Birth timing and family support shaped an academic career’s opportunities

Evidence

I attribute much of my success in life to two fortunate aspects of the timing of my birth: First, I was the first child in an extended family household that included proud parents, two doting Swedish grandmothers, and a Great Aunt Lou, providing the foundation for a firm sense of self-esteem (which survived the birth of my sister, Nancy, 3 years later). Second, 1942 proved to be the crest of the wave that was the post-World War II “baby boom,” a period of history in which opportunities opened that might otherwise not have been available to a young woman from a lower middle class background. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2462

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to sociological work on birth cohorts and opportunity structures, and to the broader ‘baby boom’ demography literature.