Why parents are unimportant. How the parents real at the child has no long term effects on the child's personality intelligence for mental health. When the psychologist Judith Richard Harris made the assertion in 1955 she became a persona non grata. But all she was really doing was questioning what extent our personalities are shaped by our up bringing. Harris noticed that most studies which purported to prove the influence of parental nurture neglected to analyze the importance of genetic influences. What more, there were no studies on the interplay between parents and children. i.e. whether children elicit particular behavior in their parents and not just vice versa. According to Harris the concept of 'the family' is apparently profound influence of the individual- is the modern phenomenon. She contradicted the Freudians and the development psychologist by suggesting that we modify our behaviour depending on the environment we are in. Her conclusion: children are shaped not by their parents but by the peer group in which they are socialised.
Critics argued that her theory was an excuse for bad parenting. She countered: ‘Are you only loving towards your children because you think you can influence them?’
One of Harris’s arguments: children speak the dialect of their peer group, not that of their parents. Critics retorted that parents determine their children social environment by selecting their school of them, and therefore still have influence.
He’s a chip off the old block
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