Freedomain Radio

Has anyone read The Nurture Assumption, by Judith Rich Harris?  In it, she lays out an empirical case against the importance of parents in forming the stable personality of their children.  She points to studies about how children form groups, and how group formation affects the children.  Her central thesis is that children act differently at home versus in the outside world, parents affect how children act at home, and the outside world affects how children act in the outside world.  Aside from genetics, which account for around 50% of a person's personality, a child's peers and self-chosen group identity casts future adult personality.  She cites a multitude of twin studies and some famous social psychology studies.  It's about a decade old, and has been highly praised by top researchers like Steven Pinker.  The only challenge I can see to the argument is epigenetics, but there needs to be another decade of research on that before hard conclusions can be reached anyway.  It seems like the empirical evidence presented in this book would contradict the "Got a problem?  Look at your parents" approach taken here.  Has anyone read the book and reconciled the arguments and evidence there with the theories and anecdotes here?

For what it's worth, I've been listening for a while now, and haven't spoken with my parents for over a year because I don't like them.  The book has affected how I view myself, and how I explain my actions, but hasn't tempted me to go back and hang with my folks.

That is very interesting, and I will definitely put it on my reading list -- I wonder though, whether correlation is being presented as causality... It certainly is true that children are highly influenced by their peers -- but I'm not sure that it is easy to explain why children choose certain peers, except by looking at their early family history.

For instance, when I was going through a very nihilistic phase in my early teens, I hung out with some really nihilistic and self-destructive people. As I began to learn more about myself, and raise my self-esteem through more positive and virtuous actions, I left those friends behind in favor of more positive and pleasant companions. In other words, my social environment was a reflection of my core beliefs at the time, which came from my family.

If a child is raised in a relaxed, happy and positive atmosphere, it is hard to imagine that he or she will end up with a stressed-out and negative social circle.

Also, just as a minor correction, my approach at least is not "have problems? - look at your parents" - but rather: "have problems? - look at your family of origin first" which is a very important difference...

I've been getting into deMause and psychohistory after listening to Stef's podcasts on incest, and there is some pretty amazing stuff on prenatal psychology which I think are missed by Harris (I've never actually read The Nurture Assumption, only read articles/discussions on it, so I could easily be wrong there).

I would reccommend two books:

One is called "The Emotional Life of Nations" (especially chapter 4), by Lloyd deMause. You can read it online here: http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/childhod/chindex.htm

The other is called "Primal Connections", by Elizabeth Noble. I don't know much about the author, but I found this one in the library and it covers a lot of the same material well.

"There are sound neurobiological reasons for this correlation between fetal trauma and social violence. Early brain development is determined both by genes and by cellular selection and self-organizational processes that are crucially dependent upon the uterine environment.87 Since fetal and early infantile traumas and abdonments occur while the brain is still being formed, while cell adhesion molecules are still determining the brain's initial mapping processes and while synaptic connections are still undergoing major developmental changes, memories of early traumas cannot be handled as traumas are later in life and instead are coded in separate neuronal networks that retain their emotional power well into adulthood.88

"Fetal abuse can be direct, either from drugs or from the pregnant mother being abused by her mate. According to the Surgeon General, "one in three pregnant women in America is slapped, kicked or punched by their mates."89 In addition, maternal emotional stress produces such biochemical imbalances as an overactivation of the pituitary-adrenal cortical and sympathetic-adrenal medullary systems with consequent increases of adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH), cortisol, pituitary growth hormone and catecholamine levels. Maternal emotional stress has even been correlated with damage to the hippocampus, the center, along with the thalamus, of conscious memory and self feelings.90 Furthermore, the emotions of the mother can be directly transmitted through the neurotransmitters and other hormones in her blood to the fetal blood and then to DNA-binding receptors in the fetal cells that turn genes on and off, thus programming her stress directly into the developing fetal brain.91 This bath of maternal hormonal imbalances can produce severe fetal traumatic emotional dysfunctions.92 Baby rats, for instance, whose mothers had been frightened by loud noises during pregnancy, were found to have copious supplies of stress hormones, plus fewer receptors for benzodiazepines and fewer GABA receptors, both needed for calming action during stress.93 The results of the mother not wanting her baby can prove lethal: one study of eight thousand pregnant women found that unwanted babies were 2.4 times more likely to die in the first month of life.94

