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Genie was the last, and second surviving, of four children born to parents living inArcadia, California. Her father worked in a factory as aflight mechanicduringWorld War IIand continued in aviation afterward, and her mother, who was around 20 years younger and from anOklahomafarming family, had come to southern California as a teenager with family friends fleeing theDust Bowl.[16][12][17]During her early childhood, Genie's mother sustained a severe head injury in an accident, giving her lingering neurological damage that caused degenerative vision problems in one eye. Genie's father mostly grew up in orphanages in the American Pacific Northwest. His father died of a lightning strike, and his mother ran a brothel while only infrequently seeing him. Additionally, his mother gave him a feminine first name which made him the target of constant derision. As a result, he harbored extreme resentment toward his mother during childhood, which Genie's brother and the scientists who studied Genie believed was the root cause of his subsequent anger problems.[17][18][19]
When Genie's father reached adulthood he changed his first name to one which was more typically masculine, and his mother began to spend as much time with him as she could. He became almost singularly fixated on his mother, despite relentless arguments over her attempts to convince him to adopt a less rigid lifestyle, and therefore came to treat all other relationships as secondary at best.[17][20][21]Although Genie's parents initially seemed happy to those who knew them, soon after they married he prevented his wife from leaving home and beat her with increasing frequency and severity.[22][16]Her eyesight steadily deteriorated due to lingering effects from her existing neurological damage, the onset of severecataracts, and adetached retinain one eye, leaving her increasingly dependent on her husband.[23][16]
