See Inside
A researcher argues that peers are much more important than parents, that psychologists underestimate the power of genetics, and that we have a lot to learn from Asian classrooms
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Editors' note, 7/8/09: This article was adapted for Scientific American Mind magazine from the Mind Matters article, "Do Parents Matter?", which was published online at ScientificAmerican.com on April 9, 2009.
This article was originally published with the title Do Parents Matter?.
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46 Comments
Add CommentI'm an American who teaches English at a public school in Japan. The role of teacher and parent is very different here. For example, if a student gets in trouble with the law, say for stealing or drinking etc., the police will FIRST contact the student's homeroom teacher, THEN the parents. Parents are considered secondary in moral development in Japan. I was shocked when I first saw this happen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to know what she thinks of books like The Pecking Order and Richard Nesbitt's book, "Intelligence: How to Get It"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to know what she thinks of books like "The Pecking Order", "Why Love Matters", and "Intelligence: How to Get It"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile not trained in the social sciences and without having read her book in the interview Mrs. Harris gives antidotal evidence and broad claims with no support. She talks about parent interaction of the 1930s in a sweep statement that Fathers provide little or no child care; their chief role was to administer discipline and that Despite the increase in praise and physical affection, they [people] are not happier or more self-confident or in better mental health. Both their claims taken at face value with no support are meaning less. Can data be produced showing that the mental health and self-confidence of the population is less today then 70 years ago? And how does one quantify happiness? What is the proof that fathers use to 'only' provide discipline? Is there data to back that up? Perhaps all this is answered in Mrs. Harris book but this interview failed to show that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this article confuses personality with behavior. A childs personality is all unto the child. Parents, environment, school, and peer group can all have a small effect on the personality, but in the end it is entirely up to the child to determine who they are, and to for them to take responsibility for who they become. That is why identical twins are different people, sons are not like their fathers, daughters are not like their mothers, and brother are not like their sisters.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBehavior is a learned attribute that is first started with the family. And to ask the question Do parents matter? is a disgusting question that demonizes the family and redirects responsibility. It is the parents responsibility to teach their children morality, work ethic, and socially acceptable behavior no matter where they are. In the home and outside of the home are not mutually exclusive environments.
I agree with Mrs. Harris statement that teachers can have a profound effect on a childs behavior and that teacher should have more power , however you wish to define that, to help mold a childs behavior.
But in any culture behavior is first taught at the home, and it is the parents responsibility to set a good example. And that is all a parent can do is set a good example because in the end a childs behavior is up to them, and when a child screws up the first responsibility falls on child, then it falls on the parents .
Read Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate (Harvard Press), before you embark any further in criticisms of her.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis convinces me that keeping my daughter in Private school is the only responsible option so that she's insulated from the education engineers who think she is a mere laboratory for the latest fads in development theory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKEEP "PUBLIC POLICY" OUT OF THE CLASSROOM!
Agreed
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have not read her book, so I am speaking out of turn, but I believe that parents have more of a role than she thinks. We CHOSE our neighborhood and ALL the schools our daughter attended in k-12, specifically BECAUSE of the environment and peer groups she would have. The elementary school had multigrade classrooms with team teaching. The middle school was humanities magnet in a mixed social and ethnic setting and the high school was the same.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWE, not anyone else, chose those settings specfically because we knew the impact of the environment on our daughter. We then reinforced those good qualities and discussed the problematic parts at home. I see a direct impact from those choices and our home reinforcement / reframing of daily school events.
Oh, and in response to the private school debate, my daughter never went to private school and got a good enough education to get into the top college in the country in her very competitive field. She must have learned something in public school and I think that something included how to get along with a wide variety of people. There are good and bad public schools, just as there are good and bad private schools.
