What is the problem of The Nurture Assumption according to Judith Rich Harris?

Harris challenges the idea that the personality of adults is determined chiefly by the way they were raised by their parents. She looks at studies which claim to show the influence of the parental environment and claims that most fail to control for genetic influences.

Why children turn out to be the way they are?

Parents already have power over the sort of people their children will turn out to be, says the journalist. He means, because parents provide the environment. The nurture. determine what sort of people your children will turn out to be are nature — their genes — and nurture — the way you bring them up.

Who argues that genes and peers are far more important than parents in children’s development?

LEHRER: Freud famously blamed the problems of the child on the parents. (He was especially hard on mothers.) In The Nurture Assumption, an influential work that was published 10 years ago, you argued that parents are mostly innocent and that peers play a much more influential role.

What is Judith Harris theory?

Judith Rich Harris, a psychologist, was writing college textbooks on child development when she suddenly realized she didn’t believe what she was telling readers about why children turn out the way they do. She had her own theory: that children are influenced more by their genes and peers than by their parents.

What is the nature assumption?

The two classical drives of human development have been thought to be nature and nurture, genes and environment. The nurture assumption is that, aside from their genes, what influences the way children develop is the way their parents bring them up.

Is peers nature or nurture?

45 to 50 percent of your personality is nature. Peers and chance shape the other half. The other 50 to 55 percent of your personality is your peers and chance.

Why are peers more influential than parents?

Other common activities may now follow hence most decisions made are through a consultation between the peers. Most of the time is spent with close friends and not the parents hence, peers are more important than the parents. Identifying with age mates is another reason why peers are more important than parents.

What did Jerome Kagan study?

Kagan studied how biological conditionals increased a child’s vulnerability to emotions, like fear and apprehension. His theory of emotion grew out of his research on temperament. He posited that emotion is the result of specific brain states combined with context and temperament.

Which of the following is among Harris main points on parenting?

Which of the following is among Harris’ main points on parenting? -parents don’t matter as much as peers when it comes to social development.

Who created the nurture theory?

psychologist Sir Francis Galton
Nurture Theory was credited to psychologist Sir Francis Galton in 1869 (Bynum, 2002). However, it is unclear who initially described the impact of genes and biology versus environmental influences.

Who is the biggest influence in a child life?

Parents
Parents are the #1 influence in their children’s lives. Parents don’t always believe this – in a Parents Empowered survey, parents placed themselves last in the line-up of influences on their children – after friends, teachers and media.