Ideas on Parenting, Part 4.

Judith Rich Harris is an unlikely renegade. She spent most of her career as a treadmill scholar, writing psychology textbooks. The textbook writer distills accepted theories into, well, textbooks, and as you remember it’s hardly riveting work. Textbook writers don’t develop a lot of new theories that change our view of the world. 

Her credentials as an academic pioneer continue. Back in the 1960s, she was excused from her Harvard doctoral program for a lack of originality. She’s suffered from an autoimmune disease since the 1970s that robs her of the strength to leave the house most days. She’s old for a visionary; by the time she came up with her groundbreaking ideas, she was nearly 60. And finally, she’s from New Jersey.  So you can understand why people have been skeptical about her ideas.

And yet her theories of child development have proven remarkably predictive and robust. For a decade, scientists have been coming up with tests to prove her wrong, and keep adding to the evidence that proves her right.  Her list of supporters grows and includes everyone from Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote this review of her first book, to William Saletan, who wrote this review of her second.

This blog will be my little effort to summarize both books, but I warn you now: if you’re a parent, be prepared to be skeptical.  Part of you won’t like what she has to say.  I didn’t, and had to read the books for myself to settle my disbelief.  But if you can get past the doubt, I think you’ll find it’s actually really good news for us.

Let’s start with a quick review.  The theory that Judith Rich Harris upturned has its roots in the nature v nurture debate: we become the kind of people we do because of our genes and environment; everyone agrees it’s about a 50:50 split.  The nurture or environment portion of that equation is mostly shaped by our home life – ergo, our parents - but also affected by our teachers, culture, friends and, according to my Grandpa, whether you cry Uncle during Indian rubs.

As most of us get our genes and home life from our parents, the theory goes, our parents are the biggest impact on how we develop – what we’ll be calling Parental Dominance.  Dr Benjamin Spock, who we talked about in the last blog, helped deepen this theory with his child-centric parenting focus. Sigmund Freud and M Scott Peck taught us we could blame our parents for any failure to create the perfect childhood, and any subsequent neuroses we endured because of that failure. Between the studies on spanking, naughty chairs, nutrition, library size, wealth and overall happiness, we’ve learned that parents can accept the blame, and the credit, for how children turn out.

The problem JRH noticed was that the evidence contradicted the theory of Parental Dominance.  Let’s look at three examples.

Identical twins have the same genetic makeup.  Very rarely are identical twins raised apart, but when they are, it provides an extraordinary opportunity to study the exact impact of nurture on the adults they become. These studies should provide evidence to support Parental Dominance.  Yet in our first example, identical twins that are raised apart are just as similar to each other when they become adults as those identical twins that are raised together.[i]  If parenting technique and home environment accounts for 50% of the kind of adults we become, shouldn’t two identical twins who are raised in different home environments, with different parents, end up more dissimilar than two identical twins that are raised together in the same household? They should... but they aren't. This evidence suggests something other than Parental Dominance is influencing the children.

Exhibit 2. Traditional non-twin siblings are far more frequently raised apart, so we have a heck of a lot more data on them.  According to the Parental Dominance theory, where 2 sets of parenting techniques are used, we should notice differences in the type of adults they become.  Siblings share the same genes but grow up in different homes, so we can see the impact different parenting choices have on them more easily.  Yet, countless studies have shown that siblings who are raised in different homes are no more similar as adults than those siblings raised in the same home.[ii]  Again, this just doesn’t make sense in a Parental Dominance theory.

For exhibit 3 we have some studies on adopted children.  Clearly, according to any Parenting Dominance model, adopted children will be influenced by their adoptive parents, and ought to share traits with their adoptive siblings.  Their adoptive parents have provided the home environment that Parental Dominance predicts has a major impact on how our kids develop. They’ve taken them to church, or not; they’ve taught them a love of reading, or not; they’ve exposed them to cigarette smoke, alcohol drinking, museum attendance and healthy television habits, or not.  And as both Parental Dominance and common sense would suggest, being exposed to these parental choices would shape how children develop. 

