Monday, April 17, 2006
What If Parents Don't Matter THAT Much?
Judith Rich Harris - in her two books The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike - makes the strong case for a minimized role for parents to play in personality development. In her model, genes shape 40% or so of the personality. Most of the rest is shaped by the social environment outside the family. Parents hardly matter at all - as long as they provide you reasonable food, shelter, clothing, and affection. This is adaptive - designed to make sure we survive in the world, not just our nuclear families. It's a natural product of the evolutionary process.
This is a very large paradigm shift for academic psychology. This scientific community has been focused for the last many decades on the overwhelming importance of parents in shaping children. Harris says this is all wishful thinking - yet another example of scientists making a moral judgement and then looking for evidence to support it. One simple thought experiment would be this - if it made such a difference, wouldn't today's children be terribly different from their parents and grandparents. Wouldn't we be different? We're really not, are we - not in the ways that psychologists would have you expect.
So, assuming Harris is right, what does this mean to parents? The nurture proponents are in a panic - thinking that child abuse will become rampant. But here are a few predictions I would make about the real effects.
First of all, people may be more comfortable having children - they may actually have more of them. Now, they really don't need to spend many thousands of dollars "shaping" them with lessons and enrichment. Just letting them play is just as good? So much cheaper. The heavy responsibility for shaping removed from their shoulders, it will become apparent that nature designed parenting for amateurs, not experts. Of course, it must have - or how else could we have survived the eons!
Second, parents will be able to concentrate on providing children a pleasant childhood. Why not enjoy your children? If you relax and realize that your children are part of your life - not the awesome responsibility, requiring a PhD in child development - then you can just enjoy.
Third, since so much of your child's personality is shaped by their social environment and their status in the groups they belong to, you can instead focus on controlling their social milleu and make sure they are put into social contexts that allow them to achieve reasonable status.
Perhaps we would return a little to the parenting style of the past. Parents would live their adult lives and let children be children. They could just play instead of running off to classes, team sports and clubs.
Judith Rich Harris - in her two books The Nurture Assumption and No Two Alike - makes the strong case for a minimized role for parents to play in personality development. In her model, genes shape 40% or so of the personality. Most of the rest is shaped by the social environment outside the family. Parents hardly matter at all - as long as they provide you reasonable food, shelter, clothing, and affection. This is adaptive - designed to make sure we survive in the world, not just our nuclear families. It's a natural product of the evolutionary process.
This is a very large paradigm shift for academic psychology. This scientific community has been focused for the last many decades on the overwhelming importance of parents in shaping children. Harris says this is all wishful thinking - yet another example of scientists making a moral judgement and then looking for evidence to support it. One simple thought experiment would be this - if it made such a difference, wouldn't today's children be terribly different from their parents and grandparents. Wouldn't we be different? We're really not, are we - not in the ways that psychologists would have you expect.
So, assuming Harris is right, what does this mean to parents? The nurture proponents are in a panic - thinking that child abuse will become rampant. But here are a few predictions I would make about the real effects.
First of all, people may be more comfortable having children - they may actually have more of them. Now, they really don't need to spend many thousands of dollars "shaping" them with lessons and enrichment. Just letting them play is just as good? So much cheaper. The heavy responsibility for shaping removed from their shoulders, it will become apparent that nature designed parenting for amateurs, not experts. Of course, it must have - or how else could we have survived the eons!
Second, parents will be able to concentrate on providing children a pleasant childhood. Why not enjoy your children? If you relax and realize that your children are part of your life - not the awesome responsibility, requiring a PhD in child development - then you can just enjoy.
Third, since so much of your child's personality is shaped by their social environment and their status in the groups they belong to, you can instead focus on controlling their social milleu and make sure they are put into social contexts that allow them to achieve reasonable status.
Perhaps we would return a little to the parenting style of the past. Parents would live their adult lives and let children be children. They could just play instead of running off to classes, team sports and clubs.
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