The Family Dynamic: A Journey into the Mystery of Sibling Success

by Susan Dominus

Overview

What explains those rare families that boast multiple siblings who achieve extraordinary success? An award-winning New York Times journalist weaves story with science to explore the circumstances that set those families apart.

“At once clear-eyed and compassionate, The Family Dynamic uncovers how parents—and siblings—shape and fuel individual success.”—Lisa Damour, bestselling author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers

An Olympic athlete. An award-winning novelist. A successful entrepreneur. All raised under one roof. What can we learn from those families whose children aim high and succeed, sometimes in widely varied fields? Just as important: What were the costs along the way, and what can we glean from their travails and triumphs?

The acclaimed New York Times journalist Susan Dominus offers compelling profiles of six such families in search of the factors that led to their success—was it an inherited quality, a specific way of parenting, the influence of a sibling, or a twist of luck? Inspired by the iconic Brontë sisters, whose remarkable literary success prompted endless speculation, Dominus, the mother of twin teenagers, sought out contemporary high-achieving families who shared intimate stories of their upbringing. She introduces us to the Chens, young parents who fled their country’s one-child policy to open a Chinese restaurant in Appalachia—then sent four children to elite colleges and on to careers that give back in technology and medicine; the Groffs, whose claim to fame is not just an award-winning novelist but an Olympic athlete and a notable entrepreneur; the Wojcickis, whose daughters made inroads as STEM pioneers in Silicon Valley; and the Murguias, who rose from exceptionally humble origins to become powerful jurists and civil rights champions. Woven into these and other stories is an account of centuries of scientific research into the ongoing question of nature versus nurture.

Elegantly written and extensively researched, The Family Dynamic is more than a checklist of how-to’s. It’s a deep and moving exploration of the complexity of family life and the rewards—and burdens—of ambition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593137918
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/06/2025
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Susan Dominus has worked for The New York Times since 2007, first as a Metro columnist and then as staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. In 2018, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service for its reporting on workplace sexual harassment. She won a Front Page Award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York and a Mychal Judge Heart of New York Award from the New York Press Club. She has studied as a fellow at the National Institutes of Health and Yale Law School. Her article about menopause in The New York Times Magazine won a National Magazine Award in 2024. She teaches journalism at Yale University.

Read an Excerpt

One

The Groffs

Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, is still sometimes cool in Cooperstown, a village in upstate New York where snow can cover patches of shaded lawn well into the first week of May. The gap between the promise of the coming summer and the reality of the weather conditions in that town was of some interest, in the eighties, to the Groff children of Cooperstown: Adam, the oldest, now a doctor and serial entrepreneur; Lauren, the middle child, now one of the most accomplished novelists of her generation; and Sarah, the youngest, currently a clinical psychology student pursuing her PhD, but also an Olympic triathlete–turned–world-class Ironman competitor.

Family tradition, as Lauren recalled, dictated that on that weekend, only weeks after the last snows had melted, their father, the esteemed Dr. Jerry Groff, would roll back the canvas covering of their pool. His children—a son and two daughters, both tall for their age—would watch quietly, arms clutched around their chests, wearing their bathing suits, as the tarp was rolled back, revealing all manner of accumulated debris on the water’s surface: unidentifiable algae, congealed muck, a dead frog, some floating earthworms. Some years, a thin coating of ice concealed what was below. Jerry Groff maintains that all of that would have been cleared away by the time any children jumped in, but he does recall the children, shrieking and laughing, teeth chattering, as he timed the event: Anyone who could stay in for a full minute would get a dollar. Lauren experienced it more as a competition; she recalled all three children standing still in stoic patience with fingers practically blue, willing time to pass, each of them hoping to display endurance that would surpass that of the other siblings. Who would bear the cold—who would stay in the longest?

This was a challenge of fortitude, if a low-stakes one; later, Sarah and Lauren would refer, half in jest, to events such as this one as the “feats of strength” exercises that characterized their family activities, even as adults. It was an exercise in toughness for kids who did not have it tough. As a child, their father had known privation, but now he had enough money to provide his family with a rambling, historic house on a lake and a pool besides. A pool might be for lounging in on puffy, airy mattresses, for flirty birthday parties, for relief from the heat, but it could also be an excuse for his children to test their mettle. Competition was fun. Pluck and determination, sometimes mixed with brute force—the family came to call that combination of qualities “Groffiness”—could be fun.

Years later, Sarah would make her living as an endurance athlete. Twice she has been an Olympic triathlete, a sheath of female muscle competing against some of the world’s most gifted athletes. In 2023, as the mother of a two-year-old, she won the women’s Ironman European Championship in Frankfurt, swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and running a marathon, all in eight hours, fifty-four minutes, and fifty-three seconds.