"Infants traumatized in utero and during birth are those Winnicott referred to as "born paranoid," and can remain hypersensitive to stress, over-fearful, withdrawn and angry all of their lives. Fetal traumas and abandonments result in overstimulation of neurotransmitters, producing hypersensitivity and other imbalances in such important neurotransmitters as the catecholamines. The most important of these imbalances is low serotonin levels, which have been demonstrated to lead to persistent hyperarousal and compulsive reenactment in violent social behavior, including both homicide and suicide.95 Because of this, reenactment in later life can be an even more potent source of violent behavior in the case of fetal trauma than it has been found to be in the case of childhood or war trauma.96"

...

"Perhaps the most impressive observational work on the personality of the fetus is being done by the Italian psychoanalyst Alessandra Piontelli, by combining thousands of hours of ultrasound observations with clinical psychoanalytic work with young children. Her research into pre- and perinatal memories began after she encountered an eighteen-month-old child who was reported by sensitive parents as being incessantly restless and unable to sleep:

"I noted that he seemed to move about restlessly almost as if obsessed by a search for something in every possible corner of the limited space of my consulting room, looking for something which he never seemed able to find. His parents commented on this, saying that he acted like that all the time, day and night. Occasionally Jacob also tried to shake several of the objects inside my room, as if trying to bring them back to life. His parents then told me that any milestone in his development (such as sitting up, crawling, walking, or uttering his first words) all seemed to be accompanied by intense anxiety and pain as if he were afraid, as they put it, 'to leave something behind him.' When I said very simply to him that he seemed to be looking for something that he had lost and could not find anywhere, Jacob stopped and looked at me very intently. I then commented on his trying to shake all the objects to life as if he were afraid that their stillness meant death. His parents almost burst into tears and told me that Jacob was, in fact, a twin, but that his co-twin, Tino, as they had already decided to call him, had died two weeks before birth. Jacob, therefore, had spent almost two weeks in utero with his dead and consequently unresponsive co-twin.¹²⁰

"Verbalization of his fears that each step forward in his development might be accompanied by the death of a loved one for whom he felt himself to be responsible "brought about an incredible change in his behavior," says Piontelli. Similarly, Leah La Goy, an American psychotherapist, has documented seventeen children who were her patients who had lost a twin in utero and who "consistently create enactments of fearing for their own life [which] can and often does weaken the parent-child bonding process" because they believe their mother might try to get rid of them too.¹²¹

"Piontelli, like many other child therapists, began to be struck by the frequency and concreteness of children's "fantasies" about their life before birth. Unlike most therapists, who, however, ignore their accurate observations because their training taught them the mind only begins after birth, she carefully recorded them and tried to confirm their reality, first by consultation with the family and eventually by her own extensive ultrasound observations of fetal life. The correlations and continuities between fetal experiences and childhood personality "were often so dramatic," she says, "that I was amazed that I had not been more aware of them at the time."¹²² One set of twins often stroked each others' heads in the womb through the dividing membrane; at the age of one, they could often be seen playing their favorite game of using a curtain as a kind of membrane through which they stroked each other's heads.¹²³ Another set of twins whose mother considered abortion because of her fear they might be jealous of each other-punched each other all the time in the womb and continued to do so after birth."

-- The Emotional Life of Nations

So it's true then that the baby is born with it's own personality, but the fact that this personality is shaped by their parents is unavoidable. It seems nearly impossible that a baby could be born without any sort of prenatal or birth trauma, but I think how the parents treat their children afterwords would determine whether their flaws get more intense or disappear. If it appears that most children are getting most of their development on their own, I would first suspect that that's because they aren't getting much help from their parents in developing a healthy personality.

