This book is outstanding for two reasons. First, the author wrote university textbooks about how parents influence their children and from her own observations and subsequent research realized that the data was flawed. The radical environmentalist dogma was using very slim data to make statements about human behavior that just was not true. Second, it is complete and very easy to read. A book that should be read by every parent, either to help raise children or parents who have failed and felt it was all their fault.

The book puts forth concepts that are well established now in behavior genetics, evolutionary psychology, etc. It takes a new look at the interaction between parents and children, and between children's peer groups. It is now recognized now that children, from a very early age, are all about exploring the world and finding their own niche, and they do this in several contexts. For example, they may show one set of moral rules while around the family, and a completely separate set of moral rules while amongst their friends, and they can switch between the two contexts easily.

The book is a fascinating adventure into a world that is known by researchers but has not yet filtered down to the press or society. There are too many social scientists and social workers who have too much at stake at blaming every fault or good a child has on the parents. This book tackles not only the nurture assumption, but also rounds out the behavior of children with an explanation of the genetic components as well. This is a must read for anyone stuck in the 60's dogma, especially Dr. Laura (sp?). This author thoroughly repudiates most of Dr. Laura's assumptions. And they are all based on the latest research, not just wishful thinking about how children should behave.

I came upon this book by accident in search of something else. It is sooooo intriguing I've been reading it and pondering all day! The author has written several text books on child development, but through personal experience (two completely different daughters, academically, socially, etc.) and a careful review of scientific literature comes to other conclusions which she is able to support with anthropology, biology, genetics (nature) and double-blind psychological studies. The results dispel popular notions of "nurture" theories so ingrained by Freudian and behavioralist influences in our education establishment and social culture. To authenticate her assertions, recorded histories of identical and fraternal twins raised by adopted or foster families and other scientific and biologic data are offered. Judith Harris makes a convincing case that parents have less influence on how children turn out than do their peers. In the process, she relieves parental guilt if not suffering.

On the second anniversary of the Columbine tragedy, it's worth examining a shift in thinking. Obviously the mainstream media are consistent about maintaining the status quo of pop psych nurturing or we would be aware of this 21st century paradigm. Harris does not discount the value of being a loving, caring, supportive parent. But, she effectively illustrates how decent parents can have decent children or not as well as the reverse. Genetic conditions for behavior apparently are not as politically correct among psycho/social "advice givers" as the egalitarian NURTURE ASSUMPTION. She contends children are more likely to bring peer influences home than share home influences with peers; preferences (genetic similarities?) determine peers; peer acceptance or rejection is far more powerful than parental guidance or lack of it. Parents, educators, social workers, law enforcement officers, counselors and coaches need to open the blinds to this view of human behavioral development.

Among the questions Harris asks of researchers are: (p.353) - How can we keep a classroom of children from splitting up into two dichontomous groups, pro-school and anti-school? - How do some teachers, schools...prevent this spilt and keep kids united and motivated? - How can we step in and break the vicious cycle of aggressive kids becoming more aggressive because in childhood they are rejected by their peers and in adolescence they get together with others like themselves?

This book was published in 1998, the year before Columbine.

I came to this book from Steven Pinker's THE BLANK SLATE. He devotes much of a chapter to its thesis that 'kids socialize kids; parents don't.' Harris here makes the case at length, and a rollicking good read it is.

The main argument AGAINST Harris is this: IF it doesn't matter how parents treat their kids, they will mistreat them. Harris shows the folly of this by looking at how adults relate: I can't change my friends and family--they are 'who they are' despite my best efforts to improve them--yet it never occurs to me that because I cannot remake them in my image and likeness I might as well abuse them. How silly that sounds when you think about it! (And sad.) Further, Harris is clear that parents can do great damage to their kids. She in no way sanctions abuse or neglect.

What does she say, then? She makes plain what all of us with siblings know from experience but forget when considering theories of child development. Namely, if parenting shapes kids, why are siblings so DIFFERENT? My mom and dad had four kids--I'm the only one that ever read a philosophy book or a Russian novel, the only one with a jazz collection, and the only one who (like mother) plays a musical instrument. Though I love my two brothers and my sister, and they love me, my mom (-dad's dead) admits, "You were all different from day one. Jamie was always happy, Linda felt God got it wrong because obviously SHE should be the mother and I the child, and Billy Boy was running off by himself before he could tie his shoes."

Parents provide us with genes. That matters. Much of what they consciously do, however, has little effect on how their kids turn out. (This is precisely why parents care who their kids play with--parents realize that 'the wrong crowd' can overcome all their teachings and warnings and pleadings in the course of a single fateful night.) IF parents had THE strongest influence on their kids, then the bad example of admired peers would be no threat. But it is and parents know this. So do kids.

Aside from being right, Harris is fun. She gets at the heart of why kids are embarrassed when their parents come outside. (Who hasn't cringed at a parent's visit to one's school? The constant fear is that mom or dad will utterly humiliate one in front of the other kids--this could only happen if 'the other kids' mattered more, in some sense, than mom or dad.)

I lent this book to a moral theologian here at the seminary who read it and then tokd me, "If she's not crazy, we've been mislead about child development. And she's not crazy."

He's right. She's not crazy. And parents should welcome this news, as it frees them from much useless anxiety. ("My child doesn't love opera--where did I go wrong?") Further, it invites them to respond to their children as persons, not as projects. Who could oppose that ideal?