I thought the idea of the amount of playtime before entering formal school affecting longevity was very interesting, specifically because of the value that society places in education. One would think that, with the way Americans push the idea of a rigid education, that a child starting school at a younger age would be beneficial for him/her. However, unstructured playtime serves to be very beneficial for one’s psychological health, and therefore can increase longevity in the long run. This is puzzling to me because it seems that this information would be used to promote more loosely structured elementary schools, but this does not seem to be the case.
I was also very puzzled by the fact that parental divorce seemed to be more tragic in the long term for children than parental death. I would have assumed that parental death would have been more traumatizing for a child (creating a more stressful environment and therefore a shorter life) than a divorce (where the child would still be supported by two parents). However, results from the Terman Project shows that those whose parents divorced lived longer than those who had a parent die during their childhood. The chapter also talks about the resilience of these children and how that affects longevity, but I would think the resilience factor in these two situations (divorce and death) would be very similar, if not more for a child whose parent died.