The Nurture Assumption

The Nurture Assumption challenges what Harris names the nurture assumption, the widely held belief that, genes aside, children turn out the way they do because of the way their parents bring them up. Harris argues that this belief is a cultural myth rather than an established finding, and that much of the evidence offered in its support cannot separate what parents pass on through heredity from what they are supposed to transmit through their child rearing. Reviewing behavioural genetic work on twins and on adopted children, she argues that inheritance accounts for a substantial share of the differences between people, that the remaining environmental influence is real but is found largely outside the home, and that the shared family environment leaves little lasting mark on adult personality. In its place she offers group socialisation theory: children are shaped by the peer groups in which they grow up, taking on the behaviour, language, accents and values of other children rather than of adults, and adapting themselves to the group in which they must make their way. Parents do not socialise children, she argues; children socialise children. Parents still matter in her account, for the relationship itself and for the neighbourhood and peers to which they give a child access, but not as the moulders of adult character.

Written from the publisher description, Simon and Schuster.

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• Margaret Mead