There’s just a little problem with the evidence.  Countless studies show that adopted children do not exhibit a tendency to be like their adoptive parents, at all, and are more like their genetic siblings who they’ve often never met than their adoptive siblings with whom they were raised.[iii]  In fact, they’re no more alike their adoptive siblings than someone chosen at random.

To Judith Rich Harris, this just didn’t make sense.

We all know that children speak the same language as their parents, share quirky mannerisms with them, prefer the food cooked by their mums and support the same sports teams as their dads. The list goes on. Children with aggressive parents are more likely to be aggressive, children with timid parents are more likely to be timid, and children with happy, competent parents are more likely to be happy, competent adults.[iv]  It seems obvious to anyone that’s grown up in the same household as their parents, or whose children have grown up in the same household as themselves, how big the impact of parents are on their children.

The trouble is, as several studies demonstrate, personality traits, mannerisms, and even which sports team one follows can be genetic!  The Parental Dominance theory always assumed the similarity we see between father and son is down to observation of the father by the son, but the evidence shows an amazing number of traits can be inherited. I have a friend who was adopted as an infant and only met her genetic parents when she was in her mid-30s.  She was astonished to find how alike they were, down to quirky habits and DIY preferences.  Ok, she didn’t support his sports teams, that bit was a joke, but the rest of this bit is true. 

In her effort to make sense of these contradictions, Judith Rich Harris found the germ of the idea that would make her famous. The first part of her theory is that Parental Dominance is a cultural myth. 

For parents, this undermines most of the ideas we’ve learned, most of the effort we make and, it would seem, the very purpose for writing this blog.  If parental choices have almost no impact on the type of adults that our kids become, what’s the point of reading further?  For me, and the purpose of this blog, the key is the almost bit.  If my parenting choices have very little impact on my kids, call me a control freak, but I want to maximize whatever impact I do have!

Let’s agree that you’re not completely convinced, but willing to explore the logical conclusions of this.  If not Parental Dominance, what then?

According to JRH, there are three factors: relationships, socialization and status.   Kids decide which views to hold and which actions to take based on these factors.  More importantly to parents, these factors are primarily interpreted by kids through the filter of their peer group.  In other words, those actions or views that are necessary to develop good relationships, fit in with the social group, or attain status with their peer group are more significant, based on sound evolutionary reasons, than those actions or views which conform with their parents.

As a parent, I know peer influence is big, but I had a problem with this idea.  I can see parental influence in children’s manners, attitudes, and all sorts of ways.  But JRH provides evidence that contradicts this notion.

To me, her most convincing argument was her dismantling of ‘birth order’ theory.  You know the one – since I’m the youngest child, it predicts I’ll behave this way, and since you’re the eldest child, you’ll behave that way.  Your birth order affects your personality, so clearly the home environment has a big impact on your adulthood.  After all, most of your peers and teachers don’t know your birth order, so couldn’t treat you differently based on it.  Therefore, the ‘birth order’ personality effect would help to support the idea of Parental Dominance.

However, the tests that prove ‘birth order’ had always been given in the home, to the person’s family.  Several recent studies took a group of students for whom the ‘birth order’ predictors had been high, but instead of giving the test to their parents and siblings, as had been done previously, the tests were given to their coworkers and peers within non-family settings.  The results were astonishing.  All the ‘birth order’ predictors disappeared.

It seems that ‘birth order’ predicts your behavior in the home.  If you’re the eldest, there is a high chance you’ll act a certain way with your family, but outside your family you may be a different person.  Of course, your siblings agree with ‘birth order’ theory, but they don’t spend a lot of time with you at work. 

In fact, this is a major plank of her entire theory proposed by Ms Harris; we are different people with different groups.  If you think of your life, I think you’ll find you’ve played lots of different roles depending on the group you’re with.  With some groups, you’re the smart one while with others, you’re the funny one and with still others, you’re the reliable one.  Your family is just one of these many groups, and the role you play with them is one of your many roles.

