Data Baby

My Life in a Psychological Experiment

By: Susannah Breslin

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Lab Girl meets Brain on Fire in this provocative and poignant memoir delving into a woman's formative experiences as a veritable "lab rat" in a lifelong psychological study, and her pursuit to reclaim autonomy and her identity as a adult.

What if your parents turn you into a human lab rat when you’re a child? Will that change the story of your life? Will that change who you are?

When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of over a hundred children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year study of personality development that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in what she feels is an abusive marriage and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped her identity and life choices. Already a successful journalist, she makes her own curious history the subject of her next investigation. From experiment rooms with one-way mirrors, to children’s puzzles with no solutions, to condemned basement laboratories, her life-changing journey uncovers the long-buried secrets hidden behind the renowned study. The question at the gnarled heart of her quest: Did the study know her better than she knew herself?

At once bravely honest and sharply witty, Data Baby is a compelling and provocative account of a woman’s quest to find her true self, and an unblinking exploration of why we turn out as we do. Few people in all of history have been studied from such a young age and for as long as Susannah Breslin, but the message of her book is universal. In an era when so many of us are looking to technology to tell us who to be, it’s up to us to discover who we actually are.

©2023 Susannah Breslin (P)2023 Legacy Lit

Critic reviews

“Data Baby is the riveting story of a long-term psychological study and its impact on Breslin’s life, a compelling story in itself. An utterly fascinating read.”—Elizabeth Crane, author of This Story Will Change: After the Happily Ever After

“Breslin's compelling memoir reminds us that psych data are made of people. Data Baby also brilliantly highlights how the making of data shapes the stories of the people being observed.”—danah boyd, author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

“As she examines the dark side of experimentation on human subjects, Breslin also asks disturbing questions about the consequences modern data-gathering will have on future generations. An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.”—Kirkus Reviews

Intriguing Story

Susannah Breslin’s lived experience is a story woven together by past and present events including the shadow of having been in a longitudinal study of her life. This study and her experience come together in the end. Her work is bold and her relationships complex. I enjoyed this book!

Didn't love this book

It starts out with some potential around how the experiment worked and impacted her day-to-day life as a child, then it dives into a basic memoir that didn't grab me and has very little to do with being a "data baby."

Interesting book not boring!

This book was different than most books. It did entertain me. I recommend it to people that are open minded. There was some funny content in it some serious some sad. I suppose that’s what makes it interesting it’s just not boring to me. I have been divorced a couple of times so I do resonate with some things in this book. I really enjoyed.

Not very entertaining

Not very entertaining, and seems to be a lot of fillers…including some very graphic sex sections.

Save yourself !

Yeah this was terrible and also not about the psychological experiment mentioned in the subtitle. Lots of WTH moments.