What I’m reading:
Obituary in the New York Times from 2007 on “Dr. Stella Chess, a child psychiatrist who helped develop and popularize the influential theory that children are born with distinct temperaments that can powerfully affect their outlook and relationship with their parents”
The theory arose from groundbreaking research into human development that began in 1956, when Dr. Chess and her husband, Dr. Alexander Thomas, a former director of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital Center, initiated the New York Longitudinal Study.
The study followed 133 children from infancy through adulthood and tried to observe patterns of behavior over that period. Working with two other researchers, Herbert G. Birch and Margaret E. Hertzig, Dr. Chess and Dr. Thomas examined nine dimensions of behavior and concluded that most of their subjects fell into three broad categories. Their findings — that children could be described as “easy,” “difficult” or “slow to warm up” — described aspects of an inherent temperament…
Reminds me in a way of the books on parenting by Alan Kazdin. I’ve actually taken his free Coursera course: Everyday Parenting: The ABCs of Child Rearing. I can really recommend it.
Below, Cronus eating his children: