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Why Home Doesn't Matter
Prospect ^ | May 2007 | Judith Rich Harris

Posted on 09/29/2007 9:53:22 AM PDT by blam

Why home doesn't matter

May 2007
Judith Rich Harris

The BBC series "Child of Our Time" assumes that studying children with their parents will help us understand how their personalities develop. But this is a mistake: parents influence their children mainly by passing on their genes. The biggest environmental influences on personality are those that occur outside the home

During much of the 20th century, it was considered impolite and unscientific to say that genes play any role in determining people's personalities, talents or intelligence. But we're in the 21st century now, the era of the genome. So when Robert Winston informs us, at the opening of each episode of the BBC1 documentary series Child of Our Time, that we're going to "find out what makes us who we are," we know he's going to say that people are the way they are partly for genetic reasons. (In case you've missed it, Child of Our Time is a project tracking the lives of 25 children for their first 20 years, returning to them each year to assess their progress. This year's series—the seventh—is being screened in three episodes, starting on Sunday 6th May.)

Child of Our Time is itself a sign of scientific progress because of its enlightened approach to the genome. Nevertheless, the series is scientifically misleading. Simply depicting the lives of 25 children, or sprinkling little "experiments" here and there throughout the programmes, sheds no light on the nature vs nurture question. Psychologists studied child development in this way for the better part of a century and learned remarkably little. Observing children at home or in school, individually or in groups, is not the way to answer the question of why they turn out the way they do.

(Excerpt) Read more at prospect-magazine.co.uk ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bbc; childofourtime; documentary; environment; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; home; lebensborn; materialist; naturevsnurture; notabularasa; personality; psychology; reductionist; tabularasa; wilhelmreich
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To: Caramelgal

No. The Shahnameh has been dismissed, but there it is.


41 posted on 09/30/2007 8:46:51 AM PDT by RightWhale (25 degrees today. Phase state change accomplished.)
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To: Old Professer
My sister was a breech birth - they ended up using tongs and manipulation

Ouch!

Our twins didn't cooperate either but they ending arriving via Caesarian.

There's a school of developmental thought that attachs signifigance to the degree of birth trauma experienced both in the womb and during the birth process. Kinda like the old saw about not getting a second chance to make a first impression.

42 posted on 09/30/2007 3:14:59 PM PDT by ninonitti
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To: ninonitti

Careful, around here you can get in big trouble if you think deeper than you can leap.


43 posted on 09/30/2007 6:38:41 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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