit in your child, first ask how much passion and perseverance you have for your own life goals. Then ask yourself how likely it is that your approach to parenting encourages your child to emulate you. If the answer to the first question is “a great deal,” and your answer to the second is “very likely,” you’re already parenting for grit.

  * * *

  It’s not just mothers and fathers who lay the foundation for grit.

  There’s a larger ecosystem of adults that extends beyond the nuclear family. All of us are “parents” to young people other than our own children in the sense that, collectively, we are responsible for “bringing forth” the next generation. In this role of supportive but demanding mentors to other people’s children, we can have a huge impact.

  Technology entrepreneur Tobi Lütke is a grit paragon who had such a mentor in his life. Tobi dropped out of his German high school when he was sixteen without any memorably positive learning experiences. As an apprentice at an engineering company in his hometown, he met Jürgen, a programmer who worked in a small room in the basement. Tobi affectionately described Jürgen as “a long-haired, fifty-something, grizzled rocker who would have been right at home in any Hells Angels gang.” Under his tutelage, Tobi discovered that the learning disabilities he’d been diagnosed with as a failing student did nothing to hamper his progress as a computer programmer.

  “Jürgen was a master teacher,” Tobi said. “He created an environment in which it was not only possible but easy to move through ten years of career development every year.”

  Each morning, Tobi would arrive at work to find a printout of the code he’d written the day before, covered in red marker with comments, suggestions, and corrections. Jürgen was unsparing in pointing out specific ways Tobi’s work could be better. “This taught me not to tangle my ego up in the code I write,” Tobi said. “There are always ways to improve it and getting this feedback is a gift.”

  One day, Jürgen asked Tobi to lead a software assignment for General Motors. The company gave Tobi extra money to buy his first suit for the presentation and installation. Tobi expected Jürgen to do all the talking, but the day before the installation, Jürgen casually turned to Tobi and told him he had somewhere else to be. Tobi would be visiting General Motors alone. Full of trepidation, Tobi went. The installation was a success.

  “This pattern kept on repeating itself,” Tobi said. “Jürgen somehow knew the extent of my comfort zone and manufactured situations which were slightly outside it. I overcame them through trial and error, through doing. . . . I succeeded.”

  Tobi went on to found Shopify, a software company that powers tens of thousands of online stores and recently exceeded $100 million in revenue.

  * * *

  In fact, emerging research on teaching suggests uncanny parallels to parenting. It seems that psychologically wise teachers can make a huge difference in the lives of their students.

  Ron Ferguson is a Harvard economist who has collected more data comparing effective and ineffective teachers than anyone I know. In one recent study, Ron partnered with the Gates Foundation to study students and teachers in 1,892 different classrooms. He found that teachers who are demanding—whose students say of them, “My teacher accepts nothing less than our best effort,” and “Students in this class behave the way my teacher wants them to”—produce measurable year-to-year gains in the academic skills of their students. Teachers who are supportive and respectful—whose students say, “My teacher seems to know if something is bothering me,” and “My teacher wants us to share our thoughts”—enhance students’ happiness, voluntary effort in class, and college aspirations.

  It’s possible, Ron finds, to be a psychologically wise teacher, just as it’s possible to be permissive, authoritarian, or negligent. And it’s the wise teachers who seem to promote competence in addition to well-being, engagement, and high hopes for the future.

  Recently, psychologists David Yeager and Geoff Cohen ran an experiment to see what effect the message of high expectations in conjunction with unflagging support had on students. They asked seventh-grade teachers to provide written feedback on student essays, including suggestions for improvement and any words of encouragement they would normally give. Per u
sual, teachers filled the margins of the students’ essays with comments.

  Next, teachers passed all of the marked-up essays to researchers, who randomly sorted them into two piles. On half of the essays, researchers affixed a Post-it note that read: I’m giving you these comments so that you’ll have feedback on your paper. This was the placebo control condition.

  On the other half of the essays, researchers affixed a Post-it note that read: I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them. This was the wise feedback condition.

  So that teachers would not see which student received which note, and so that students would not notice that some of their classmates had received a different note than they had, researchers placed each essay in a folder for teachers to hand back to the students during class.

  Students were then given the option to revise their essays the following week.

  When the essays were collected, David discovered that about 40 percent of the students who’d received the placebo control Post-it note decided to turn in a revised essay, compared to about twice that number—80 percent of the students—who’d received the Post-it note communicating wise feedback.

  In a replication study with a different sample, students who received the wise feedback Post-it—“I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them”—made twice as many edits to their essays as students in the placebo control condition.