Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne

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 nurturing so common in women's colleges at the time was replaced by big research university life and the obvious discrepancy between how female and male graduate students were perceived and often treated. I joined a woman's group of Harvard graduate students almost immediately. I spent a year taking courses from professors whose work had become very familiar during my undergraduate years (Thomas Pettigrew, Courtney Cazden, Sheldon White). All were concerned with policy and equity. My interest in these topics came, I believe, from my activist church youth group (a focus on civil rights and literacy programs).

My doctoral research was more theoretical, though, combining social and cognitive perspectives on the development of a sense of self. Work with Michael Lewis at the University of Pennsylvania and then the Education Testing Service on social cognition and the acquisition of self (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979) was exciting and rewarding.

While at Penn, I helped initiate the Women's Studies Program, which led to an interest in how females defined and revised their sense of self as a result of reproductive events, and how social cognitive processes as well as context influenced experiences such as menarche, dysmenorrheal, and so-called premenstrual blues (Brooks-Gunn & Matthews, 1979). Diane Ruble and I began a research collaboration on this topic. Even in the face of some skepticism (some colleagues recommended against doing reproductively oriented research, as it was not in the mainstream of psychology), our menarche results were relevant for social cognition and the self (Brooks-Gunn & Ruble, 1982). This research led to an interest in the socialization experiences of girls around the [Page 189]time of puberty, as well as the context in which girls experience puberty.

Viewed from a historical perspective, the end of the 1970s found my research interests solidifying around central conceptual themes: social cognition and self, contextual features of key developmental transitions, and increasingly, the relationships that are central to redefinitions and adaptation.

In the early 1980s, I initiated discussions at the Johnson and Johnson Company about pubertal health education, given that girls received most of their early information about puberty from the pamphlets and films produced by the feminine products industry. I had always cared about how developmental research could be used to promote well-being and equity. The result was an updating of their classic film on menarche, a conference on “Girls at Puberty,” and an edited volume with Anne Petersen (Brooks-Gunn & Petersen, 1983). At the end of the conference, I was determined to continue work on puberty, but with more of a focus on the intersection of pubertal changes (not just menarche), contextual influences, relationships, and biology. I was introduced to Michelle Warren, a reproductive endocrinologist at Columbia University. Here was a highly respected physician who had been studying behavior as well as physical consequences of hormonal dysfunction, and wanted to collaborate. We prepared a research agenda and spent 2 years trying to obtain funds to start it. The Adolescent Study Program continues today (with more than 20 years of continuous funding).

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