Plus, your family is unlikely to reject you long term.  As long as you follow the family rules when you’re with your family, from established manners to birth order roles, this creates all the harmony a family needs.  Hence, it’s just not important when you’re outside the home to honor your parents’ wishes when it comes to the relationships, socialization and status you display with the rest of the world.

To me, this really connected.  I remember doing this as a child, playing different roles in different settings, and not understanding why.

When asked, most people have very good friends they could never imagine bringing together. They play different roles with these different friends. Bringing them together would create havoc in their internal role system.

There are some people that are very consistent whether they’re with their family or peer group.  These people are far more likely to be a part of tight-knit communities where their family and peer group share the same values.  For instance, they found less role divergence in the personalities of people from ultra-orthodox religious communities.  Simply put, they play the same role in the various groups because there is really just one group. 

And this brings me to why I think this is good news for parents.  If JRH is right, certain choices that parents do get to make, like your child’s schools, clubs and neighborhood, are very important.

For me, this was a revelation.  Previous to reading JRH, I believed that parents who changed their child’s schools or clubs because the child was having a hard time were molly-coddling their child.  Life isn’t fair, and a child might as well get used to it.  But actually, making sure your child has a healthy peer group is the most important decision you can make as a parent.  

As we saw in the last blog, being in a school or neighborhood with good or bad peer influences has a bigger impact than anything we do as parents. Dr Spock said we should make child-centric decisions as parents, and it seems to me that he was almost right.  But it isn’t the daily parenting technique or child discipline that needs to be child-centered. It's the life choices that impact which peer group the child will experience. 

This is what’s so wonderful about JRH.  Parent the way you want to parent.  Be disciplined or laissez-faire.  Teach them good table manners or eat around the television.  Teach them to read or play video games with them.  Do whatever you believe is the right thing to do, and relax.  You’re making the right decision.  You’re simply teaching them how to act around you.  

But really think about the bigger adult decisions: where you live and where they go to school.  If you make a bad choice, be prepared to change it.  To your greatest ability, don’t allow finance or convenience to keep you from putting your child around a group of peers that help bring the best out of them.

My son was in an award-winning school, but doing poorly.  He had a few friends, and doing ok academically, but it seemed obvious to us that he could do better.  Before reading JRH I thought this was probably good for him.  Life isn’t fair, and he would learn to toughen up.

After reading JRH we changed his school and watched him blossom in a truly heart-warming way.  He made better friends, did well in sport and started achieving his potential academically.  The change wasn’t convenient, nor financially easy, but I’m convinced it’s the right one for him.

I hope this little blog helps you make whatever decisions you need to make, and helps you relax about all the others.

---

[i] Bajak, 1986; Lykken, McGue, Tellegen & Bouchard, 1992; Wright, 1995.

[ii] Plomin & Daniels, 1987.

[iii] Harris, Judith Rich, 1999.

[iv] Perusse, Cassidy, Burkes, Carson & Boyum, 1994 and Stavish, 1994

Ideas on Parenting, Part 3.

 Houston, Texas is unlike most cities.  It wasn’t founded near a plentiful river or a bountiful forest that had tempted local tribes into settling roots.  It wasn’t a convenient point for trade, or set before a stunning vista of natural beauty.  It was 6000 acres of swamp.  It had almost nothing to recommend it as a future metropolis; its heat produced a fetid cauldron in the summer and it was miles from the nearest port.  Nevertheless, two entrepreneurs from New York City came to the area with some big ideas, purchased some land and founded a city from scratch.  

That was 1836, and today it’s the fourth largest city in America, and one of its wealthiest.  It’s not only the center of America’s oil industry, but also home to NASA and the Texas Medical Centre – the world’s largest concentration of medical research facilities.  Although I wouldn’t recommend visiting in summer, when it’s hotter than an Apple product launch, it’s an attractive, cosmopolitan city... at least by Texas’ standards.  Like most cities, there’s also an ugly underbelly, with 20% of its population living below the poverty line.

Into this community in 1991 strode two entrepreneurial teachers, one from New York City.  Like the founders before them, they had a practical swamp to dredge and very little reasons to suggest this was the right place to do it.  But they followed their instincts with some big ideas and, although they didn’t know it yet, they were destined to set up a modern Spartan agoge from scratch.

