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Chapter 9: Hope
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Grit, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Passion, Perseverance, and Success
Developing Grit
Psychology and Human Development
Grit and Society
Summary
Analysis
People constantly ask Duckworth how they can help others develop grit. Most are parents, but some are also teachers, managers, and even military generals. Many of these people assume that young people should face as much adversity as possible to become gritty. They sound like the early-20th-century psychologist John Watson, who thought that parents shouldn’t show their children affection or help them with the challenges they face. Meanwhile, other parents think that the key to raising gritty children is “unconditional affection and support.”
The last four chapters have focused on how people can build grit for themselves, but the next three explain how they can help others—especially young people—do the same. The debate over parenting that Duckworth describes here reflects how controversial a topic this is; and yet both theories are partially consistent with the evidence that Duckworth has presented so far. But, as she noted in the previous chapter, the kind of challenges that people face is much more important than the number of challenges they encounter. This is why neither strict, authoritarian parenting nor completely lax, permissive parenting is the obvious solution to raising gritty kids.
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Duckworth asks whether strict parents or supportive ones end up helping children develop grit. She offers two contrasting examples, starting with the star quarterback Steve Young, who attributes his success to his strict Mormon parents. In college, Young wanted to quit football, but his father refused to let him move home. Instead, he practiced hard and eventually became the country’s best college quarterback. Young’s parents wanted to raise persistent and disciplined kids, but they were warm and supportive, not authoritarian. Young’s father—who, fittingly, goes by the nickname “Grit”—did everything he could to spend weekends with his children. He also helped Young work through his childhood anxiety attacks. Young recognizes that his parents’ tough love was actually selfless: they wanted him to have more opportunities than they did.
Duckworth notes that Young’s parents might seem overly strict and authoritarian at first. Upon further examination, though, they were clearly fair, loving, and deeply committed to their children. The clearest evidence of this is that Young fully appreciates their parenting style in retrospect. Thus, Young’s father didn’t ban Young from returning home out of cruelty, but rather because he believed it was best for his son. This was really just Young’s parents’ way of expressing their high expectations and belief in their children’s ability to succeed. In short, Young’s story shows that parents can raise gritty children through a combination of high expectations and support.
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While unlike Steve Young in many ways, the British comedian Francesca Martinez also has lots of grit. She has built a successful career despite her cerebral palsy, which makes performing onstage difficult. She blames her loving, supportive family for her success. When she wanted to drop out of high school to pursue comedy, her parents encouraged her. Martinez’s parents explained their philosophy to Duckworth: they believe that nurturing, supportive parenting naturally helps children find their calling and thrive. But they also refused to spoil their children. Instead, they taught their children to finish what they start and live according to moral principles.
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Young and Martinez’s parents were very different, but they fit into the pattern that Duckworth has seen produce high-grit kids time and time again. While psychologists still need to research this topic further, Duckworth offers some clear insights. First, parents don’t have to choose between being supportive or demanding—all around the world, for decades, study after study has found that the most successful parents do both. Duckworth calls these parents “wise parents.” She gives her readers a checklist for determining if they are appropriately demanding and supportive (or warm and respectful).
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Wise parents raise gritty children because they serve as effective role models for grit. Of course, all children imitate the adults around them—especially their parents. In a famous Stanford study, young children watched an adult either play with toys or attack an inflatable doll, then did the exact same thing as the adult they saw. But as children grow up, they stop imitating adults and start emulating them: they decide whether they want to be the same kind of people as the adults around them. When he studied successful performers, Benjamin Bloom found that most had wise parents who modeled a strong work ethic and passed on their own interests. This suggests that wise parents also have to model passion and perseverance in order to raise gritty children.
Other adults besides parents can also model grit for children. For instance, Spotify founder Tobi Lütke dropped out of high school and took an apprenticeship with an engineering company. A programmer at the company taught Lütke how to write code, gave him consistent feedback, and helped him face challenges like presenting his work to General Motors.
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Similarly, wise teachers can influence young people just like wise parents. Harvard economist Ron Ferguson has found that students perform better, participate more in class, and feel happier when their teachers are both supportive and demanding. Similarly, David Yeager and Geoff Cohen ran an experiment by returning some students’ graded essays with a post-it note that said, “I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.” Eighty percent of the students who received this feedback revised and resubmitted their essays, compared to forty percent in the control group. They also made much more substantial edits.
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Not every high-grit person has parents who are able to be present and supportive, but they all have some mentor at a crucial point in their life. For instance, Cody Coleman was born to an incarcerated mother and raised by his impoverished, aging grandmother. He wasn’t a great student at the underperforming school he attended, and he assumed he couldn’t get into an elite college. But his older brother told him that he might as well try. Cody ended up earning perfect grades in high school and getting into MIT. His math teacher supported and challenged him through high school, as did his professors and peers once he reached MIT. He graduated with honors, and now he’s starting a PhD at Stanford. His experience shows how any adult can change young people’s lives by understanding and supporting them.
