Description
The nurture assumption is the previously unquestioned belief that what makes children turn out the way they do, aside from their genes, is the way their parents bring them up. The assumption is deeply embedded in our culture - it underlies everything we are taught about rearing children, everything we have heard about the emotional hang-ups of adults. But that doesn't make it true. Judith Rich Harris looks with a fresh eye at the real lives of real children - from the Brazilian rain forest to the leafiest suburb - and shows that the nurture assumption is nothing more than a cultural myth.
With eloquence and wit, Harris explains why parents have little power to determine the sort of people their children will become. It is what children experience outside the home, in the company of their peers that matters most. Parents don't socialise children:
children socialise children.
The Nurture Assumption provides wisdom, advice and relief from guilt for those whose best efforts have somehow failed to produce a happy, well-behaved, self-confident child.