The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do

People across cultures and time periods have had superstitions about pregnant women influencing their unborn children, and developed rules and taboos around parenting to ensure these children would thrive. Harris asserts modern people have their own share of superstitions, which she aims to debunk: She refutes the “Hand-me-down” idea that children copy their parents’ habits, again arguing that any similarities are likely to be genetic. She argues “Heredity is one of the reasons that parents with problems often have children with problems. It is a simple, obvious, undeniable fact; and yet it is the most ignored fact in all of psychology” (277). With this in mind, Harris considers evidence of children’s likelihood to become criminals and concludes the most important factor is one’s childhood neighborhood. She argues common traits in criminals—such as a desire for excitement, lack of empathy, and lower IQ—are largely genetic, making the role of parenting in producing criminals overstated. She addresses the common belief that fatherless children tend to fare worse as adults, arguing that such data is merely correlational. Fatherless children tend to live in impoverished neighborhoods, and experience other factors which lead to higher rates of school dropouts, teen mothers, and criminals. Harris cites evidence which shows children raised by single mothers in middle-class neighborhoods do not fare worse than children with two parents.