What makes you think that private schools are any freer from "education engineers?" That doesn't sound like the private schools I attended; just because the theory or ideology they operate from isn't the one that's governmentally sanctioned, that doesn't make it any less influential on the way they run their school.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy wife and I have Ph.D.s in history and literature respectively; our son and daughter have Ph.D.s in science. I'm not suggesting there's a gene for pursuing doctorates. I guess their (inherited?) academic ability and our assumption that they would be intellectually curious and certainly go to college may have had something to do with it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey went to public schools which had high honors tracks. Our daughter thinks like us politically and in many other ways; our son is pretty much the opposite of us in beliefs and opinions. My wife and I maintain vowels as they are pronounced in New York City where we grew up; our children picked up the New England pronunciations of their peers. Parents, peers, personality or temperament, and life experiences all seem to have played a role.
Of course this evidence is "anecdotal" and unscientific; however, I've noticed that sociologists when they do research on the (usually disfunctional) family always manage to prove something different from the received wisdom. The typical article goes: What everyone says is wrong or not quite right; we have found that the situation is more complex or has not been examined from such and such a perspective; Conclusion: current assumptions are completely or at least partially wrong, and the problem requires more research!
Funny, I was just speak of Harris the other day, and remember seeing a tv magazine show on her theory. I am still stuck today, as I was then. Her theory is self-motivated. I believe she has a certain amount of guilt lingering over her adopted child, and has let that affect her hypothesis (It certainly has based it). It's valuable to have POVs that challenge the status-quo, but certainly to most parents in the trenches, this idea does not make sense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat about the Flynn Effect as possible evidence for some change in child rearing practices? I admit it anecdotal, but it is a starting point for research. Its interesting how looking at different parts of the population, or at different assessment instruments can give very different information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm bemused by the fulminating against public policy in the classroom. Doesn't all public education have policies? Even home schoolers have to meet requirements set by the state (provincial) curriculum. Where, exactly, is this amazing land of No-Public-Policy-in-the-Classroom located? And can the products of that education system even write their own names?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrick, you are absolutely correct when you say that the parents choose the right environ for their kids. moreover, they instill certain core values which enable even the young children to choose their friends and cope with their neighbours. no wonder, i am still very much in contact with a a few friends i made about 15 years ago...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJudith Harris is absolutely right: It's nature not nurture. The evidence has been around for decades in that identical twins are as similar--in personality as well as intelligence--whether raised together or apart and. As an adopted child grows older, s/he increasingly resembles the biological rather than the adoptive mother so the traits of such teenagers are as correlated with the biological mother as if she raised the child herself and utterly uncorrelated with the adoptive mother. In evaluating teacher/school performance, we should first start with the native intelligence of the children before casting blame on the teachers/schools.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read her book about a year ago and it has changed my perspective on parenting. While I tend to shy away from any "extreme" theory, I think she makes many good points in her book. Some of the previous comments by people who have not read her book actually support her theories when taken in context with her book. Seriously, read this book it's probably at your library. While I don't agree 100% with her theories, she has made me realize that one of the most effective things I can do to parent my children is to control their peer environment in choosing neighborhoods, school districts, extra-curricular activities, play groups, etc... Her book does not give parents license to become jerks. As she puts it in her book, your behavior as a parent may not have much to do with how your child turns out but it will effect what your children think of you when they grow into adults. Also she does disclaim extremely abusive parenting as an exception. Ie you can destroy your child.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHmm. It's difficult to separate nature from nurture, even in the case of twins. However, if it's all nature, rather than nurture (i.e. heredity rather than environment or parents rather than peers), as you suggest, then you are disagreeing with Judith Harris' position.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJudith Harris is investigating the behavior of a herd animal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeer pressure implies group influence. The human herd instinctively associates successful behavior with survival, first at the mother's teat, then through maternal or paternal, family, tribal and communal learning. Leadership is accidental, favoring the attraction of followers for protection, security, or access to survival success. The ability to develop virtual reality beliefs from emotional commitments is typical of human herd development.
I am horrified that Scientific American would publish such rubbish. We have now had at least 25 years of research showing how the HPA axis is disregulated by childhood abuse(neglect included) and your own magazine has done some incredible work on methylation and gene silencing as it relates to mental illness. What did not get reported was that some of these same researchers (on methylation) have shown that it is childhood lack of nurturing that causes the gene silencing. I do expect better!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first clue that Jonah has no idea what she is talking about was the very first sentence - Freud not only never blamed parents, he was admant until the end that the child's libido was what was traumatizing the ego because the child could not admit of his or her own wanting to have sex. Ever since there has been a concerted effort to credit Freud with almost every discovery and believe me, he was on one track and one track only, the repressed libido. That was his thing. But no where do I see her claiming the libido theory has never been proven.
