Oct 22, 2019
Ronald Ferguson is a Harvard
Kennedy School professor. Tatsha Robertson is an award-winning
journalist. Together, they have found the answer to a pivotal
question every parent asks: "How can I raise my children to be, not
just successful people, but extraordinarily successful human
beings?" In 2009,
Ronald, a father of three who is also the faculty director of the
Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University, started the “How
I was Parented Project” in which Harvard students interviewed one
another in an effort to understand how parenting got them to where
they were. Four years before Ronald started his project, Tasha
Robertson, who was then the New York City Bureau Chief for The
Boston Globe, begun interviewing high-achieving people
(including eventually, President Obama) about how thy raised their
own children and how they were raised. The purpose? She wondered if
mothers and fathers of very successful people were knowingly or
unknowingly following patterns in their
parenting. In late 2014,
Tatsha decided to write a book about her investigation and
reached out to achievement expert Ronald Ferguson. She wanted to
know if he saw patterns, too. He did! The two worked together,
analysing Tatsha’s interviews and the data from the Harvard study
as well as re-interviewing many of the achievers and their
parents. They confirmed
that there was a distinct pattern in the way they were all
parented; a pattern that was astonishingly consistent among these
parents, regardless of their socio-economic status, race, religious
or cultural background or level of education. The
Formula reveals the strategies you too can use to raise your
children to extraordinarily successful people who lead happy,
purposeful lives.