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« Save the roaches | Main | World Without Oil game » Friday, May 4, 2007How a child changesChris asks below if Judith Rich Harris backs away from her thesis from "The Nurture Assumption" in this Prospect essay. I'd say that she does, slightly. Harris discusses in numerous places the influence of peers in child development -- she also mentions the guidance of schoolteachers -- but it is in those passages that she most strays away from citing data and steps into more of an orator mode: Children have to discover how they compare with other children along a variety of dimensions. Am I tall or short, strong or weak, pretty or plain, smart or dull? Without answers to these questions, they would have no way of deciding whether to try to dominate others or yield without a fight, to make suggestions or follow the suggestions of others, to turn down potential mates in hopes of doing better or take whatever comes along. "No way of deciding" would be challenged by those who see parents as important teachers and moral guides. Harris also gets in a little knock on her elders: "The urge to learn new words and new facts gradually declines as we get older...." Posted by Evan Hughes at 05:24 PM
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