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Summary: A great book:Don't be threatened
Review: Read the whole book. She is a witty and insightful writer.People shouldn't be afraid of these ideas in this book. She does not say that parents don't matter. What she says is that psychologists aren't able to measure parental effect and maybe they should try looking at peer groups instead. Ultimately, this book encourages people to be not just good parents, but good citizens and neighbors.
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Summary: A Great Intellectual Achievment - and Fun to Read!
Review: I think this is one of the most original and important books of the last part of the 20th century. Boy, it sure does get some people's hackles up, though! I suggest that you read the negative reviews posted here and elsewhere, and then read the book - you will see that these issues are indeed addressed by Ms. Harris. A lot of people have read the reviews but not the book, giving them a reason to get upset but depriving them of Ms. Harris's tremendously important insight (not to mention a very enjoyable read). So go read the book!
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Summary: We are beginning to get some clarity for age old questions.
Review: Having a child that meets Harris' criteria for at-risk behavior, I read her book with great fascination. It is an easy read and yet I was impressed by the citation of behavioral research and her fine bibliography. She takes great risk in speaking to the socio-political ramifications around the nurture assumption. With a son who has demonstarted behaviors that arose from a unsettling temperament from age 2, I could identify with what she described as genetic based behaviors. If one is honest about ones heritage, it isn't difficult to identify similar personality traits in the family lineage. Moreover, it is rather easy to look backward and see the influence transition that occurs to peer groups as the child ages. What makes me even more certain that Harris is on to something is the tremendous resistance to her analysis and thought process by some defenders of the status quo. I always assume that if someone is as deeply wounded as some appear to be by Harris' words, there is probably something to them! While I had to stand on the sidelines while genophobes railed against works like The Bell Curve, I have experience with this topic and I see relevance in what she has discovered. Somewhere I read that Freud, Watson and Skinner were co-conspirators in the suppression of genetically oriented research underway at the start of the century. Let's hope that we don't let that type of mind guarding keep us from enlightenment this time out.
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Summary: Definitely NOT a new insight into devel. psych.
Review: Harris has justifiably challanged the many false assumptions currently accepted in psychology. Unfortunately she asks the reader to believe an even more useless and impractical assumption about developmental psychology. (To paraphrase) Her best advice to readers is to forget nurturing our children other than through their peer acceptance. She advocates concentrating on altering your child's 'genetic short commings' with plastic surgery and fancy clothes or toys so they might 'fit in' better with their peers...etc This is shallow and useless advise that has been keeping our culture in a state of psychological insecurity for thousands of years. At best, this prejudice may superficially soothe the guilt of the privileged few as it has throughout history, but it is NOT groundbreaking insight! This reactionary psychology definitely is NOT valuable to our culture or to science! If you read this book, at least balance yourself with some healthy psychology: Read 'Reconnecting With Nature' by Michael Cohen. This book also adresses the 'nature and nurture' issues, with ground breaking healthy advice that applies to all psychology. Kevin Bethel MD
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Summary: A controversial, scholarly book; witty, accessible prose
Review: This controversial book from an unorthodox scholar has gotten the world talking -- and more importantly, thinking. Though Harris offers no shortage of opinions and theories, the real contribution is to make the reader examine the title assumption and the layers of social baggage that have been built upon the assumption. Though Harris' wit and casual style make for quick reading, this book is indeed scholarly and scientific, though there will be critics who do not take the time to realize this. The scope of her work is remarkable, ranging from social aspects of primates and evolutionary psychology to critiques of Freudians. Some digressions (e.g., her theory of the fate of the Neanderthals) smack of dilletantism, thus risking dilution of the author's important message. The tone of the book is more confrontational than the true message, but that is appropriate for a book that is intended to pierce sacred myths. Read it for yourself, and see if you are convinced. I think you will be provoked and challanged, if not converted; and I feel that is an extremely valuable contribution to this area.
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Summary: Substituting one extreme view for another.
Review: That's what Harris' book seems to be. Coming from a genetics background as I do, it's obvious to any scientist, mother, or father that BOTH nature and nurture play a part in how we end up, and in varying degrees for varying instances. It's almost impossible to quantify which is more or less important, and that's OK. Separating the two simply leads to the type of logic fallacy found in this book. To say that it's almost all nurture is to deny the obvious role our genetic imprint has on both body and mind. Yet to say, as Harris does, that it's all nature is to deny the reality that our genetic influence is encouraged and/or discouraged by the environment we're brought up in. It's a common misconception that genetics translates directly to the social sciences, when the truth is that things are much more complicated. Best in this case to avoid Harris' self-contradictory book (which reads to me like a literary salve for the working parents' guilt) and pick up something by Richard Dawkins for a better perspective on the relative effects of genetics and nurturing. One last note: Our genes only get their influence from conception to birth. They constrain us to physical structures like our mind and body, but it's your parents in your early years and you as you grow old that dictates the influences of your environment around you. While you can't alter what you pass on, you can certainly improve your mind and body, or let them go to do as they will. If this is not true, then why do we learn? Why to people work out? If genetics were all-encompassing, we'd all have what we were destined to have, right? My advice is dont buy either extreme viewpoint. As my old anthro prof said to the question: "Is it nature or nurture? --Yes."
