Late Bloomers, The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement (2019) is a highly recommendable book by Rich Karlgaard. The book isn’t strictly speaking about late bloomers, but about the wider societal context and our obsession with prodigies and early bloomers. Late bloomers have received little scientific attention and research. One notable exception is Debra Eve (https://laterbloomer.com/). Karlgaard’s book is more a philosophical perspective on the phenomenon rather than empirical research and it touches on many problems that concern society as a whole and not just late bloomers. Problems, such employability of middle-aged folks arise:
In Silicon Valley’s most successful companies, the median employee is likely to be thirty-two or younger. And these aren’t a handful of unicorn startups. They are corporate—and cultural—giants like Apple, Google, Tesla, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
And, of course, the angst of a whole generation left without orientation:
For every Zuckerberg, who made his first billion by twenty-three, or Lena Dunham, the twenty-five-year-old creator of the HBO show Girls, there are tens of thousands of twenty-somethings sitting in their parents’ basements wondering why they performed poorly in school and haven’t yet made a movie, disrupted an industry, or started a fashion line. This anxiety has paralyzed an entire generation of young people just at the point when their lives should be dynamic.
Like many famous people who eventually became high achievers (scientists Todd Rose and Berry Scott Kaufmann are mentioned), Rich Karlgaard struggled through junior high school:
Then adolescence arrived and upended my little world. Junior high school felt like a prison. The other boys began to mature physically while I seemed stuck in a snowbank. They got interested in girls, and girls in them. [...] In sports I was a benchwarmer. In social life I was picked on, pushed around, yanked up by the underwear, and flushed. One afternoon a ninth grader took a swing at me and broke my glasses. I did nothing to retaliate and became a loser in the eyes of those who stood by. In high school I won back some shred of dignity by trying out for the track and cross-country teams. Distance running favors skinny kids who can channel their anger into pain tolerance.
This reads almost like my own biography, except that I didn’t become a long distance runner. I could identify, though, as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe was one of the many books about loners I read.
Karlgaard writes about another common phenomenon among late bloomers: self-doubt:
From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Maya Angelou, to popular musicians, to world-renowned brain surgeons, even the brightest and most creative aren’t immune to this nagging sense of dread—a feeling that, eventually, someone will pull back the curtain and reveal just how untalented and unworthy they truly are. Maya Angelou once confessed, “ I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’ ” All healthy people have self-doubt.
A lot of late bloomers feel like ugly ducklings (Ugly Duckling Syndrome) when young. Andersen himself was a relatively late bloomer just like the protagonist in his famous fairy, which many speculate may have been based on himself. Having started writing his fairy tales in his 30s, they nevertheless did not sell well in the beginning, as parents and children alike ignored his works. It would take a decade for him to gain a foothold in the public consciousness and fully experience success in his lifetime.
When late bloomers become successful the Ugly Duckling Syndrome often turns into Imposter Syndrome. This is not only true for May Angelou, but for countless other successful people: Tom Hanks, Sharyl Sandberg, Tina Fey, George R.R. Martin, J.K. Rowling, and F. Scott Fitzgerald are only a few famous names among the legions of people with imposter syndrome.
Late bloomers, therefore, seem to be psychologically and biologically different from other people. If you are surprised about the “biologically” part, go back to Karlgaard’s description of his young teenage self. There is an interesting pattern. Late bloomers tend to be
- Interested in sex later and when interested not into promiscuity
- More childish and playful
- Disadvantaged at sports (benchwarmers)
- Later when it comes to puberty
- Physically weaker (and get bullied by early bloomers, rarely by other late bloomers!)
There is a single biological process that can account for all of these traits: r/K selection, or life-history theory as it is called nowadays.
r Selection | K selection |
shorter lifespans | longer lifespans |
early puberty | later puberty |
looks more mature (facial hair, etc.) | more neotenous traits (looks younger) |
low parental investment | high parental investment |
more superficial relationships | more intense relationships |
tendency towards promiscuity | tendency towards monogamy |
There is always some biological variation, but the question is why are there these distinct patterns in junior high school? In my model of evolutionary personality types, it is hunter-gatherers who are K-selected and early food producers, farmers and especially pastoralists, who are more hierarchical and status-conscious.
As foragers are egalitarian and tend to mature later (foragers typically do not marry before age 17/18), it should not be surprising that forager types/late bloomers often end up at the bottom of the high school hierarchy. I have argued that hunter-gatherer humility (e.g. shaming the meat) is the psychological origin of imposter syndrome. Foragers typically have ectomorph (skinny) body types that are adapted to endurance hunting. Karlgaard’s decision to take up long-distance running was therefore ideal as he would have hardly had any chance in competing against pastoralist types, whose mesomorph bodies are adapted to speed. Pastoralists are also very in-groupish (cliquish), which explains why the jocks tend to be sprinters rather than long-distance runners (who tend to be loners).
It makes perfect biological sense for foragers to be more K-selected and late bloomers. It is typically the older hunters who are the best hunters due to experience, rather than the younger fitter hunters. Hunting is long-distance running plus tracking (detective work), so it’s also not surprising that late bloomers come up with original ideas later in life by honing their skills a life long.
While many early bloomers tend to be pastoralist types (especially in sports and entertainment), ironically early bloomers in science and technology tend to be forager types, exactly because of their brains’ ability to see multiple possibilities and patterns (tracking skills). I was a late bloomer, but I also showed early signs of giftedness, especially in language. The same was true for my oldest son, who was able to read by age two. When his classmates had their growth spurts I was able to warn him that his would be ... just a little bit later.
I am definitely looking forward to more research on late bloomers. The Ugly Duckling, on the other hand, has become less known among the little late bloomers nowadays. They turn to more modern fiction, like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (a late bloomer, of course).
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