How family history improves mental health
People who know, share, and explore their family history enjoy psychological benefits
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When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me the story of one of our ancestors who lived in the Old West. This ancestor, Jacob Hamblin, lived on the frontier and one day sent his adolescent son off to a nearby Native American chief to trade a horse for some blankets. When the son presented the horse, the chief offered a bundle of blankets. But the son, wanting to get the best deal he could, shook his head and demanded more. The chief complied. That happened again and again until the son had a massive mountain of blankets that weighed down the horse he was riding home.
But when the son got home, Hamblin was disappointed. He scolded his son for being greedy and taking more than his fair share of blankets. Hamblin then separated out the blankets into two piles and ordered the son to take one of the piles back. When the son returned, the chief seemed to be expecting him. And when the son asked the chief why he was willing to give more blankets than the horse was worth, the chief replied that he knew Hamblin was an honest man and would never stand for an unfair trade. He knew the boy’s father would send him back1.
I think there were more details in the version of this story that my mom told, but even from the simplified version that I remember it’s easy to see how it could have influenced a young mind. It hinted at where my family came from, and also that honesty was one of our core values. I’m sure my parents explicitly told me many times to be an honest person, but stories like this had a deeper impact, suggesting that being honest wasn’t just something we ought to do but instead was a fundamental part of who we are.
I enjoy family lore like this because it’s both entertaining and didactic. But I was surprised this spring to discover that there’s actually more to it than that. In fact, researchers have found relationships between exploring one’s family history and psychological well-being. In other words, family lore can play a role in improving mental health — a useful finding at a time when depression among teens seems to be reaching crisis levels.
The latest research on this topic comes in a paper from a trio of professors — Barry M. Lunt, Kelly R. Summers, and David A. Wood — at Brigham Young University2. They published the paper in the The Journal of Genealogy and Family in April3. The gist is that the trio set out to test the hypotheses that researching one’s family history improves psychological well-being. They also argue in the paper that “knowing about one’s ancestors can enhance one’s feeling of a positive identity, bestowing on an individual greater psychological well-being through the medium of positive distinctiveness.”
To test these ideas, the professors surveyed 256 college students. Slightly more than half of those students were enrolled in an introductory family history course, while the rest of the students were enrolled in other history classes. The students took surveys both at the beginning and at the end of their time in these courses.
This is a blog, not an academic journal, so I won’t go too deep into the nuts and bolts of the methodology and controls mentioned in the paper. But the findings are fascinating:
We find that participating in a family history course increases family identification, which in turn increases self-esteem, decreases anxiety, increases resilience, and leads to a more internal locus of control.
The fact that the authors used the phrase “locus of control” immediately caught my attention because it’s something that Jonathan Haidt — a social psychologist and co-author of the Coddling of the American Mind — has also recently written about. The phrase refers to types of mindsets; people with internal loci will feel like they control their own fate. Meanwhile, someone with an external locus of control will feel like they have little agency or influence over their life. And in keeping with this latest research, Haidt argued that having an internal locus is linked to better mental health outcomes.
It’s no surprise, then, that if doing family history work “leads to a more internal locus of control” it also has a positive influence on mental health.
In any case, the BYU professors also found that “knowing about one’s family and participating in family history are both associated with better psychological well-being.” And they argue in the paper that the research “suggests that other interventions that strengthen family identification are likely to produce psychological well-being.”
In news coverage of this research, Wood pointed out that “we’re not suggesting that this can solve clinical depression and all ills of life.” But he did argue that “it can help.”
The paper also builds on a large body of research that similarly connects mental health with knowledge of family lore. A 2008 paper, for example, argued that “knowledge of family history is significantly correlated with internal locus of control, higher self-esteem, better family functioning, greater family cohesiveness, lower levels of anxiety, and lower incidence of behavior problems.”
Other researchers have linked family storytelling to both positive outcomes for youth and stronger feelings of community and belonging within families. Another paper reports that reminiscing at the dinner table can help people learn to regulate emotions. And other researchers have found that “adolescents who tell intergenerational narratives that are rich in intergenerational connections and perspective-taking show higher levels of well-being.”
In a similar vein, author Michaeleen Doucleff notes in her book on indigenous family-raising practices Hunt, Gather, Parent that storytelling is a “human universal” that “transmits cultural values to children” and teaches them to be good members of their communities4.
The list could go on, but the point is that there’s an expansive body of research linking mental well-being to the exploration of family history. That makes me especially grateful for the stories, such as the one about Jacob Hamblin, that my parents shared with me. And it offers a practical reason to invest in the stability of families generally; at a time when a growing chorus claims that family is an outdated idea, the research overwhelmingly shows that it serves a useful function in bolstering psychological well-being. Put another way, as families disintegrate people don’t just lose role models or financial stability, they also lose a valuable tool for improving mental health.
As Woods indicated, none of this is a cure-all. But as a parent myself, one of the things that most concerns me is teens’ deteriorating mental health. Depression has skyrocketed in recent years, and it’s especially prevalent among girls and young women. My own kids are still young — my youngest can’t even talk yet — but anything I can do now to improve their odds of avoiding serious depression is something that I’m interested in. And it turns, out one of those things is very simple: I have to engage them in our family’s history.
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Headlines to check out this week:
Programs Should Put Family First
“America stands at a crossroads. Our most important institution, the family, is foundering. Given the importance of strong and stable families for our kids, communities, and the country, nothing is more important than moving to renew the economic and cultural foundations of the American family. Policymakers need to move quickly to eliminate marriage penalties, expand support for working families, and promote the message that family matters. Taken together, these measures would improve the appeal and affordability of marriage and family life for all Americans.”
Life Considered
I’m linking to Haley Baumeister’s blog homepage here, rather than a specific post, because each week she puts together a fantastic list of essays and articles that I always find interesting. More than a few of those links have ended up in influencing things I’ve written, or appeared in the “Headlines to check out this week” section of Nuclear Meltdown. Some of the essays that get links in Life Considered overlap directly with the topics I write about here, and others don’t exactly. But every week there’s something I find fascinating that wouldn’t otherwise have landed on my radar.
This story is a minor Old West legend, and if you google it you’ll find various versions online. (Hamblin has thousands of living descendents today.) A number of the details differ in various versions of the story, but I tried to recount it the way that it was told to me. I’ve never seen anything that calls this story into question, but like many stories passed down via oral tradition, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has…evolved over time. Also, obviously the Old West is a complicated topic worthy of serious study. Plenty of bad stuff happened in that era. I studied it as part of my graduate work, and wrote a master thesis on the West. But that’s largely beyond the scope of this particular blog post on the mental health impacts of family lore.
BYU is my alma mater.
Full reference for the paper: The Journal of Genealogy and Family History, East Sussex, England; 6:1, pp 66-73; April 2023. The paper is not publicly available online, but the authors graciously provided me with a press copy, for which I’d like to publicly thank them.
Page 201-202 (I have the Kindle version and I’m reading it on an iPhone. I’m not sure if the page numbers are identical on all platforms.) I’ll probably write a review of this book soon.
Great piece. I've been thinking a lot about how family history can fulfill some of the role that religion plays — and how it may have even been the origin of some religious practices. For instance, I know some people who still speak to deceased family members, a practice that feels closely related to prayer. And it doesn't feel like a stretch to say that the idea of holidays could have originated from family traditions and grown from there.
Thanks for writing this!