Lauren, too, would rely on endurance to make a living. As a novelist and short-story writer, she does it privately, in a converted bedroom her own two children do not readily access. For five or six uninterrupted hours a day, she builds humans, bits of imagined bone and flesh and feeling, characters who populate universes, whole worlds moving through time. She creates her own reality, in order to reflect something yet unseen about the one in which she lives. She writes a draft longhand, throws it away, writes another draft, throws it away—a dozen or so for Fates and Furies, her breakout novel, one of three books for which she has been a finalist for the National Book Award.

Adam, too, would prove an exemplar in a certain kind of endurance: He simultaneously acquired an MD and an MBA, then went on to become a serial entrepreneur in the health-care field. Adam frequently jokes about being the least talented of his siblings, but Lauren credits Adam, the least publicly celebrated sibling, as the one who set the bar for the rest of them. “He’s ridiculous,” Lauren told me the first time we spoke. “He has always been the star.” She still believes that to be true—that within the family, his words carry the most weight.

Jerry and his wife, Jeannine, raised their children in an atmosphere that prized propulsion, motion, effort. The parents had endless projects and focused ambitions for themselves, but their children were never the main one. What the Groff parents expected of their children was primarily a work ethic—labors of love and otherwise.

That the Groff siblings have diversified so remarkably, however, is perhaps a reflection of the general intensity of their home life. Differentiation could serve as a form of refuge from the challenges of coming of age in a family in which so much talent and industry and mental toughness align.

On Father’s Day in June 2016, the Groff family assembled in Orford, New Hampshire, at Jerry and Jeannine’s then-new home, about twenty-five minutes from the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, where Jerry, a rheumatologist, had completed a two-year fellowship decades earlier and where Adam also works. The home, like the one in Cooperstown in which the children were raised, is sprawling, with grounds that are pastorally impressive: rolling lawn, a barn, a murky but swimmable pond, ringed by willows and trees. Inside, Jeannine has painted the rooms in historically appropriate colors, seemingly never-ending work that she proudly points out to guests; they can afford to hire people to help, but the Groffs still prefer to take care of that kind of work themselves. Parked by one of the outbuildings is usually a pickup truck that Jerry drives around town.

Jerry and Jeannine had recently moved from Cooperstown to be closer to the families of two of their three children. Sarah, the youngest, lives nearby with her husband, the professional distance runner Ben True. Adam, the oldest, lives in that area as well, with his wife, Tricia, a pediatrician, and their four children. Lauren, married to Clay Kallman, a property developer with whom she has two children, frequently spends her summer there and eventually rode out the pandemic lockdown in another home on the property in Orford, a modern space where she wrote while her two sons were taking classes online.

Sarah and Ben arrived at the gathering a bit late, on their bikes and wearing athletic gear. Although Sarah can be playful and lively in the many interviews she does on podcasts, that day she and her husband were both quiet, radiating a perceptibly tense energy that even I, a guest at the Groff home, could feel. The upcoming weeks were potentially momentous for both of them, and their minds were drifting forward to how they’d both fare physically and mentally in competition. Ben, who still holds the American record in the five-kilometer road race, was trying to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in the five thousand meters, having narrowly missed that opportunity four years earlier, hampered by a bout of Lyme disease. Sarah had already qualified, but that only intensified her stress, as, at age thirty-four, she was likely facing her last chance at a medal. She had spent the four years leading up to this moment training in what her family calls a “bubble,” a zone from which she rarely strayed, missing friends’ weddings or nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays, pushing herself through workouts so grueling that they left her mind drained of thought. She had run in hundred-degree, high-humidity conditions in Mexico and swum in fifty-degree waters in the Pacific, had woken up multiple times in an ambulance after passing out and once, for a two-month stretch, trained in excruciating pain with what turned out to be a fractured sacrum.

Sarah had met Ben not long after relocating to New Hampshire, where she had moved to find some stability and to be closer to Adam and his family. Adam is not quite so long of limb as his sisters, and yet he is a serious runner as well, a marathoner who will occasionally join Sarah on a long run. He had even done so recently, Tricia mentioned, as the family sat around a table eating lunch.

“Oh yeah? How’d that go?” Lauren asked, a little amused. There was an edge to the question: She seemed to like the idea of her older brother struggling to keep up with her younger sister.

