Kagan, J. (1998, September 13). A parent’s influence is peerless: Nurture Assumption ignores more theory than it proposes. The Boston Globe, p. E3.

OVERVIEW

One of the leading experts on child development, Harvard University’s Jerome Kagan here takes on a best selling book that sparked great controversy in 1998. Judith Harris’ The Nurture Assumption claims offer a revolutionary insight and radical corrective to scholarly opinion on child rearing stating that parents can relax: genetics aside, parents exert a minor influence while peers, along with other outside-the-home factors, are the major influences in the shaping of personality and behavior.

Harris feels that parental success or failure primarily reflects the kind of child they are raising. Good kids make for good parenting and visa versa. Kagan counters that is the educational level and social status of parents along with their parenting style, do make a great deal of difference.

The behavior and moods of 6-month-old infants are very similar whatever their parents’ level of education. But by 5 or 6 years, children’s psychological differences are not at all subtle because each has been socialized differently.

That explains why a 6-year-old raised in New England will be very different from a 6-year-old raises in Malaysia, Uganda, or the southern tip of Argentina. The reason is they experience different child-rearing practices by their parents.

Harris would answer, "Not at all. It is because they are growing up in different cultures and playing with different kinds of kids." But Kagan goes on:

Children of Mexican-American parents growing up in the Southwest are more cooperative and less competitive than native children who live in the same town, go to the same schools, and watch the same television programs. Children of Japanese parents growing up in California work harder in school, and obtain higher grades than Mexican-American children living in the same neighborhood and attending the same schools. The differences, of course, are the work of the parents.

Kagan goes on to show how children traumatized by war can "regain cognitive and social skills" after being "adopted by nurturing families." He cites many examples of this.

Kagan contends that Harris has not only ignored important facts but relies on faulty research. Parental influence on children is very subtle and complex, and their are many interlocking factors in the socialization of children. "Although parents clearly do matter, it is often hard to measure just how."

"Unfortunately, a great deal of the evidence cited (by Harris and others) to support the idea that parents don’t matter much is based on questionnaires in which people are asked to describe themselves." Study of the research shows parents estimate of genetic influence increases as the child grows older while the observation by social scientists reveals that it actually decreases with age.

Kagan refers to research showing that many lasting personality traits are molded in the home before school and friends begin to have strong affect. And the choice of friends usually comes out of a personality that has already significantly formed.

Serious biographies and interviews of adults constantly hold parental influence to be stronger and long-lasting than that of peers and other environmental factors.

So why is this book a best seller and why has it caused such a stir. Kagan thinks it is a palliative for anxiety that grips many parents. "Any book that reduced some of that concern would be greeted with joy and might be followed by a temporary muting of the burden of responsibility for the child’s growth. But the evidence of parents’ importance remains woven throughout every day life."

Please see the Harris book review and Begley article review within this topic.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Do you understand the main points and strength of Harris’ augments in The Nurture Assumption? If parents don’t have a responsibility for the way children turn out, where does the responsibility lie?
2. Does Kagan begin to answer her arguments? Is this a reasonable critique?
3. What do you see as the possibilities of parental influence on the life of children?
4. How would you respond to Harris’ contention that parents don’t matter much?
5. What do you think are the implications of this debate over the influence of parents in child rearing?

IMPLICATIONS

1. Family is basic to community and society. All children have a right to strong, caring nurture in their early years and until they reach adulthood.
2. Parents aren’t the only influence on children. Besides the extended family and from their earliest years, children are influenced by pictures and books, television, day care, school, siblings, and playmates. We must look at the interaction of all these factors, including issues poverty and community life in assessing responsibility for childhood ills and teenage problems.
3. Adoptive parents especially need encouragement as to the powerful initial and remedial impact they can have on children who do not share their genes.

Dean Borgman cCYS