Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn

In the late 1960s, I fell in love with developmental psychology as an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college, Connecticut College (at that time a women's college). Psychology was appealing from the first course, and I don't remember ever thinking about another major after my freshman year. I still have a copy of my first developmental study (including the raw data, now-faded yellow mimeographed questionnaires on beliefs and feelings toward Hanukkah and Christmas holidays of conservative and reform Jewish children and Unitarian and Methodist Protestant children). My interests in developmental psychology coalesced when Eleanor Heider joined the faculty. She espoused a unique blend of cognitive and social psychology. My senior thesis was based on Lawrence Kohlberg's work, so I applied to a master's program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. Moving to Cambridge in the fall of 1969 was a jolt: All of a sudden, the academic ...

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