I hated this article and please do not publish garbage like this. Do you have adequate editorial staff there to know what is science and what is garbage?
A major difficulty with attempts to attribute priority to behavioral or inborn sources of maturation is the presumption that all learning is a conscious process -- something that is patently false. But one trivial example is the acquisition of melodies of tunes. Among my friends some could hum most of the melodies from the themes movies seen but once. I used to do that. But to pretend that this is a genetically determined trait is a premature supposition. The environment of infancy may have attached importance to singing as a behavior, as was true of my origins. Irrespective of whether parents sing or not. Until comparative data become incorporated into studies that can assign relevance to unconscious learning, hearsay will continue to sway opinion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot having read Harris' book makes this comment formally improper. But the topic fascinates immensely. If one may presume that the socialization process is dominated by a significant unconscious component, and further, that learning capabilities themselves adapt, then time-scales matter, as we witness in observing "windows of opportunity" for specific learning issues. To sweep these issues into a single bucket does a disservice to any attempt to build an understanding of these important matters. Do any of the issues discussed grant insight why some people successfully learn a new language at the age of seventy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am tot
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the main reasons that modern parents like to believe that they have a large influence is largely conceit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf your children do well you can take credit for being a good parent.
Problems arise if this theory is false.
Consider this:
Badly behaved children are therefore the fault of the parents and well behaved children are a result of good parenting.
Can you see where this leads?
The evidence, however, is otherwise. If you examine a group of well behaved children and their personality and then IGNORE the parenting but instead look at the personality and behaviour of the parents you will see a much larger correlation.
Evidence of this abounds, but conceited parents rule the roost.
That said, since Genetics has such a strong influence it doubly reinforces the need to affect the nurture component in as positive a manner as possible.
Since parenting has a limited effect and peer pressure has a much larger effect (though not as large as genetics), it's imperative to make sure that at-risk children are influenced to the positive by being placed alongside better behaved and genetically calmer children.
On a cynical note, however, can you imagine the howls of outrage from the parents of the calm, well hehaved children?
The reason for this is the that we have turned responsiblity for educating our kids over to the government run public schools where main goal is creating a workforce of conformists and meeting the needs of the average student.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA "Lord of the Flys" type situation develops where the kids form a social order, pick leaders and then ostrasize those who don't conform or otherwise fit in with the pack. Of course this will influence the kids since they have to put up with this 6 or more hours a day. It will change them as they adjust to survive the environment. Pull your kids out, homeschool them and you will see a big difference - no bullying to scar them for life and they are free to develop their own interests and talents (not those of the the "pack", government or teachers which may run counter to the parents'). Furthermore, keep them away from the trash in the mass media which teaches kids many rude and improper behaviors (take a close look even at some "G" rated movies).
I am a principal at a public elementary school, and I can see some of the points the author makes in my school. Children do learn how to act differently in school/public than at home. Unforturnately, many children don't learn the socialization skills they need at home before they come to school to be able to successfully navigate the trials present in association with peers in the community. When such a child is unsuccessful, he or she referts to humor or anger to cover up their mistakes. Let's face it, we all act differently in public from how we act at home. Otherwise, I'd take my trash can to the curb on pick up day while in my underwear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis runs directly counter to findings in the UK where, as far back as the Plowden Report (1967 - full text available on line), the overwhelming importance of parental attitude to the development of children was deconvolved (more than three thousand children in 173 schools: vol 2). Material standard of living, quality of schooling, and perental encouragement were all considered. The researchers found that parental attitude was more important than "all other factors, separately or combined," and that bringing the worst schools up to the quality of the best, and the poorest families to the level of the most affluent, would have nothing like the effect of changing the attitude of parents.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese findings have never been contradicted and are supported by much subsequent research, both from NGOs (e.g. National Foundation for Educational Research) and governmental bodies (e.g. HMI annual reports).