The confusion of correlation with causation is actually one of her main critiques of the nurture assumption

One piece of evidence for causation comes from observing what happens when children don't choose their own peers.  She references studies (such as the Robbers Cave study) where two groups of children create differing group norms.  In the Robbers Cave study, one group became "holy rollers" (e.g., didn't swear, always prayed, allowed members to cry if injured), while another became "bad boys" (swore, never prayed, expected stoicism in the face of pain).  That was the group identity they forged for themselves, and they fell in line with the group identity.  The groups were of similar backgrounds and were randomly assigned, so it's unlikely (though, of course, not impossible) that the groups reflected family situations.  For the first week of  the study, the two groups didn't know of the other's existence, and didn't create the "good boy" and "bad boy" identities; that is, the two groups were similar for one week, then assumed the newly-created group identities after they started competing with the other.

In the real world, though, people do choose their own peers, and it's possible that they choose them to reflect their home lives.  There is a strong place for heredity, and heredity might explain why parents who create a nihilistic home life pass on genes predisposing someone for nihilistic core beliefs.  Was it that your mother was a nihilist, or that you responded to her by becoming a nihilist?  I suppose the sort of narcissistic paranoia from which your mother suffered (and which she inflicted upon you) bears resemblance to nihilism, and narcissistic paranoia has a genetic component to it, so it's possible that her narcissism and your nihilism are both partially genetic.  It's hard to draw conclusions from anecdotes, and it's something I was afraid Harris would do, but her book contains lots of controlled studies supporting her ideas (she has a 32-page references section, and continuously makes reference to studies throughout the narrative).

If a child is raised in a relaxed, happy and positive atmosphere, he probably inherited genes that predispose her to seek out relaxed, happy and positive social groups.  There are two reasons for this: first, the parents probably have "good" genes, which predisposed them to be good parents; and second, the child probably (unwittingly) helped create the relaxed, happy and positive atmosphere.  Harris makes the case for the parent-child relationship being a two-way relationship, where the child's actions affect the parents'.  So if a child comes from a happy home, both the parents and the child are the reasons.  This doesn't mean she places moral blame on the child for his parents' action -- the explanation is descriptive, not moral.  We can say that a partial reason reason a man got mugged was that he walked down a dark alley screaming, "I'm unarmed and drunk and have lots of money!" without saying he is morally responsible for the mugging.

Thanks for the correction; I agree, it's an important one.  I can think of some examples where the FOO wouldn't be the cause of someone's problems -- for example, someone suffering from PTSD after being assaulted.  Could you point me toward a case where someone approached you with a profound problem and the solution didn't come from examining one's FOO relationship?

No, my mother was not a nihilist, but more of a hedonist.

I am fascinated at the possibility that genetics can determine core values or beliefs -- do you know of any scientific work that has been done in this area? It would seem to fly in the face of the fact that children in Muslim cultures tend to grow up Muslim and so on...

Thanks!

webdever:

I've been getting into deMause and psychohistory after listening to Stef's podcasts on incest, and there is some pretty amazing stuff on prenatal psychology which I think are missed by Harris (I've never actually read The Nurture Assumption, only read articles/discussions on it, so I could easily be wrong there).

I would reccommend two books:

One is called "The Emotional Life of Nations" (especially chapter 4), by Lloyd deMause. You can read it online here: http://www.geocities.com/kidhistory/childhod/chindex.htm

The other is called "Primal Connections", by Elizabeth Noble. I don't know much about the author, but I found this one in the library and it covers a lot of the same material well.

"There are sound neurobiological reasons for this correlation between fetal trauma and social violence. Early brain development is determined both by genes and by cellular selection and self-organizational processes that are crucially dependent upon the uterine environment.87 Since fetal and early infantile traumas and abdonments occur while the brain is still being formed, while cell adhesion molecules are still determining the brain's initial mapping processes and while synaptic connections are still undergoing major developmental changes, memories of early traumas cannot be handled as traumas are later in life and instead are coded in separate neuronal networks that retain their emotional power well into adulthood.88

