
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 12, 1995                   TAG: 9503100029
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LIVE LONG

A "CONSCIENTIOUS" child is likely to live longer as an adult than the impulsive kid who is less dependable and truthful, behavioral researchers at Stanford University have concluded after following up on a group first studied when they attended California schools more than 70 years ago.

The trend by 1991, reported recently in Science News magazine, showed that dependable boys, especially, outlived their unreliable peers by two to four years. The study group was not randomly selected, so the researchers don't want to make too much of their findings, saying merely that the possible connection deserves study.

Parents should feel free to use the basic observation, however, without the disclaimer. ("You agreed to pick up your room before you went out, now get in there and do it. Do you want to die four years before Jim? His mom says he always gets his work done before he goofs off! That's going to pay off for him when he's 74.") All is fair in love and war, and raising kids is both, isn't it?

Another interesting variable in the study is marital stability. People who came from families where there was no divorce, and who had not been divorced themselves, lived longer. "Conscientious men from stable families lived an average of 81 years, compared to 74 years for nonconscientious men whose parents had divorced," according to the magazine article.

Surprisingly, though, adults who had been cheerful, optimistic children tended to die younger. Researchers said the difference could not be explained fully by the optimism with which subjects might have regarded their chances of cheating injury or disease if they engaged in risky behaviors, such as smoking cigarettes.

So if your conscientious child is downright cheery about cleaning his room, you might tell him to wipe that smile off his face.

We're not sure where the driven personality fits in, the type normally considered a candidate for heart attacks in middle age. We also don't know if a more controlled follow-up study to the Stanford research will be done. We don't expect to live long enough to learn the results, in any event.

Still, we have an unscientific explanation to offer for the dutiful child's longer life. These men have too many projects to handle, and too many people depending on them, to dare lie down and die.

Which might also help to explain why women - who, let's admit it, tend to be more conscientious than men - live considerably longer. Most women have too much to do to think about retiring early, as it were.

by CNB