Adam’s daughter Heidi, then four, was a blond bit of a girl, her dress pink, her cheeks pink; she also wore a pink cast on one leg, the result of a mishap with a sprinkler just a few days earlier. On the cast, Jeannine had written, “You are so tough!” As the family sat around a table on the patio, the foothills of the White Mountains visible in the distance, Heidi, who was without her crutches, started off toward the kitchen, where she had heard there were live lobsters. Various assembled members of the Groff family watched as Heidi dragged herself, in a cross between a military crawl and the toddler scrabble she’d so thoroughly outgrown, across the patio toward the steps leading up to the back entrance of the house. When she finally arrived at the steps, she looked up balefully. The question hung in the air: Was she going to keep going? Sitting there watching, well aware that I was among trained medical professionals, I worried nonetheless: I pictured tiny bones rebreaking, the cast splitting open. “Let her do it,” Tricia said. “Let her see how far she can get.”

Editorial Reviews

[W]onderfully engaging. . . . [Dominus] expertly interweaves stories of the Brontë sisters with those of contemporary families and academic studies on factors that contribute to children’s excellence. She makes clear that the current research provides no definitive set of answers to the cereal question. Instead, it hints at certain heuristics, which are illuminated by Dominus’s careful, detailed portraits.”—The New York Times

“The Family Dynamic will no doubt disappoint readers looking for bullet-pointed parenting-for-success tips. It’s just not that kind of book. It’s better. Dominus is smart, honest and wise, and at her best, very funny. Her findings offer a science-based reality check, while her fluid, artful writing can give parents a much-needed break.”—The Washington Post

“I can think of no other book more helpful in understanding not just the inner workings of families, but how best to help children from all walks of life to thrive despite a world filled with challenges. Susan Dominus has given us all a brilliant gift.”—Robert Kolker, bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road

“The Family Dynamic makes the idea of a ‘family culture’ feel tangible and real, as it elegantly explores the degree to which parents can (and just as often cannot) shape the people their children become.”—Rachel Aviv, bestselling author of Strangers to Ourselves

“This powerful book will ignite essential conversations about the often-hidden costs of pursuing success—a must-read for parents, educators, coaches, grandparents, and anyone shaping the next generation.”—Jennifer Breheny Wallace, bestselling author of Never Enough

“At once clear-eyed and compassionate, The Family Dynamic uncovers how parents—and siblings—shape and fuel individual success. This richly drawn portrait of family life is as captivating as it is insightful—I can’t wait for the world to read this book.”—Lisa Damour, bestselling author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers

“Susan Dominus has given us an absolute stunner of a debut book. It would hardly surprise me if this book became a touchstone of family psychology—an exemplar of literary nonfiction, taught for many years to come.”—Jennifer Senior, Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author of All Joy and No Fun

“A captivating book on how our early roots shape our later success. Susan Dominus serves up a delicious smorgasbord of rich stories and rigorous social science to illuminate how multiple kids in the same family go on to achieve great things.”—Adam Grant, bestselling author of Hidden Potential

“A brilliantly empathetic portraitist, Susan Dominus is the ideal writer to explore the mystery of family ambition. The perfect gift for the brother or sister who made you the person you are.”—Emily Nussbaum, Pulitzer Prize–winning culture critic and author of Cue the Sun!

“[The Family Dynamic is full of] compelling advice for those seeking guidance in setting up their children for success.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Empathetic and written with a novelist’s knack for characterization, this entrances.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2025-03-22
ANew York Times journalist explores factors that contribute to sibling success.

In this engaging exploration, Dominus says the impetus for writing her book formed many years ago. Following a childhood visit to a friend’s house, she explains, “I had been given a window into just how varied family culture could be regarding expectations and the cultivation of skills.” Dominus was further inspired by the success of the Brontë sisters, a subject of discussion throughout. The author offers an intimate look into the lives of six families from various locations and walks of life whose children had all achieved high levels of success, in an attempt to find the commonalities that exist among them. While the author speaks to the actions she feels contributed to the success of these children, she also discusses actions she feels families should not take. One suggestion Dominus offers is to try to “get out of your children’s way.” As the author explains, “Various studies, over the years, have shown that when parents intervene, for example, as a child is trying to finish a puzzle, the extra help is demotivating for that child.” Dominus empathizes, “For parents invested in their children’s success, it can be excruciating to watch them fail—or even wait it out to see whether their children will succeed on their own.” Among other suggestions are setting high yet reasonable expectations, exposing children to highly educated role models, and creating a culturally rich environment. Despite the best efforts of caregivers, Dominus contends, one must not forget the role of chance in the success of children. “The coin toss is the outside world asserting the power of randomness on even the most strong family culture.”

Compelling advice for those seeking guidance in setting up their children for success.

Kirkus Reviews