"Fetal abuse can be direct, either from drugs or from the pregnant mother being abused by her mate. According to the Surgeon General, "one in three pregnant women in America is slapped, kicked or punched by their mates."89 In addition, maternal emotional stress produces such biochemical imbalances as an overactivation of the pituitary-adrenal cortical and sympathetic-adrenal medullary systems with consequent increases of adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH), cortisol, pituitary growth hormone and catecholamine levels. Maternal emotional stress has even been correlated with damage to the hippocampus, the center, along with the thalamus, of conscious memory and self feelings.90 Furthermore, the emotions of the mother can be directly transmitted through the neurotransmitters and other hormones in her blood to the fetal blood and then to DNA-binding receptors in the fetal cells that turn genes on and off, thus programming her stress directly into the developing fetal brain.91 This bath of maternal hormonal imbalances can produce severe fetal traumatic emotional dysfunctions.92 Baby rats, for instance, whose mothers had been frightened by loud noises during pregnancy, were found to have copious supplies of stress hormones, plus fewer receptors for benzodiazepines and fewer GABA receptors, both needed for calming action during stress.93 The results of the mother not wanting her baby can prove lethal: one study of eight thousand pregnant women found that unwanted babies were 2.4 times more likely to die in the first month of life.94

"Infants traumatized in utero and during birth are those Winnicott referred to as "born paranoid," and can remain hypersensitive to stress, over-fearful, withdrawn and angry all of their lives. Fetal traumas and abandonments result in overstimulation of neurotransmitters, producing hypersensitivity and other imbalances in such important neurotransmitters as the catecholamines. The most important of these imbalances is low serotonin levels, which have been demonstrated to lead to persistent hyperarousal and compulsive reenactment in violent social behavior, including both homicide and suicide.95 Because of this, reenactment in later life can be an even more potent source of violent behavior in the case of fetal trauma than it has been found to be in the case of childhood or war trauma.96"

...

"Perhaps the most impressive observational work on the personality of the fetus is being done by the Italian psychoanalyst Alessandra Piontelli, by combining thousands of hours of ultrasound observations with clinical psychoanalytic work with young children. Her research into pre- and perinatal memories began after she encountered an eighteen-month-old child who was reported by sensitive parents as being incessantly restless and unable to sleep:

"I noted that he seemed to move about restlessly almost as if obsessed by a search for something in every possible corner of the limited space of my consulting room, looking for something which he never seemed able to find. His parents commented on this, saying that he acted like that all the time, day and night. Occasionally Jacob also tried to shake several of the objects inside my room, as if trying to bring them back to life. His parents then told me that any milestone in his development (such as sitting up, crawling, walking, or uttering his first words) all seemed to be accompanied by intense anxiety and pain as if he were afraid, as they put it, 'to leave something behind him.' When I said very simply to him that he seemed to be looking for something that he had lost and could not find anywhere, Jacob stopped and looked at me very intently. I then commented on his trying to shake all the objects to life as if he were afraid that their stillness meant death. His parents almost burst into tears and told me that Jacob was, in fact, a twin, but that his co-twin, Tino, as they had already decided to call him, had died two weeks before birth. Jacob, therefore, had spent almost two weeks in utero with his dead and consequently unresponsive co-twin.¹²⁰

"Verbalization of his fears that each step forward in his development might be accompanied by the death of a loved one for whom he felt himself to be responsible "brought about an incredible change in his behavior," says Piontelli. Similarly, Leah La Goy, an American psychotherapist, has documented seventeen children who were her patients who had lost a twin in utero and who "consistently create enactments of fearing for their own life [which] can and often does weaken the parent-child bonding process" because they believe their mother might try to get rid of them too.¹²¹

"Piontelli, like many other child therapists, began to be struck by the frequency and concreteness of children's "fantasies" about their life before birth. Unlike most therapists, who, however, ignore their accurate observations because their training taught them the mind only begins after birth, she carefully recorded them and tried to confirm their reality, first by consultation with the family and eventually by her own extensive ultrasound observations of fetal life. The correlations and continuities between fetal experiences and childhood personality "were often so dramatic," she says, "that I was amazed that I had not been more aware of them at the time."¹²² One set of twins often stroked each others' heads in the womb through the dividing membrane; at the age of one, they could often be seen playing their favorite game of using a curtain as a kind of membrane through which they stroked each other's heads.¹²³ Another set of twins whose mother considered abortion because of her fear they might be jealous of each other-punched each other all the time in the womb and continued to do so after birth."

