Review by Choice Review
Harris's book addresses a variety of seminal questions in the child development arena. Is the child a product of nature, nurture, both, or something else? Harris challenges orthodoxy, suggesting that peer socialization is at the crux of shaping children's use of language, their values, and their temperaments. Though parents may be important to their child's upbringing, parental influence falls short of being all-determining. Challenging the nurture assumption, Harris notes that no two siblings are ever alike; children often speak differently from their parents (without their parents' distinctive accents). She also argues that correlations obtained in past socialization research between parents' and children's behaviors usually fall woefully short of indicating decisive influences of one on the other. Harris has had a long and successful career as a professional psychology textbook author, demythologizing the writings of academic psychologists and making them clear and palatable to beginning students. Her lucid and lively writing style makes this book very accessible, not only to academic audiences but to educated general readers as well. W. Feigelman; Nassau Community College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Harris, author of a college-level textbook on child development, offers a contribution to the increasingly popular trend to absolve parents from feeling responsible for the rearing of their children. The inability of psychologists to demonstrate that parents have predictable effects on children, it is argued, vitiates the long-standing assumption of parents' crucial role in children's personality development. While the author's skepticism of the view that parents' behavior produces necessary and direct effects on children is itself well founded, her counterpoint to the "nurture assumption" is not. Rather than attempting to examine the evident complexity of parental influence on children, the author instead avoids the problem altogether, asserting that one must recognize "that children learn separately, in each social context, how to behave in that context." By consequence, the primary influence on a child's social development, Harris asserts, is not the family setting (in which the author thinks children merely learn how to behave toward other family members), but rather the peer group. Pleasant as this theory may be to some parents, this book contains not a shred of empirical research to support it. What substitutes for research are numerous anecdotes and pages of opining. Here, for example, is one of many personal observations the author uses to bolster her own argument: "I believe high or low status in the peer group has permanent effects on the personality. Children who are unpopular with their peers... never get over that. At least I didn't." While this kind of evidence is unlikely to sway the critical reader, it will undoubtedly find favor among those parents who, like the author, find in this book's thesis a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, which will mitigate guilty feelings about how they treated their childrenfeelings that, as the book implies, need not be analyzed. First broadcast to 20/20. BOMC alternate, QPB selection. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Harris both annoyed and intrigued specialists everywhere last year with the publication of her theory that neither nature nor nurture has the greatest influence upon child development. Rather, she asserts, the peer group is the determining factor in children's growth and personality development. Beginning with a look at traditional child development theories, Harris then builds a convincing case for her theory based on observation, anecdotes, and research-based data. Inspired partly by her desire to relieve the guilt and anxiety felt by parents determined to provide the best environment for their offspring, Harris contends, through narration by Paula Parker, that the only true impact parents can have is to encourage children to identify with appropriate peers and to ensure that children fit in. Although her theory is extreme, there is much to consider and react to, making this an interesting addition to library collections that include parenting resources.ÄSusan McCaffrey, Haslett H.S., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A meta-analysis of nature/nurture research. Harris claims theres no proof that parents enjoy more than a genetic influence on how their kids turn out.'' It's the childrens peers, instead, who exercise the larger influence on them in their daily lives, reports the author, a self- styled nonacademic who says she was booted from her Harvard Ph.D. programbut whos since written college textbooks and journal articles on child development. Increasingly skeptical of the material shed been including in her own textbooks, Harris began questioning and reviewing child-development studies with particular emphasis on ``socialization research.'' This corner of the field theorizes that parents determine the ``entire course of their [childrens] lives.'' This is what Harris calls the nurture assumption; she devotes the next 400 pages to disputing it. She asserts that evolution demands children find their way quickly into groups and that, by the time theyre toddlers, theyll be shaping their own behavior, whether formally or just in fun, based on that of their peers and of older children. Harris gleefully attacks various child-development icons (John Watson, Carol Gilligan); surveys the truths offered both by literature (Lord of the Flies) and primate research; and often cites a saying that emphasizes the power of social disapproval: ``The nail that stick up gets hammered down.'' She defends parents who treat their different children differently, contrasts one-on-one relationships and ``group culture,'' and offers some not very optimistic thoughts onand tentative defenses againstdelinquency and racism. While Harris warns that ``parenting has been oversold,'' she also includes many personal anecdotes about her children and her own childhood, which sometimes has the effect of diluting the impact of her message. This poses an important challenge to the mounting pressure on parents that decrees they alone can guide the character and accomplishments of their children.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
