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JUDITH
RICH HARRIS
Independent
Investigator and Theoretician; Author, The Nurture
Assumption
The idea of zero parental influence
Is it
dangerous to claim that parents have no power at all (other than
genetic) to shape their child's personality, intelligence, or the
way he or she behaves outside the family home? More to the point, is
this claim false? Was I wrong when I proposed that parents' power to
do these things by environmental means is zero, nada,
zilch?
A
confession: When I first made this proposal ten years ago, I didn't
fully believe it myself. I took an extreme position, the null
hypothesis of zero parental influence, for the sake of scientific
clarity. Making myself an easy target, I invited the establishment —
research psychologists in the academic world — to shoot me down. I
didn't think it would be all that difficult for them to do so. It
was clear by then that there weren't any big effects of parenting,
but I thought there must be modest effects that I would ultimately
have to acknowledge.
The
establishment's failure to shoot me down has been nothing short of
astonishing. One developmental psychologist even admitted, one year
ago on this very website, that researchers hadn't yet found proof
that "parents do shape their children," but she was still convinced
that they will eventually find it, if they just keep searching long
enough.
Her
comrades in arms have been less forthright. "There are
dozens of studies that show the influence of parents on
children!" they kept saying, but then they'd somehow forget to name
them — perhaps because these studies were among the ones I had
already demolished (by showing that they lacked the necessary
controls or the proper statistical analyses). Or they'd claim to
have newer research that provided an airtight case for parental
influence, but again there was a catch: the work had never been
published in a peer-reviewed journal. When I investigated, I could
find no evidence that the research in question had actually been
done or, if done, that it had produced the results that were claimed
for it. At most, it appeared to consist of preliminary work, with
too little data to be meaningful (or publishable).
Vaporware, I call it. Some of the vaporware has achieved
mythic status. You may have heard of Stephen Suomi's experiment with
nervous baby monkeys, supposedly showing that those reared by
"nurturant" adoptive monkey mothers turn into calm, socially
confident adults. Or of Jerome Kagan's research with nervous baby
humans, supposedly showing that those reared by "overprotective"
(that is, nurturant) human mothers are more likely to remain
fearful.
Researchers like these might well see my ideas as dangerous.
But is the notion of zero parental influence dangerous in any other
sense? So it is alleged. Here's what Frank Farley, former president
of the American Psychological Association, told a journalist in
1998:
[Harris's] thesis is absurd on its face, but consider
what might happen if parents believe this stuff! Will it free some
to mistreat their kids, since "it doesn't matter"? Will it tell
parents who are tired after a long day that they needn't bother
even paying any attention to their kid since "it doesn't
matter"?
Farley
seems to be saying that the only reason parents are nice to their
children is because they think it will make the children turn out
better! And that if parents believed that they had no influence at
all on how their kids turn out, they are likely to abuse or neglect
them.
Which,
it seems to me, is absurd on its face. Most chimpanzee mothers are
nice to their babies and take good care of them. Do chimpanzees
think they're going to influence how their offspring turn out?
Doesn't Frank Farley know anything at all about evolutionary biology
and evolutionary psychology?
My idea
is viewed as dangerous by the powers that be, but I don't think it's
dangerous at all. On the contrary: if people accepted it, it would
be a breath of fresh air. Family life, for parents and children
alike, would improve. Look what's happening now as a result of the
faith, obligatory in our culture, in the power of parents to mold
their children's fragile psyches. Parents are exhausting themselves
in their efforts to meet their children's every demand, not
realizing that evolution designed offspring — nonhuman animals as
well as humans — to demand more than they really need. Family life has
become phony, because parents are convinced that children need
constant reassurances of their love, so if they don't happen to feel
very loving at a particular time or towards a particular child, they
fake it. Praise is delivered by the bushel, which devalues its
worth. Children have become the masters of the home.
And
what has all this sacrifice and effort on the part of parents bought
them? Zilch. There are no indications that children today are
happier, more self-confident, less aggressive, or in better mental
health than they were sixty years ago, when I was a child — when
homes were run by and for adults, when physical punishment was used
routinely, when fathers were generally unavailable, when praise was
a rare and precious commodity, and when explicit expressions of
parental love were reserved for the deathbed.
Is my
idea dangerous? I've never condoned child abuse or neglect; I've
never believed that parents don't matter. The relationship between a
parent and a child is an important one, but it's important in the
same way as the relationship between married partners. A good
relationship is one in which each party cares about the other and
derives happiness from making the other happy. A good relationship
is not one in which one party's central goal is to modify the
other's personality.
I think
what's really dangerous — perhaps a better word is tragic — is the
establishment's idea of the all-powerful, and hence all-blamable,
parent.
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