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HISTORY-CHILD-FAMILY  September 1998

HISTORY-CHILD-FAMILY September 1998

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Subject:

The Nurture Assumption

From:

[log in to unmask] (Greg Johnson)

Reply-To:

[log in to unmask]

Date:

Wed, 23 Sep 1998 10:58:10 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (43 lines)

Having not yet read  _The Nurture Assumption_ or Harris' _Psychological
Review_ article, I can only comment hesitantly on the "buzz" or media play
on her work.  If she is correct that parenting has a much less important
role in child development than previously thought,  much of the history of
childhood would need rethinking.

Her idea seems to be that genetics and peers are much more important than
parenting in how children turn out as adults.  She apparently asserts that
children may act as the parents wish around the parents, but act in accord
with their peer group when parents aren't around.  As a parent, that's not
news to me.  She also apparently believes that rebellious teenagers aren't
trying to act like adults but rather like their peers.  Again, any parent
knows that teenagers look on adults as barely animate relics of long dead
cultures.  And, doesn't saying peers are the important thing beg the
questions: how did the peers get the way they are?  

My question would be: At what age is the influence of parenting measured in
the child?  This may be something Harris covers.  I don't know yet, so I
intend to be skeptical rather than critical.  I would guess that the
effects of parenting would be more apparent in older adults than in younger
ones.  19th C. American writer Mark Twain observed that when he was 18 he
thought his father was so foolish he couldn't stand him, but ten years
later he was surprised at how wise his father had become.  The New Yorker
article about Harris (August 17th, 1998) states that one of Harris' two
daughters was quite troublesome as a teenager, but is now living a life
that Harris would consider successful.  So wasn't Harris's parenting
ultimately successful?

To change the subject, in looking at parental interventions in children's
play, it might be useful to consider reductions in average family size. 
Wouldn't intervention be more likely in families with only one or two
children?  Wouldn't those family dynamics result in parental pressure on
childcare professionals to intervene as well?

Greg Johnson
East Asian Languages and Cultures
Indiana University
USA



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