Elizabeth and her twin sister Ann were born in 1936 by Alice Lamb, a 33-year-old single mother, in London. However, due to financial constraints, Alice was forced to offer both of them up for adoption, hoping that they would live better lives than the one she was able to provide. Luckily for her, Ann was adopted when she was 5 months old, which separated the twins for the next 70 years. Hector and Gladys Wilson preferred adopting Ann to Elizabeth because the latter was born with a slight spinal disorder (Segal et al., 2015). This essay aims at shedding light on the twins’ life history and how they met after being separated for 70 years.
Elizabeth had been raised in England by her single mother until she was 15 years old. It is during that time when her mother met her over 50-year-old step father, who had a son and two daughters from his previous marriage. However, Elizabeth did not live with her step brother and sisters at any point in her life. Regardless of her other siblings, her parents did their best to educate her, although she was always in bottom third of the facilities’ rankings. Nevertheless, she was pursuing her education until she was 15 when she dropped out and sought employment in various offices. She worked in different positions for the next ten years and eventually joined the Women’s Royal Navy. When serving in the army, she met her future husband, who held a degree in real estate appraisal (Segal et al., 2015). They got married when Elizabeth was 28 years old, gave birth to two sons, and moved to the US where they managed rental houses.
Ann’s life was more eventful than Elizabeth’s in terms of career and family stability. Her mother and father adopted her when they were in their thirties and raised her together for the next six years before getting divorced. Henceforth, she had minimal interaction with her step-father until she was 20. Ann and her now single mother spent her teenage years moving from town to town, before she got married at the age of 26. Her husband was six months younger than her, and they had three daughters (Segal et al., 2015). She spent the rest of her life working part-time and raising the children until she reunited with Elizabeth more than half a century later.
Elizabeth and Ann’s eventual meeting, which happened when they were 70 years old, was not coincidental. Ann had spent significant time and resources trying to find her biological mother. She searched and advertised in newspapers hoping that one day she would get information on where her mother or any other biological family member were. Luckily, after using her grandmother’s death certificate, her daughter located Ann’s step father, who informed her that her grandmother had a sister live in the US. Ann’s daughter later found Elizabeth and initiated a contact, which led to their first meeting in 2014. The encounter was rewarding, with both Elizabeth and Ann expressing gratitude for having finally seen each other (Segal et al., 2015). Unfortunately, they all died a few years later, having broken the Guinness World Record for twins separated for the longest time.
Inspired by the twins’ long separation, researchers sought to investigate whether there were any resultant psychological and cognitive differences or similarities between them. Segal et al., (2015) established that there were no major mental differences between Elizabeth and Ann that could have resulted from them growing in different environments. Instead, they established minimal similarities, such as both married men called Jim, and left school when they both were 15 (Segal et al., 2015).
In conclusion, Ann and Elizabeth lived an eventful life, having been separated when they were six years old. Although they lived in different places, they had some circumstantial similarities between them. For example, they both married men called Jim and stopped schooling by the age 15. Apart from that, scholars did not establish any significant cognitive differences between them, despite Elizabeth and Ann growing up in dissimilar environments.
Reference
Segal, N., Cortez, F., Zettel-Watson, L., Cherry, B., Mechanic, M., & Munson, J., Velazquez, J., Reed, B. (2015). Genetic and experiential influences on behavior: Twins reunited at seventy-eight years. Personality and Individual Differences, 73, 110-117. Web.