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Summary: Shame on Judith Harris
Review: As a research scientist, I am in constant dismay over the popularity of extreme--and patently false--books like The Nurture Assumption. Written in the tradition of the Bell Curve, scouring science only for supporting data and neglecting the mountain of contrary data, Harris offers a glib, unsupportable thesis, whose popularity owes to its convenient packaging into the soundbite that parents don't matter. Worse yet, is her irritating, self-styled maverick approach, as though being kicked out of Harvard gave her the perspective to change the field. After reading her book, I can understand why Harvard kicked her out--her thesis wouldn't pass an undergraduate review. Save your money, or better yet read Richard Weissbourd's The Vulnerable Child, a book written by a real expert who understands the subtle interplay of forces that shape children. Shame on Harris for such a lousy, dishonest book. And shame on the Free Press, her publisher, who also published the Bell Curve, for hyping such shoddy and irresponsible work.
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Summary: Harris has hit a nerve
Review: It amazes me how people feel that they have to either be totally for or against Harris's ideas. What about just considering her ideas or trying to work parts of her ideas into one's world view? Why do we have to politicize everything and reduce it to right or wrong. Can't we just consider new ideas without ripping down the ideas and the person who comes up with them? "We learn from history that we do not learn from history." -- George Wilhelm Hegel "A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular." -- Adlai Stevenson "You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea." -- John Nuveen "The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds." -- Mark Twain "The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it." -- Peter Medawar "A new idea has to win its place against normal skepticism, a lack of desire to change, and even jealousy." -- Sanford Ovshinsky "Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have." -- Emile Chartier Maybe it's because we live in a culture where people over trust and transfer responsibility to authorities all too readily. A mom reads this book and somehow raises an axe murderer and blames Judith Harris just like someone suing over spilled coffee. "An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it." -- Don Marquis I love the fact that Harris is questioning conventional wisdom. Isn't it interesting that the folks who have the most to lose in questioning this area of conventional wisdom are the harshest critics of Harris's ideas. Judith Harris has hit a nerve with this book and we're not ready to take a look and see what's wrong yet. Life is a constant process of learning and experimenting and changing old conclusions. I find it amazing that we, as a group, do not seem to have learned that yet.
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Summary: Sad misinformed attempt to absolve parental responsibility.
Review: Hey! Great! Now we don't have to take any responsibility for parenting. If we could believe this sadly misinformed author, the efforts of most good parents are wasted. Why we should have just done a better job of "picking" their friends! And to think of all the time I wasted with my five children. I taught them to be honest; to share; to work hard; to laugh; to persevere; to meet adversity; to take an extra step in everything they do; to think for themselves; to be responsible; and so many other things of value. Luckily they did not read this book and understand that these lessons were not supposed to become part of their lives. Instead they have grown to be responsible, productive, and happy human beings. There are many factors that are important in raising children and peer pressure is one of them, but not near as important as the author would have us believe unless the positive parenting is missing. Of course, if she had not made up her mind prior to reading the literature on the subject including that referenced in her book, she would know that. Deciding something is true and then trying to prove it is not the scientific method. It might let you write a book that adds to the excuses people have for not taking responsibility for their actions but it is not science, nor is it correct. I have no doubt that she will be embraced by many of the apologists in our society who continue to make excuses for all failures and proclaim excuse after excuse rather than take responsibility. Sadly, I have no doubt that she will soon be on Oprah and spread more of this dangerous and misinformed message to many other people who are looking for another way to say "It's not my fault."
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Summary: Fun, smart, without jargon, and probably right
Review: The Nurture Assumption is a great read. Although the author occasionally overdoes her exuberance (obviously a matter of taste), the book is a wonderfully refreshing contrast to the jargon-ridden style that characterizes 98% of all social science, not just psychology. The substantive heart of the book, for me, was the causal analysis that allows her to refute, very effectively, many earlier views and to demonstrate why her apparently paradoxical claims do in fact have a lot of support in common sense. As I write this review in a spirit of enthusiasm, I may be blind to objections that will present themselves on a second reading. This being said, her claims seem compelling. I believe they are true. I recommend readers to purchase, read and reread this book for two reasons. First, all of us have had parents and peers who have shaped our lives, and many of us are parents ourselves. To help us understand what happened to us, what we did to ourselves and to others, this book has no peer. Second, and for me perhaps even more important, this book has a VOICE. I am not saying it reaches the heights of Montaigne's Essays (nothing does), but like that work it makes me feel that I am almost in the physical presence of a free and rigorous spirit.
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