I recently read an article that discussed the book “The Nurture Assumption” in which the author Judith Harris claimed that, “parents have little or no influence over the long-term development of their children’s personality.” Instead she claims that a child’s personality is shaped by the experiences that occur outside the home, mainly by their friends. Any similarity between parent and child was because of “shared genes and a shared culture.”
In response the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development put together a conference out of which came a book edited by Drs. John Borkowski and Sharon Ramey titled “Parenting and the Child’s World: Influences on Academic, Intellectual and Socioemotional Development.” In the book Dr. Harris has a chapter but so do many other child development experts, which state that “parenting matters.” Even asking the question is preposterous Dr. Ramey believes.
“The idea [of the book] was to figure out when, where and how parenting matters,” says Dr. Borkowski.
Most child development experts agree that parenting, genes, and peers act to together to influence children. “It’s like talking about a horse race and trying to pit two horses against each other when there are 10 in the race,” says Dr. Cowan. “You can’t isolate the two from the pack because they’re inseparably linked to the other horses on the track.”
“We now see parenting less in terms of simple parent-to-child influence, and more as a set of interactive processes whereby parents and children react to each other and influence each other from the moment a child is born,” writes Stanford University’s Eleanor Maccoby, PhD, in one of the book’s introductory chapters. The home environment and parents do affect children but each child reacts differently based on their temperament.
The book points out that besides parenting styles and discipline parents influence such things as the schools their child goes to, the foods they eat, and the neighborhood which they grow up in.
No one knows exactly how much parents influence their children, although I believe my parents had a great impact upon the choices that my siblings and I made in getting good grades, pursuing college educations, remaining strong in our religion, and maintaining high moral standards.
One study suggests that, 50% of the difference between those who succeed in school and those that don’t results from influences that occur before children enter school. “Parenting adds up to a lifestyle that funnels into the language, general knowledge, reading and math skills that children start school with,” says Dr. Morrison.
Another study found that when parents improved their marriage relationship it had a great impact on their child’s aggression and academic behavior. By improving the marriage parents also improved their parenting styles – being warmer and providing more consistent discipline. “Overall, the more parents changed after the couples group intervention, the better their children did in school,” says Carolyn Cowan.
So Moms and Dads despite what Dr. Harris claims it looks like we do matter.