Chapter 6 was definitely uplifting for me to read because I was a child whose parents decided to wait until I was older to enter Pre-K. Two of my best friends in high school were the two youngest in our class, whereas I was the fourth oldest. It was interesting to observe our differences in some of these areas; for example, I know they both felt a tremendous amount of academic pressure from a very young age. Unlike what LP mentioned, my two friends were extremely smart and ended up at amazing four year institutions where they plan on achieving their outstanding goals. I do, however, really see the expectations effect on them because they had a lot of stress about getting good grades for their parents.
I found Chapter 7 to relate a lot back to the Straub Chapter 4 reading about stress. It seemed straightforward to me that, when placed in a stressful situation at such a young age, the children turned to coping mechanisms that maybe were not the best for their health. One of the book’s themes that I saw reflected in this chapter again was the ability to take your fate into your own hands; if one’s parents got divorced, they simply had to find their own happiness and fulfillment later in life to not feel the heavy burden of their parent’s divorce throughout their lives.
I had a very similar reaction to Chapter 7. Many of my friends in elementary/high school had divorced parents, and it always puzzled me how differently they all coped with the stress that their situation entailed. I, like you have said here, think that the main concept to pull away is that, despite the stressful situations that we all go through in life, longevity is more determined by the ability to cope with this stress.