In Part 2 of this blog, we looked at the agoge precedent – that from the age of seven Spartans taught their children how to be adults, that neither our culture nor school systems do this, and yet science shows us that neurologically children are ready and that seven is a pretty good age to start.

In contrast, our society promotes a protected life for kids, hoping that by minimizing or delaying their exposure to certain things we develop good citizens.  This makes sense.  I don’t want my kids exposed to pain, disease, the Saw movie franchise, Big Macs, foul-mouthed hooligans, or rampant sexual innuendo… hell, quite a lot of things.  In fact, I don’t want my kids exposed to anything that might sully the absolute perfection of their little lives.

The problem with what I want, as a dad, is that it isn’t always good for my kids.  For instance, the human immune system’s ability to develop antibodies tails off as we age.  Antibodies are the cells that ward off disease, one reason why vaccines are given to children and not adults.  It is genuinely good for them (from about 30 lbs).

The parents that are forever sterilizing their counters or prevent them from eating food that’s been on the ground are unwittingly weakening their kids’ immune systems.  Kids need germs!  Of course, we understand the motive – who wants a sick and miserable child?  And the companies that sell these cleansers are curiously absent in mentioning the biological sabotage they’re promoting.  Their ads play on the emotions of parents, especially mothers.  Yet the simple fact is that when we, as loving parents, are guided by our emotions when dealing with germs we sometimes hinder the development of their immune systems.

It’s not just their biological development that needs provocation to develop.  And I believe it’s this void that’s a pretty good reason why we have the levels of apathy, depression and obesity in young people that we discussed in Part 1.  

So why do we have this emotionally led and protective approach to raising our children in the first place? 

For this, we must visit Dr Benjamin Spock and his book, Baby and Child Care, published in 1946.  Its central tenet said, for the first time ever, it was ok for mothers to love their children - mothers should listen to their instincts. 

What’s extraordinary to our modern ears is that this was a revolutionary idea less than 70 years ago.  Until that time, the more common refrain of parenting was, “spare the rod, spoil the child.”  Spanking was not only positively encouraged, but childcare in general was impersonal and regimented.  Mothers loved their children, of course, but Old Wives Tales held that this love was a weakness, bound to produce fat, lazy and downbeat children.

Dr Spock rode in to the rescue of anxious mothers.  He taught parents to treat each child as an individual, and pay heed to their emotions by catering to their desires.  For Dr Spock, promoting standards of behavior or instilling expectations into them was a form of manipulation.  Children should be free to develop however is best for them.

Western society largely adopted the ideas promoted by Dr Spock, and his book is easily the best selling book on childcare of all time.  It is with some irony that we now face widespread apathy, depression and obesity in children – the very thing the mothers who criticized Dr Spock predicted would happen.

Personally, I don’t think a return to pre-Spock parenting is the answer, but I’m also deeply skeptical of basing my parenting technique on a child’s emotional feedback.  Everything I’ve learned in life outside of parenting suggests that a) things I don’t want are often good for me; b) my mood is a horrible barometer of right-ness and c) having standards often raises performance.

The agoge seems to have been an ancient way to raise standards.  So the challenge was whether this modern agoge in Houston could effectively raise the standards for a group of kids despite our culture’s broad adoption of Dr Spock’s ideas? 

Before we return to the agoge, let’s look at their challenge.  Instead of dredging the physical swamp of Houston, our neo-Spartans were dredging the swamp of American education.  Instead of creating warriors, their agoge was meant to create college students.  See, these pioneers confronted an American tragedy – that despite its freedom and affirmative action programs, if you were a black or Hispanic kid from the wrong neighborhood, you had virtually no chance of climbing out of the gutter.  Despite federal programs and billions of dollars – the average child from these communities had a greater chance of going to prison than college.  Even after tripling the money spent over the last three decades, children born into poverty had a higher chance of living in poverty as an adult than their parents.  This problem was getting worse and, despite lots of effort, nothing had worked.

