ABSTRACT
Judith Rich Harris's book, The Nurture Assumption, is apparently a commercial and talk-show success. That leaves publishers, critics, and psychologists scratching their heads and struggling mightily to figure out why. Harris argues that parenting doesn't matter-nothing much that mothers and fathers do will have any long-term effect on their children. Researchers point to a genetic base for traits such as shyness, nurturance, and aggression, and even for behaviors such as suicide and divorce. Harris's contribution, has been to take this debate and inject it into the national conversation in the most extreme and simpleminded form possible. Publishers have been feeding the market for parental absolution for some time. Books and articles explained to us that divorce doesn't matter to children. Our society is hip-deep in evidence of the pain and loss of underparented and unparented children.
