Rating: 
Summary: Well-written yet ultimately pointless
Review: OF COURSE nature matters! I don't think anyone would argue that it doesn't. But c'mon! Nurture obviously matters as well. For a better exploration of this topic, check out the brand new book "ATTACHMENT PARENTING--Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child" by Katie Allison Granju. Granju wrote a great review of Harris's book for Salon Magazine. It's in the archives there.
Rating: 
Summary: For a book that does a great disservice to American children
Review: This book is Harris' attempt at espousing her opinion with little or no regard to scientific studies or facts. This book should appeal to those parents who want to play the blame game. This book is not for mothers and fathers who are really trying to raise their own children. She does bring up interesting correlations between genes and peers. These correlations are not based on any kind of control group and the sample size is not specified which leads you to believe she either doesn't know or care about proper research.
Rating: 
Summary: A very large rock dropped in the nature vs. nurture pond.
Review: The ripples are going to be crashing into the shore for a long time to come. Like a dentist who knows she's found the right tooth because of the reaction she gets, Harris hits the most sensitive part of the nerve. People don't get this upset (read the reviews) unless a nerve is directly involved. At the very least, Harris has loosened a tooth-perhaps a wisdom tooth. She shows how so much of what we have internalized about the nature vs., nurture dilemma is the result of educational indoctrination and how so much of the evidence just doesn't fit the circumstances. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: It may not be my fault after all!
Review: This book is aimed at parents that have problem children, but all parents should read it. It's right o hte money. Not perfect, but pretty close. As I write this, the blame in the Columbine High massacre is being directed to...surprise, the parents. Imagine that? No parent who had ever had a "problem" child would blame them, however. This theory why children turn out the way they do works. I can look back and see it in my own life, and can see it in my own childrens. There is more to it than just heridity and peer pressure, but those two are by far the biggest. This theory won't go over with society as a whole, and the psychology profession in general, however. They love having someone to blame too much.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent thoughts on why children act the way they do
Review: I believe that this book explains it all! Mrs. Harris comes up with clever examples to convince her readers "not to blame the parents" I agree. Though I am a bit young, still in my teens I am in college and it was an assignment. The book gave me an open mind when it came to this theory of the nurture assumption. I related to some of the stories and thought right then and there this book is brilliant. I am a bit turned off on the way Mrs. Harris seemed to only use African Americans in such a negative way. Every example would be poor, low-class - just something negative. Overall the book is something that I would recommend. Mothers, Fathers, Grandparents, or caregivers I suggest that you read the nurture assumption. It will help when it comes to you blaming yourself for the actions of your kids. IT MAY NOT ALL BE YOUR FAULT!!
Rating:
Summary: Best psychology book I've ever read.
Review: With an undergraduate major in psychology, master's degree in special education and as a school psychologist and parent, I found this to be the best book on explaining why kids do what they do that I've ever read. I have two adult sons, close in age, who were reared essentially the same. They are as different as night and day.Back in the 60s, when I first heard about the birth-order effect, I had a college instructor who had the good sense to say that he thought birth order was a bunch of hooey and about as valuable as reading your horoscope or a mood ring to figure out human behavior. Judith Rich Harris confirms this 30 years later in her book. In the 80s, when I was first introduced to "parenting" ideas in my graduate work in school psychology, I knew as parent of young boys that what I was reading was an oversimplification of human behavior. Like notions about birth order, it seemed much too logical and easy, a cookbook approach to explaining behavior and development.When I used to read college textbooks, possibly the very ones that Harris wrote, I often had the uneasy feeling that something was missing. From my own childhood, I saw such a variation in the behavior of my siblings and my friends that could not simply be attributed to how we were raised. Judith Rich Harris insights and her recantation of her earlier works confirm what my own experience told me.The fact that she recanted 20 years of work as a writer of college psychology texts impressed me greatly. It reminds me of a former Roman Catholic priest I used to play racquetball with. After one of our matches, I asked him why he had left the priesthood and abandoned his parish. He told me drolly, "I woke up one morning and just realized that I no longer believed much of what I was preaching." I can't remember whether he said he had become an athiest or an agnostic.Judith Rich Harris recanted, but she did not become an agnostic or an athiest in terms of her academic discipline. Maybe, instead, she is part of the much needed Reformation of a branch of psychlogy that was badly in need of reform.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent summary of recent findings about raising children
Review: Ms Harris is definitely on to something here. While she gives heredity its due, she overturns our assumptions about the influence of parents in acculturating their offspring. Much supplementary material is interesting in its own right.
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Summary: Wonderful! But don't overlook physical environment
Review: All I have to add to the many reviews already published is that Harris and other social scientists consistently overlook one component of environment. That component includes viruses, pollutants, birth trauma and other factors that have nothing to do with either nuture or peer socialization.It is suspected that ADHD, childhood-onset mood and anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia all have environmental components and triggers that have nothing to do with nature, nurture OR peers. For example, some cases of childhood-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder are believed to be triggered by strep infection. Any number of prescription medications can trigger major depression. Kudos for challenging so much of the correlational research that gets transmitted to the public as "causitive."
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Summary: A smart book written by a smart woman...
Review: J Harris wrote probably one of the most interesting book in psychology in that end of century...I hope it will be translated in French (the country I am from...)It made me start to explore my relationships with my schoolmates during my childhood instead of being focused on those with my parents and I found very valuable things to explain some of the features of my personality...More over, it will be very helpful to raise my own kids in the future Anyway, it is a great book !
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books of 1998
Review: What I love most about this book is that the people who disagree with Judith Harris are hopping mad, and it's so much fun to watch them hop.
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