In 1991, this began to change.  Two recent college graduates, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, joined a program called Teach for America.  This program connected recent college graduates, many of whom might be destined for lucrative careers in banking or law or technology, with under-funded school systems for a 2 year teaching stint.  It was the kind of altruistic program that is often imagined, but rarely gets off the ground.   Mike and Dave went to Houston. 

Once they’d completed their two years, they had a vision for a different kind of school.  The Houston school board was skeptical, so the pair had to go knocking door-to-door to recruit their first students.  It you’re interested to know more, watch this link– it’s one of those really lovely, inspirational stories.

Fast-forward 20 years and our two Spartan educators have become world-renowned. Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin set up a school called KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), and although they don’t call it an agoge, it has been an extraordinary success.  It now has 109 schools in 20 states educating 32,000 students.  They are all free, state-run schools, located in the lowest-income areas of the cities they serve, and their admittance is based solely on a lottery – no cherry picking of the brightest students.  Over 95 percent of their students are African American or Hispanic/Latino, almost 30% have English as a second language, and more than 80% come from homes that receive financial support from the state.  These kids have all the normal baggage you expect in disadvantaged communities; while many are from stable, happy homes that happen to be poor, there are lots that are from broken, abusive, single-parent or otherwise challenged homes. 

Within this framework, these KIPP schools are among the best performing schools in the country.  Not just state-run schools.  They routinely out-perform the finest private schools money can buy.  A jaw-dropping 95% of their students get admitted to an American university, and because of their financial situation, many of them receive a free ride scholarship.

The story is one of breathtaking beauty, and I encourage any interested reader to watch this link, this link or this one to learn more.  But this blog is about parenting, not education, so let’s look at what this has to do with middle class kids and their parents.

To answer that question, we have to look briefly at how they’ve achieved these results and its, I suspect, unintentional homage to its Spartan agoge predecessors.  KIPP schools operate from 7:30am – 5:00pm, six days a week.  It is a total immersion process.  It requires a life choice into which the entire family commits – there is even a signed contract for both the children and the parents!  The homework keeps children busy until 10 or 11pm, when they collapse in their beds for a few hours sleep.  They expect an incredibly high standard of behavior; hell, even Spartan kids might find it a bit Spartan!  The utterly overwhelming indoctrination of KIPP students creates a modern day aura of the ancient system that produced the legendary Spartan warrior.

You’ll quickly notice what a complete departure this is from Dr Spock’s approach.  The children are not asked what they think.  They are told the minimum that is expected of them, and treated as if they’re capable of it.  Every single child, in every single year, is expected to do well.  And they do.

Numerous observers have lauded the system, its founders and the extraordinary teachers who contribute to the story, and rightly so. They’ve praised how the KIPP program works, and what the schools achieve. 

I think there’s an additional story here, one that goes to explain why KIPP is so effective when others aren’t, and that can help you and I become better parents, and it’s probably not the one you think.    

The easy message to take is to that we must have high standards in our homes and families.  Makes sense.  But I think that’s incomplete.

To explain why, let’s look at some upper-income schools where they have high standards, without the results.  In his brilliant documentary, Waiting for Superman, David Guggenheim tracks the results of Woodside High School in Redwood City, CA.  In the film, Mr Guggenheim shows how Woodside is reflective of most upper-income high schools.  The average home price in its catchment area in 2010 was $1M.  Woodside was ranked by Newsweek in the top 6% of American High Schools.  At Woodside they have amazing facilities and very few problems with the police; students are well-behaved, mostly, and the vast majority go to college.  However, they are inculcated with Dr Spock’s view that choices should be led by the child’s dreams and desires. 

Therefore, as insecure teenagers, many are taking courses that leave them ill-prepared for college.  Due to streaming, which places the highest-achieving students in separate classes, and sends the message to the rest of the student body that they’re less capable, many students don’t think they’re clever enough for advanced math and science.  KIPP proves this is rubbish – 95% of their inner-city kids are doing it.  But these kids, in a wealthy, educated community, aren’t. They are recommended that they take courses to ‘improve their confidence’, or what we called an ‘easy-A’.

