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

In making an argument for her “group socialization theory,” Judith Rich Harris establishes Children’s Agency and Individuality. To Harris, science considers children passive receptacles for their parents’ influence, like “blank slates” waiting to be programmed. She critiques this simplistic, unscientific model of childhood: “The nurture assumption implies that children are born with empty brains which their parents are responsible for filling up” (111), despite these adults having been children themselves with no less agency. Harris asserts “Children are not incompetent members of the adults’ society: they are competent members of their own society, which has its own standards and its own culture” (187). She regards parents and children with sympathy, as both groups should be recognized as their own people with limited responsibility for others. While parents are important to their children, Harris supports her theory by giving them grace and placing some responsibility on children and their peers.

Children’s active participation in their own subculture(s) is an essential part of Harris’s theory. She highlights how children influence each other by jointly deciding which behaviors and traits to value in their group, and which to ban. She compares children to committee members who approve of matters together: Being young, “Children cannot develop their own cultures, any more than they can develop their own languages, except in the company of other children” (187).