The Books of the Ages

The cover of Ravenna M. Helson and Valory Mitchell’s book aptly introduces the book’s topic: A fifty-year study of women’s adult development.

I don’t recall how I found out about this book, but I was happy to find that my local library has the book. I picked up a copy yesterday.

Goodreads’ description of Women on the River of Life: A Fifty-Year Study of Adult Development begins as follows: “Commenced in 1958 with 142 young women who were seniors at Mills College, the Mills Study has become the largest and longest longitudinal study of women’s adult development, with assessments of these women in their twenties, forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies.” (Mills College is a private college in California.)

The first chapters of the book provide what a sociological study must provide – discussion of how the study came to be, an explanation of the study’s methodology, demographics of the study’s participants, limitations of the study (for example, all the study participants were women who could attend a private women’s college – indicating a more homogenous group of people within the study than would typically be found in broader society), an analysis of the social times within which the study occurred, an explanation of the benefits of a longitudinal study over a point-in-time study, etc. Such explanations for sociological studies are necessary, important, and informative.

After I skimmed through the introductory explanations to get a broad sense of the study and its’ parameters, I began happily finding valuable insights from what has been learned in this longitudinal study. For example, when the study leaders did the first series of interviews and had the study participants complete their first set of multiple questionnaires about their lives and about how the study participants socially identify, what goals they had, how their viewed their inner experience, etc. (when the study participants were in their final year of undergraduate study), the study leaders scored each study participant’s “social presence” based on the completed questionnaires. The study leaders wondered if scores of higher or lower “social presence” would impact the women’s adult lives in terms of goal achievement and other life measurements. Over the next several decades, subsequent follow up (questionnaires, etc.) did – in fact – show that higher or lower levels of “social presence” did correlate to life achievements or lack thereof: ability to achieve career goals, rates of marital stability or divorce, etc.

I am finding this book so insightful that reading a library copy isn’t enough. This study’s insights resonate with my own life experience. I see ways in which the sociological insights presented here can help me direct the course of how I navigate the world. I ordered a copy to have on my bookshelf at home.

Bibliophile and would-be-antiquarian Kim Burkhardt reviews books at The Books of the Ages and at The Hermitage Within. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!).