Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience. By Glen H. Elder, Jr., Westview Press, 444 pages, $25. 

The children of the Great Depression fought tooth-and-nail for things that most Americans take for granted every day. They grew up in hardship and learned to make more out of less. 

“Most people initially thought of this as a ‘lost generation,’” Glen Elder says. “One can think of this as a generation of people steeled to misfortune and adversity and then experiencing incredible opportunity after the war. When they came back from the war, it’s my sense that many felt that there was absolutely nothing they could not do. So it was a can-do generation.” 

Elder’s “sense” on this particular issue is unrivaled. When this book first gained print in 1974 it spawned life course theory-social changes change the people who are living during a particular time period-which has become an integral part of sociology curricula around the nation. 

The University of Chicago Press kept the book in print for 20 years, and the Westview Press released the 25th anniversary edition earlier this year. The re-issue includes a new chapter focusing on the period during World War II and the people who left destitute communities to fight for their country, as well as those who remained behind. The chapter also provides an account of the evolution of life course theory and studies. 

“The motivation was that the life course theory has come of age-it’s everywhere,” Elder says. “No theory is formed by any single work, but this was probably the first monographic study to bring the central ideas together and apply the theory to the changing times and lives of Americans-to how people change and how they end up in their later years.” 

The sample of Oakland, California, residents who were born in 1921 includes not only those who suffered heavy economic losses during the Great Depression, but also those who were more fortunate. The book is based on detailed information gained from the groundbreaking Oakland Growth Study, conducted in 1931-32 by Herbert Stolz and Harold E. Jones. 

Following graduate studies and a postdoctoral year at Carolina, Elder in 1962 joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he helped continue the data collection and analysis of the original sample members as they reached the age of 40. The study followed them year-by-year through the 1930s and into the war years, then obtained follow-ups in their adult years in 1955, 1960, 1964, 1972, and 1982. 

“The anniversary edition proves that the study holds up remarkably well over a quarter of a century,” writes Robert N. Wilson, professor emeritus of sociology, in a recent review of the book. “What was original then, and is still unfortunately uncommon today, is the effort to link the particulars of individual lives to the vast currents of historical change. Much psychological study continues to treat individual behavior as if the person lives in a historical vacuum; many historical narratives lose the individual in the sweep of massive forces.”