"But regardless of class size, some teachers have a knack for keeping their classrooms united. Teachers in Asian countries seem to be better at this than Americans, and I suspect this is one of the reasons why Asian kids learn more in school. No doubt theres a difference in cultures, but maybe we could study how they do it and apply their methods here."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnereally has to be out of touch with what goes on in the East Asian classrooms the author references here to suggest applying these methods before studying them and their effects [such as an alarming spike in academic achievement that peaks at high school graduation and never recovers, and far below average problem-solving skills and creativity]. The 'unity' mislabeled above is in fact passive silence enforced by corporal punishment, and cemented by a one-way, authoritarian approach to education that creates passive learners and rigid, dogmatic thinking. In other words, an approach that fell into disfavor in Western education about a century ago because of its glaring faults.
In South Korea, much lauded in the West for its [artificially inflated] high school math and science scores, a huge portion of families with the means to do so send their kids to be educated in the west, often splitting up families to do so [dad works in Korea, Mom and kids live abroad for the sole purpose of avoiding the Korean education system].
Now why do you think they would do that?
Western teachers should focus on keeping students engaged. Outside of those with Fascist leanings, we can't stomach the sort of 'unity' held up for praise in this article.
This article and discussion are facinating. I used to belive that parents have a profound influence on their childern aside from the schools they placed them in and the other enviornmental factors mentioned in earlier comments. As I have gotten older I have come to increasingly belive in the stronger role played by genitics. I find myself developing traits of my father, I see my grandchildren taking on personality traits of their parents despite their parents making every effort to influence them to behave otherwise. By training I am a mental health professional and I see my patients express the "sins" of their parents. I do not blame the parents for anything other than transmitting their genes!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEffect of association: The behaviour of children is driven by one thing that is ASSOCIATION. This association effect is not only true for children but this is also equally true for any person of all age group. In case of children specifically school going children they are more time associated with their friends in school even while they are with parents they do talk with friends in phone, they do chat with their friends most of the time. If we look at the number of time a children is associating his/her parents is just 3-4 hour per day only where as he spend most of the time with his/ her friends. And this association effect has impact on the behaviour of a children.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have a natural inclination to love my parents and may persist even when they are not alive. How can this be explained. Even if I don't have or will have such feelings I can still do my job or may be I get economically far better as I will have to spend far less time with my parents can you explain this?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf true this research supports my assertion that the relationship of the parents, during the teenage years when peer pressure really kicks in, needs to change into friendship and an adult relationship. That way communication continues and the 'child' is not adrift from adult support. This can be achieved by making sure every week you go out together for pure fun, like we do with friends, dinner & a movie, bush walking, the beach. Encouraging paid employment so they learn about money and enter the adult world as a responsible participant, not slease off their parents. A fair contribution to running the shared household, not let Mum do it all - the teenage years are a transitional zone when often parents infantilise their kids rather than assist them to grow up by shifting out of the parenting role.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWE are not born with a 'self'. The self is potentiated or realised in the context of relationships with others, and in the first instance with the mother. As Bruner states, a sense of self, manifested in language "begins when mother and infant create a predictable format of interaciton that can serve as a micrcosm for communicating and for constituting a shared reality." The self comes into being through the development of secure attachments to caregivers who provide appropriate responsiveness and attunement. Failure at this very early stage of development that is almost entirely dependent on the primary caregivers, who are, in the majority of cases, the parents, can set a problematic developmental trajectory that may last a lifetime.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease don't simplify human development by proposing simplistic arguments about whether "parents matter."
I believe that our personalities ( nature ) is first. Then comes the nurturing from our parents, teachers,peers, etc. How we respond to a childs personality is what they become accustomed to. We can respond positively or negatively to their behaviors. We as parents have to learn what works and what does not work when a child misbehaves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are the teachers but also the students when it comes to child rearing.
Of course yes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe peers do influence a good deal the personality of kid. Good teachers can be come role models of students and thus translate the student to great citizens and hard working intellects or scientists.Dr.Thrivikramji
Yes it is true beyod doubt that the peer pressure and peer influence play a GREAT ROLE IN MOLDING THE KIDS PERSONALITY. iN FACT ONCE CHILDREN ARE IN SCHOOL PARENTS NO LONGER ARE THEIR ROLE MODELS.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBUT TEACHERS ALSO BECOME GOOD ROLE MODELS.
Ditto. I was thinking the very same thing. When a 'scientist' makes such broad generalized claims, to me that's a huge reg flag, indicating someone who has an axe to grind, and will make false statements without support to generate support for them based on their status as an authority, rather than support based on actual data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a psychologist very familiar with the research, Mrs. Harris is ignoring some good research, and selectively criticising some poorly done studies, which do exist. Personality and behavior are two different concepts. Personality has more to do with genetic traits related to mood and energy (which plenty of research indicate are strongly influenced genetically). Behavior, as noted in previous comments, depends on context, and is guided by laws (!) of behaviorism - i.e., reinforcement principles. If parents do (or do not) provide reinforcement for specific types of behavior, you will either see or not see those behaviors. Likewise, certain behaviors will be reinforced in the classroom, by teachers. I teach these basic principles. When people apply them, the work "like magic." Simple but effective TV shows, such as "SuperNanny" demonstrate their effectiveness. To suggest that parents 'don't matter,' or have little influence is beyond laughable. There is no doubt that peers matter - but usually they matter MORE (the research shows) when the parents (a) Ignore the impact (b) Don't address the impact (c) Don't take actions to amerliorate negative impact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn reply to Iain Sailsbury:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe study you refer to doesn't separate the influence of environment and genetics. You assume that the children of the encouraging parents responded to the encouragement to become more successful students. However in these results the environment is confounded with genetics, since the parents who were encouraging would have probably been more intelligence and conscientious than parents who were not encouraging, and they would have passed on genes for intelligence and conscientiousness to their children. The study tells you the children of encouraging parents are successful, but it doesn't tell you WHY they are successful. You don't know to what extent the causation is environmental and to what extent it is genetic.
Harris presents data from studies of adopted children and studies that compare identical and fraternal twins. These studies show that it is the genes that are largely the causative agent. For example, studies show that identical twins have personalities that are more alike than fraternal twins. Both identical and fraternal twins share the same environment, so it must be genes that make the identical twins personalities more alike.
Another example: children adopted at birth turn out to have personalities that resemble their biological parents, not their adoptive parents.
None of this means that parents don't matter. Of course it matters that we give our children a loving and kind environment. It is not going to have much influence on their personality, but it matters because of basic human decency.
In reply to Dianna:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou say that when babies don't become attached to their parents, they tend to have mental health problems later in life. This may be true, but why do assume that the failure to attach CAUSES the mental health problems? That is just one possible explanation for the correlation. It could be that the mental health problems were present in the baby at birth, and it is the mental health problems that cause the failure to attach. Or perhaps the parent has mental health problems too, and the parents mental health problems are responsible for the failure to attach. Then the child might inherit a genetic tendency to mental health problems from the parent genetically.
The author has made an endeavour to explain a reality by theorizing the phenomenon of child development. The problem with scientific research techniques is , they insists on looking at reality in the universe linearly, through cause and effect relationship.Reality is complex phenomenon with multiple facets and dimensions.Being dynamic in nature, at different time junctions, it revels different angles. Children who, due to some misfortune, have to grow without real parents, later on displayed excellent humain behaviours and character traits.Should we attribute all to their teachers. No. What if, They did not get chance to attend formal schooling.Reality is not always black and white. There are in-between Grey areas also. Reality does not always lie on extreme ends . It is complex in nature and we need to accept it as such with out distorting it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead the book and look at the evidence she gives, which is massively documented in her work and couldn't possibly be in a brief verbal interview, before dismissing it based on your preconceptions. The research is definitive. You are wrong. She is right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree wholeheartedly. Judith Harris and Pinker are brilliant and there work life changing. It is not true that parents make their children into moral people. Many moral, decent and excellent parents have children who become antisocial, rude, or even violent in adulthood, or even in childhood. Good parents can have ill behaved children, and ill behaved parents can have good children.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are wrong. Read her books. Open your mind to the world of fact, not the world you wish existed.
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