-- The Emotional Life of Nations

So it's true then that the baby is born with it's own personality, but the fact that this personality is shaped by their parents is unavoidable. It seems nearly impossible that a baby could be born without any sort of prenatal or birth trauma, but I think how the parents treat their children afterwords would determine whether their flaws get more intense or disappear. If it appears that most children are getting most of their development on their own, I would first suspect that that's because they aren't getting much help from their parents in developing a healthy personality.

What the mother feels the fetus will of course feel also, e.g. a mother with many 'stress' hormones going round her body will also be passing on stress hormones to the fetus.

This is also true of mothers who breast feed, hormones in the breast milk will be passed to the baby. In short, a happy pregnant woman or a happy breast feeding mother will also have a happy fetus or baby and vice versa if she is feeling stressed or sad.

Whether or not this forms a person's personality I really have no idea, i dont know enough about the long term effects that this can have on fetuses and babies being breast fed, like i dont know if the hormones that are passed to the baby only have a temporary effect or if a long term one, perhaps if it is constant and severe enough it will do.

IMO, either way its just important pregnant and breast feeding mothers are given every opportunity to feel fab! Sadly of course this is not always the case, and unexpected events may happen to the mother that do cause her to feel very sad and unhappy during pregnancy and breast feeding (i.e. a loved one dying- I have read studies about the effects of this on mother and baby but i dont remember the book!!! but i think it was one called "The Female Brain" :S )

It's been said that people can't choose whether or not they go insane, but they can choose the way it is expressed.  I first heard that in explanation of the growth of multiple personality disorders.  As a psychological disorder becomes popularized, more people appear with the symptoms.  As it falls from popularity, fewer people appear with the symptoms, but more appear with different symptoms.  There is also sleep paralysis, which a few hundred years ago was probably the cause of nighttime witch sightings, and is now probably the cause of many nighttime alien abduction stories.  Likewise, there may be genetic predispositions to certain traits that lead to certain core values, and those core values express themselves in ways the culture allows.  It's not that the cultural trappings are genetically passed down.  A man with a fantasy-prone personality might become a Muslim mystic, a Pentacostal, or a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, depending on a multitude of things, but they all stem from that personality trait.

Now, your story might provide an argument against that.  You say you were raised by a narcicistic hedonist, became a nihilist, sought out nihilistic social supports, and then, through an act of will, turned away from the nihilism and toward a very much less destructive form of narcicissm and hedonism (relationships with women, university, and the events surrounding the sale of your company), finally ending up answering the question of life, the universe and everything (with an answer more profound than "42"), and dedicating your life toward the improvement of mankind, quitting your lucrative day job to better do so.  Your life story seems to show that people are able to overcome any core beliefs you may have inherited, genetic or otherwise, from your parents, by sheer force of will.  So maybe I'm wrong . . . .

Very interesting ideas all around, and I will definitely have to check out the book. My own thought process when it comes to evolutionary issues, of which this seems to be one, is to ask myself what situations would cause the human organism to succeed in the largest number of cases and maximize survivability, at least until reproductive age. To me, it would seem to make sense that human beings would have a sort of 'default' case that is determined by the condition of the mother. A mother who is unable to provide abundant nutrients to the fetus would, it could be supposed, produce a child whose default set of instinctual behaviors are more aggressive in order to better survive an environment of scarcity, where focusing on short-term gains provides an evolutionary benefit over the long-term benefits of empathy and cooperation. Thus, the 'morality code' that caused an organism to instinctually pursue mutually beneficial interactions would be switched off, but remain still present.