Once they arrive to college, according to a board of California University officials, only 32 out of 100 students from the top 10% of high schools are intellectually prepared for college courses.  Almost 60% have to take remedial courses on their arrival!  So this story is only partly about standards.  It’s also about which standards are chosen. 

It still doesn’t fully explain why kids with successful, college-educated parents and an amazing school resource at their disposal are aiming so low.  Why are companies like Apple, Oracle and Microsoft being forced to recruit from India and China?  Because the American and British counterparts aren’t qualified to do the job.  Understanding why the American and British children think they’re performing well, while doing poorly compared to the Indian and Chinese kids, requires one more story.

For the final part of this puzzle, we return east to more troubled communities.   A recent study of poor neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh tracked a variety of factors.  They compared crime rates, divorce rates, single-parent homes, church attendance, abusive family situations, alcoholism, parental involvement with homework and reading, parental discipline style and a partridge in a pear tree. 

While doing this, they noticed that in some neighborhoods, there was almost no crime, none of the black-male-teenager-in-prison syndrome.  In the past, most studies had been focused on the problem, but these scientists looked more deeply at these good neighborhoods where nobody was going to prison.   Why and how was this happening?

What they found was shocking.  The single, solitary factor as to whether a child from any community was likely to go to prison was whether other kids in his school were going to prison.  This outweighed every other variable.  Nothing else was even statistically significant!  This is so mind-blowingly big – allow me to spell it out.

Compare two kids.  The first child is black, from an alcoholic, drug-addicted, single-parent family in which that child is abused.  No future, right?  We know this don’t we?  The second is also black, from a loving home where the parents are married, go to church every Sunday, and help the child with his homework daily.  What this study found was, if the first child is in a low-crime community, and the second kid is in a high-crime community, the second is much more likely to go to prison.  Whether your friends are breaking the law has a much bigger impact than anything your parents do.  Nothing else even comes close.

And here, finally, we come to the uniting lesson from all three examples – the impact of our kids’ peer groups.  Clearly, the standards set in the KIPP schools are amazing and produce amazing results, but the standards are only part of the equation.  The kids themselves are in a classroom of other kids going through the same thing, so high standards combined with a supportive peer group proves to be a bigger factor than the troubling household situations these kids endure when they return home at the end of the day.

In Woodside, the kids have highly-educated, successful parents who teach them to have high standards.  But these standards are inspired by Spockian beliefs, and a peer group which supports limiting beliefs (unlike at KIPP), so the kids aim low and are shocked to find how unprepared they are later in life.  

Finally, in Philadelphia, no matter what home life is provided by the parents, no matter what the parents do, if you happen to be in a high-crime community, you’re up to 10x more likely to go to prison. 

As a dad, I’d always thought I was clearly a bigger impact on my kids than their peer group.  I knew peer pressure was a big deal, but as Jabba the Hut might say, only for weak-minded fools.  Kids may smoke a cigarette because someone else was doing it, but they wouldn’t be smarter because other kids were smarter, they wouldn’t have lower expectations of themselves because others had low expectations of themselves, and they certainly wouldn’t commit a crime because someone else was doing it.

However, the standard and type of behavior expected in a child’s peer community seems to have a far bigger impact on that child’s choices and the kind of life they have than any of us would have thought.  Disturbingly, it seems to have an even bigger impact than the kind of home we create. 
Growing up, I went to a state school.  My plan was for my children to go to state school.  Because of these studies, we've moved them to private school. 

Part 4 of this blog is going to examine a series of studies into this very issue.  Where is parental influence biggest, and where does it wane? When is it pointless to exert our authority, and what can we do to make sure that the authority we choose to exert has maximum impact?

For this study we’re going to meet an elderly and chronically ill woman who, by all rights, should have never made any impact on serious thinking about raising kids. She failed out of graduate school, had no university system to support her research and was unable to carry out any studies into her theories.  But I think you’ll agree that making an impact on ideas about children is exactly what Judith Rich Harris has managed to do.