Cowan and Cowan presented their results at a 1999 conference called "Parenting and the Child's World: Multiple Influences on Intellectual and Socio-Emotional Development," sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Now NICHD is planning to follow up the conference by putting out a pamphlet of child-rearing recommendations to parents; the participants in the conference have been invited to contribute their advice (Azar, 2000).

I find the production of this pamphlet troubling. At the conference (which I attended), most of the participants spoke enthusiastically about looking for interactions between parenting style and the child's temperament; they no longer seemed certain that parenting has any main effects. The new motto is: different children react differently to a given style of parenting. Yes, I'm sure they do, and it may also be the case that different breast cancer patients react differently to bone marrow transplants. But the physician who said that bone marrow transplants might have a beneficial effect on some subset of patients would be acting irresponsibly if he recommended that treatment to all his patients. He'd have to know which subset might be benefitted and which might be harmed. Do the developmentalists have the knowledge to say which subset of children might be benefitted, and which might be harmed, by a given style of child-rearing? If not, how can they make recommendations to parents?