Even an amoral organism would stand to benefit, however, from a knowledge of empathy, if only to exploit those who have it. Reportedly, the most amoral individuals are often the most charismatic, and they generally have the ability to generate the illusion of mutual benefit even when none exists. Knowledge of empathy, then, seems to be nearly universal, as would be predicted by evolutionary theory..A child with a default reaction of selfishness would tend to repel those who pursue a strategy based on mutually benefitial interactions, but should he somehow find himself in a peer group of more empathetic types, he would possess the intrinisic knowledge needed to conform with these new peers. Therefore, I feel that external influences, the 'false self' that is imposed on us by others, are overlaid onto the default personality that is provided at birth in order to promote survival and reproduction at the high cost of maintaining an constant illusion.

The most beneficial evolutionary programming would seem to be to have human organisms start with sensible default values for the personality based on the likely conditions outside the womb and then be sensitive to external input in order to fine-tune these values. Having the personality be hard-coded genetically from an amalgam of parental personality traits seems a woefully unadaptive system, but it is certainly a possibility that cannot be ruled out without serious research. I don't know enough of the science of human development to really speak with any authority on the topic, but it's definitely something that I am curious about. It seems like a lot of this stuff is within the realm of the testable, so I'm very excited to read the research around it.

If you raise a happy, confident and curious child, I have no doubt that sending the child to school at the age of 5 can seriously harm his social skills with his peers in the future. This is what happened to me. This did not directly affect my home life, except that I began to take my frustration out on my mother as I got older. I was very confident and unafraid of my peers at a young age - I just thought they were funny when they said irrational things like "respect your elders", and I would use use the argument from absurdity to make jokes about these ideas. Needless to say, this did not go down well, and this was all that the bullying types needed to start getting more aggressive. Since I was a very sensitive child, this pattern eventually triggered a vicious cycle. Being different, a bit unsure of myself and then being moved to a completely different country at the age of 6 provided a new crop of bullies with everything they needed to undermine my sense of self esteem. After that year, I was permanently tainted with insecurity in social situations. I was still very confident at home, although I had begun to subconsciously blame my mother for moving me around so much. After 2 bad periods when I was 6 and 10, it took me years to gradually raise my self esteem in social situations.

It is not enough to raise a child with empathy, to reason with him and to build his sense of self esteem. A child also needs be taught how to defend himself from evil, before he experiences it. It's pretty horrible to raise a sensitive and curious child, only to throw him into a pit of savages with no ability to defend himself. Here are 3 ways i can think of to prepare as sensitive child to overcome the evils in the real world:

1) Art. Show the child cartoons, movies and stories which depict the types of evil he is likely to encounter, why it is wrong, and how a protagonist overcomes it.

2) Vaccination. A vaccine is a crippled version of a dangerous virus which allows the immune system to understand it and build a defence, without much risk of getting hurt. Show your child mild/ineffective versions of dangerous people like bullies, and let your child practice defeating them. That way, when the real threats comes along, the child correctly identifies THEM as evil (instead of doubting himself), and is somewhat prepared to deal with the threat.

3) Video. Film your kids playing, ands then later, show your kid video footage of a bully targeting him, or your child bullying another kid, or your kid acting strange. In all cases, your child can learn to empathise and to see how other people experience his behaviour.

soma:

If you raise a happy, confident and curious child, I have no doubt that sending the child to school at the age of 5 can seriously harm his social skills with his peers in the future. This is what happened to me.

Though I read the rest of your post and can see that you mentioned you felt unconsciously angry at your mother for moving you around, I don't understand how you can still say that she was interested in raising a happy, confident and curious child if she was throwing you to the wolves so to speak.

Nathan:

soma:

If you raise a happy, confident and curious child, I have no doubt that sending the child to school at the age of 5 can seriously harm his social skills with his peers in the future. This is what happened to me.

Though I read the rest of your post and can see that you mentioned you felt unconsciously angry at your mother for moving you around, I don't understand how you can still say that she was interested in raising a happy, confident and curious child if she was throwing you to the wolves so to speak.

