The Tipping Point

I just finished reading a book called The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. What I appreciate about The Tipping Point was how the ideas that were being communicated were supported by data. I am not one who enjoys spending hours reading about someone's speculations. I would rather sit down and spend hours formulating my own speculation and theories, I guess. I don't generally read for pleasure, I read for information.

In my adoption reading thus far, it seems like books are either based on the author's personal opinion with very little data, like the writing of Sherrie Eldrige, or as in the case of Journey of the Adopted Self by Betty Jean Lifton, it seems as though the data is based on a subset of a minority of adoptees that are not the norm. Both kinds of books are fine - and both are needed. I've been pleasantly surprised at how much I've enjoyed reading other people's opinions on adoption, even though the books tend to deal with abstract ideas like emotions - that can't be quantified or proven. There is also relevance in books, like Lifton's, that address the needs of adoptees who have deep psychological issues as a result of their adoptions that may be a part of why they act out in harmful, disturbing ways.

I guess what I'm getting at is that when I read, I am a skeptic. You can postulate all you want, but unless you've got some numbers, I might not believe you.

Back to The Tipping Point.

The Tipping Point isn't an adoption book, rather, its a book about social behavior that has some business applications, which is why I was reading it. However, as I came to the end, it actually talked about adoption, and since the purpose of this book wasn't to appeal to birth moms, adoptees, or adoptive parents, I see the author as an unbiased source of information about adoption.

Gladwell begins to address the issue of nature versus nurture which has always been fascinating to me, as it probably is with most adoptees. He writes about the Colorado Adoption Project of the 1970s. They studied 245 babies who had been given up for adoption by following them through the years and administering personality and intelligence tests. The adoptive parents took the same tests. As a control, they also administered the tests to sets of parents and their biological children. The biological children scored similarly to their parents. To quote Gladwell:

For the adopted kids, however, the results were downright strange. Their scores have nothing whatsoever in common with their adoptive parents: these children are no more similar in their personality or intellectual skills to the people who raised them, fed them, clothed them, read to them, taught them, and loved them for sixteen years than they are to any two adults taken at random off the streets.

Wow. With all the reading about adoption that I've done over the past few months, its odd that I've found what I find to be the most interesting study highlighted in a book that I didn't even know would mention adoption! Sure, everyone would guess that this were the case, that bio kids are more like their parents than adopted kids, but like I said, I'm a skeptic, so until your prove it to me, I probably won't fully believe it.

Even more interesting is the conclusion of this study. Gladwell wasn't trying to discredit the "nurture" argument, but rather, where the environmental impact actually comes from. He goes on to provide compelling data to suggest that children are actually more influenced by their peers than they are their parents.

The whole thing was quite interesting for me to read. He really hits the nail on the head - it sometimes does feel like my parents are two random people off the street, because essentially they are - biologically they are probably no more similar to me than any of you reading this blog right now. The difference is they invested their time, money and love into my development. But it still feels random.

The idea of environmental influence coming from peers is completely accurate in my case. Once I was old enough to go to friends' houses to spend the night, I was never at home, I always wanted to be at a friend's house. I have always had the tendency to elevate my friends to "family" status if that makes any sense. This week, I really identified with something another adoptee wrote on her blog (which you should definitely check out here):

When it comes to my family I feel disconnected and displaced. I feel very much connected to my husband and friends.

I can really relate to that. It isn't that there is a lack of love for my family, its just that there is a lack of similarity with them, and I've been able to find that similarity to some degree elsewhere - my friends.

Funny how you sometimes learn new things in the least likely of places...