Who needs experts?

Our children are more magical and far more precious than the reductionist equation 'genes plus peers.'

By Beth Kephart

Sep 18, 1998 | Two-thirds of the way through "The Nurture Assumption," author Judith Rich Harris breathlessly puts us ringside at her Very Major Moment. "Except for the dog, I was alone in the house," she remembers, no detail here being too small to spare. "I was sitting at my desk on a dark winter afternoon, reading an article about adolescent delinquency. It was January 20, 1994." Shortly, without due warning, a fiery inspiration pierced Harris' skull and seized her brain -- an insight so startling and effulgent that even she felt staggered by the light.

"Teenagers aren't trying to be like adults: They are trying to distinguish themselves from adults!" Harris recounts her thinking. "The thought blossomed like a magician's bouquet. Within a few minutes I had the basic outline of group socialization theory -- the theory that children identify with a group consisting of their peers, that they tailor their behavior to the norms of their group, and that groups contrast themselves with other groups and adopt different norms. Only after I had gotten that far did I realize the full implications, and then I had to go back and reconsider the evidence before I was willing to accept the second half of my epiphany. 'Hey, it's not the parents! It's not the parents at all!'"

It's hard to settle on the more confounding factoid -- that Harris actually felt she'd entered original terrain by recognizing that peers play a role in children's lives, that Harris could justify tying this "conceptual breakthrough" to a noncategorical statement of "fact" regarding the overall value of parenting or that Harris' thesis could be taking media types by storm -- plopping her center stage on TV shows and magazine covers, earning her folk-heroine status in some circles and sending her book into multiple printings.

It's enough to make a person shudder. Closer inspection of Harris' work further exacerbates one's shaken spirits. "You've followed the (advice givers') advice and where has it got you?" Harris presumptively exhorts. "They've made you feel guilty if you don't love all your children equally, though it's not your fault if nature made some kids more lovable than others. They've made you feel guilty if you don't give them enough quality time, though your kids seem to prefer to spend their quality time with their friends ... They've made you feel guilty if you hit your child, though big hominids have been hitting little ones for millions of years. Worst of all, they've made you feel guilty if anything goes wrong with your child. It's easy to blame parents for everything; they're sitting ducks."

Next Page: Who says parents are such idiots?

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