I have spoken with her about this a few times. She didn't have some sort of subconscious desire to sabotage me by outsourcing my abuse to a school system... Basically, she did do some research on the various school options, such as normal schooling, Montessori and home schooling. My stepfather didn't want to pay for me to go to Montessori because he had heard that children had difficulties integrating with the real world, and she considered home school, but thought that it would cut me off socially (spelling bees come to mind). She has been fairly open to my arguments about the problems with school structures. I am sure that if had been given the information I now have about home-schooling, she would have done the right thing. We talked about this recently, and she confirmed that if she could do it all over again, she would have home-schooled me.

After seeing the psychohistory chart of the progression of parenting, I would place my mother in the 'helping mode'. She was messed up by her own parents, yet was adamant that I not experience the same childhood that she did (hence the lack of violence, manipulation or coldness in my childhood). If she had gone through therapy and become more strong and psychologically healthy before she had me, then I would have had a better (or even present) father. Her life would have been more fulfilled, purposeful and inspiring. My parents relationship would have been a good template. These are the things that were lacking in my childhood, rather than things like empathy or reason. Hope that makes some sense.

I'm currently reading They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life by Oliver James and in it he cites a multitude of studies showing how adults reenact their family scripting.  He writes about how the way one is raised up to about age 6 significantly affects one's behavior as an adult.  Even some major mental illnesses can be attributed to the quality of parental care received in childhood.

O. James attributes much less than 50% to genetics in that our genes create us to be adaptable humans and not what kind of human.  He talks about this at length in the book.

So, in this book, the author is saying that most of our adult behavior is attributable to how our parents raised us and not genetic or other influences. 

Without being a psychology researcher and pouring over all the studies that both authors cite, I think it would be hard for any layman to have any real understanding of childhood and adult behavior.  I say this only because the 'professionals' have near polar opposite beliefs (knowledge) based on the studies they have done and read.

t

Ari in Zona:

Has anyone read The Nurture Assumption, by Judith Rich Harris?  In it, she lays out an empirical case against the importance of parents in forming the stable personality of their children.  She points to studies about how children form groups, and how group formation affects the children.  Her central thesis is that children act differently at home versus in the outside world, parents affect how children act at home, and the outside world affects how children act in the outside world.  Aside from genetics, which account for around 50% of a person's personality, a child's peers and self-chosen group identity casts future adult personality.  She cites a multitude of twin studies and some famous social psychology studies.  It's about a decade old, and has been highly praised by top researchers like Steven Pinker.  The only challenge I can see to the argument is epigenetics, but there needs to be another decade of research on that before hard conclusions can be reached anyway.  It seems like the empirical evidence presented in this book would contradict the "Got a problem?  Look at your parents" approach taken here.  Has anyone read the book and reconciled the arguments and evidence there with the theories and anecdotes here?

For what it's worth, I've been listening for a while now, and haven't spoken with my parents for over a year because I don't like them.  The book has affected how I view myself, and how I explain my actions, but hasn't tempted me to go back and hang with my folks.

 I would like to read the book and will do so when I have the chance. But here are some problems I see in your brief synopsis:

Methinks it would be difficult to use empirical evidence to prove such a thing. You could easily find correlations, but the ever elusive gap over to proving causation will be hard to find; in addition there are simply too many variables and one cannot isolate them individually as is done in physics and chemistry laboratories. Of course, this also applies to the so called nurture assumption (a misnomer).

The main problem I see, however, is that saying children act differently at home and with peers does not prove parenting has no effect. It sounds a bit absurd to me. People act differently in all differing situations. According to her hypothesis, everyone has their life broken into a bunch of different worlds with an impregnable barrier separating between them. A woman with an abusive husband will not be effected by it at work because her husband influences how she feels at home and her peers influence her work life; there is absolutely no connection between the two.

 I find it nearly impossible to believe that a child (or any human) can have a certain sector of his life isolated from every other sector.

That being said, I also think parents are not our sole influence, and genetic factors determine quite a bit. It just seems like she thinks you can sweep the influence of parents under the rug.

This is a testable theory. It requires a series of controlled twin studies. Genetically identical humans separated at birth and raised under different circumstances, or in the same home but under different forms of parenting.

A quick search returned this very old thread. Has anyone currently on the boards read this book? Any thoughts?