By Robert Crosnoe
Teens from economically disadvantaged homes are more likely to go to college if their parents' attitudes about their chances of enrollment are positive.
While teenagers from poor families are less likely overall to go to college versus those from higher income backgrounds, the study finds that the optimism or pessimism of their parents, particularly their mothers, makes a substantial difference in whether they enroll or not.
In the study of over 350 families, researchers found that poor parents in general were less likely to believe their children would ever attend college, and therefore provided less motivation to their children regarding that potential. This was especially true for girls, who parents may consider even more disadvantaged due to their sex, and non-African Americans.
African Americans have a profound belief in the educational system as a route to success, so they don't view poverty with the same level of risk as non-African Americans.
Overall, according to the study, poor parents who believed in their children's potential for college despite their economic situation - who instilled in them a sense of positively looking forward to the future -- seem to provide them a verifiable and significant advantage.
Journal of Marriage and Family 2002;64:690-702
This study is a powerful testimony to the power of belief. Many of us don't fully appreciate the potential influence we have on others, especially our close family members.
The above study provides a positive context, but my clinical experience is that many of the influences on us from our relatives are actually quite negative and serve to sabotage our health for many years, if not the remainder of our life.
Some of these influences are so painful we just bury them in our subconscious and fail to recognize the profound damage these influences have on our current health. Many times these events were not intentionally designed to harm, but nevertheless they result in bioelectrical short-circuiting that can have profound negative influences on our health.
These are usually the dozens, if not hundreds, of self-limiting beliefs that most of us have that prevent us from the highest levels of health and happiness.
All the drugs in the world, and nearly most of all the cognitive talk-based psychotherapy models, will fail to heal this short-circuiting.
The saddest thing is, unless some effective intervention strategy is implemented, this short-circuiting can persist over a lifetime. I recall a seventy-two year old woman whose father was a Chicago police officer. Over six decades earlier, she was with her father and his friend when a man stepped up to them and blew his friend's head off.
A profound trauma, indeed. It caused continuous insomnia in this woman for over 66 years. There was little reason to believe this would ever "spontaneously" heal.
Yet, when I applied a psychological acupressure technique that literally took only a few minutes, the post-traumatic terror that had prevented her sleep resolved and she felt a new sense of peace that allowed her to sleep comfortably at night.
The type of psychological acupressure technique I used for this process is called EFT. You can review the free EFT manual to learn the basics of this technique yourself.
After more than six months of hard work, I finally have my 10-hour EFT workshops available on DVD. They consist of: