The Nurture Assumption
Judith Harris published an article in the mid-90’s that has had a profound effect upon the underlying thinking in the nature versus nurture debate. She doesn’t get into the debate on the division between the two, though acknowledges that the general consensus out there is that it is about half and half. Her impact was in challenging the assumption that the term nurture heavily involved the parents. She argues, instead, that the biggest influence upon kids growing up are not their parents. No, she says, it is their peer group; and the most important influence parents have on their kids is in putting them in environments that will determine their peer group. The one rationalization that really stands out to me is ‘why don’t immigrant kids ever pick up their parents’ accents’? Instead they sound like the other kids in the neighborhood. By extension then, according to Harris’ central idea, much of the value of an international education is derived from the putting kids around other international kids. Hmm….this actually makes some sense.
By the way, Harris’ path to intellectual glory is a really great story. Admittedly I read her book about decade ago so forgive me if my details aren’t entirely accurate, but she dropped out of a PhD program and then began writing introductory physc. textbooks for first year university students: from what I know of such things, this is roughly the academic equivalent to flipping intellectual burgers. Well as she is writing these textbooks and summarizing the research, something about the nature / nurture thing strikes her as being off. And then she come up with this idea about the influence of peer groups, gets published in one of the world’s leading psychology journals and rockets to intellectual stardom. (Off the top of my head, Pinker—who has written a collection of the most accessible and popular ‘brain research’ books you will probably find on the shelves—is a big fan. Harris’ theory even she got an honorable mention in Freakonmics if my memory serves me correctly.)
Anyway, if you are parent, don’t feel to proud or too guilty about your actions and how you kids have turned out. Your biggest role is probably picking their environment and the candidate pool of friends. If you are teacher, be mindful of who is hanging out with who—it really matters. If you were ever a kid, ask yourself: Who were your friends growing up…?
