Parents dont matter?
 

Judith Rich Harris has made some headlines with her book "The Nurture Assumption." I have not read the book but have read her essays and articles about her and it seems she has a pretty good argument that parenting does not matter.

I think it does fit my own view that kids are pretty resilient, as long as they arn't abused they will do ok, or not.

Of course parental affluence makes a big difference for how well kids do in life...

I haven't read her stuff, so I can't comment specifically on what she has said, but I disagree. Parents tend to have a significant impact on their kids.

K-PAXians don't have families.

Neither nature nor nurture trumps the other one in all cases.

well here is the article, i think its interesting.

zero parental influence

Following is excerpt:

OK, well I read the article and I can't really disagree with it because it doesn't actually say anything. It questions current assumptions but doesn't come up with any conclusions of its own. It offers no evidence that parents have zero influence on their kids.

I think she's just throwing an idea out there to challenge people. Nothing wrong with that. I'm with Happy Monkey that people become who they are because of a balance of Nature and Nurture. Can't give parents all the credit (or blame) and can't say they have zero influence on their kids either. It's a mix.

There was a wonderful episode of Nova, called "The Secret of the Wild Child." It was about "Genie" a girl who was kept in isolation until she was found at 13. She couldn't talk. Scientists, though drawn to her, also saw an opportunity to test nature vs. nurture. It is a wonderful show, but everything was inconclusive because they could not determine whether Genie was born mentally retarded, or is her retardation was a result of her total isolation. There are very few cases of total isolation, so balance of nature vs nurture is hard to discern. I do believe, like some of you, that it's a combination.

It's a mesmerizing story. The girl draws you in. I wonder what ever happened to her.

Transcript here.

Im familiar with the nature vs. nurture debate and the only reasonable position is that its both. But the point is that what is known as "parenting" is not a heavy component of nurture. Or at least there is not any proof positive that parenting is a significant factor in how children turn out. In my own experience i find this reasonable. Just think of the people you know, good kids to bad parents, bad kids to good parents but mostly i draw on my siblings. 15 of them and all so completely different with roughly the same parenting technique.

Except the parenting technique is only roughly the same. The first child is parented very differently from the 16th. My mom is the oldest of a large number of siblings, and she ended up doing a lot of the parenting for some of her siblings, while she obviously had no older siblings to help raise her. And when she went off to college, a different sibling became the oldest, so the parenting style changed again. In addition to that, the parents will certainly have changed their methods to some extent over the years, whether from learning what works, or just getting tired.

Have you ever tallied the totals? I'll wager you only notice and remember the parent/child differences and the others, seeming normal, pass like repetitive scenery.

Rebellious teens is not a myth. Some take it further than others and some parents react stronger than others. By young adulthood, I'd guess the majority tend to realign somewhat with common values, if not goals.

There will always be exceptions and don't forget different is not necessarily bad.

My brother and I are as different as night and day. I think that's because being 10 years apart, we were raised when our parents were living in a rapidly changing environment and economic status. That can change the parents values and parenting attitudes as well as the nature of outside influences.

She ended up being institutionalized. There was also a huge controversy between two of the scientists involved in her care. It was something about who had the right to care for her, and then one of them died (natural causes), and the other found she was too difficult to care for.

It's a heart wrenching story. We studied her at Uni.

The reason no one will ever be able to prove the argument of nature versus nurture is because there is no way to have unbiased research. Meaning that you simply can't have two identical children to do the experiment with. For one thing, human rights wouldn't allow it anyway.

There will only ever be speculation.

Until they can turn out perfect clones at will.

It's funny you should say that Bruce, because that's obviously the only way to determine it. Of course, that's a whole different discussion. ;)

nature first ..nurture can bring out the best

lack of can twist,break,cripple