How to Succeed in Childhood

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How to Succeed in Childhood How to Succeed in Childhood by Judith Rich Harris very day, tell your children bad for kids. In those days, spanking was that you love them. Hug considered not just the parents’ right but them at least once every 24 their duty. hours. Never hit them. If they Partly as a result of the major retoolings Edo something wrong, don’t say, “You’re in the advice industry, child-rearing styles bad!” Say, “What you did was bad.” No, have changed drastically over the course of wait—even that might be too harsh. Say, this century. Although abusive parents instead, “What you did made me unhap- have always existed, run-of-the-mill par- py.” ents—the large majority of the popula- The people who are in the business of tion—administer more hugs and fewer giving out this sort of advice are very angry spankings than they used to. at me, and with good reason. I’m the Now ask yourself this: Are children turn- author of The Nurture Assumption—the ing out better? Are they happier and better book that allegedly claims that “parents adjusted than they were in the earlier part don’t matter.” Though that’s not what the of the century? Less aggressive? Less anx- book actually says, the advice givers are ious? Nicer? nonetheless justified in their anger. I don’t pull punches, and I’m not impressed by ² their air of benevolent omniscience. Their advice is based not on scientific evidence It was Sigmund Freud who gave us the but on prevailing cultural myths. idea that parents are the be-all and end-all The advice isn’t wrong; it’s just ineffec- of the child’s world. According to Freudian tive. Whether parents do or don’t follow it theory, children learn right from wrong— has no measurable effect on how their that is, they learn to behave in ways their children turn out. There is a great deal of parents and their society deem accept- evidence that the differences in how par- able—by identifying with their parents. In ents rear their children are not responsible the calm after the storm of the oedipal cri- for the differences among the children. sis, or the reduced-for-quick-sale female I’ve reviewed this evidence in my book; I version of the oedipal crisis, the child sup- will not do it again here. posedly identifies with the parent of the Let me, however, bring one thing to same sex. your attention: the advice given to parents Freud’s name is no longer heard much in the early part of this century was almost in academic departments of psychology, the mirror image of the advice that is given but the theory that children learn how to today. In the early part of this century, par- behave by identifying with their parents is ents were not warned against damaging still accepted. Every textbook in develop- their children’s self-esteem; they were mental psychology (including, I confess, warned against “spoiling” them. Too much the one I co-authored) has its obligatory attention and affection were thought to be photo of a father shaving and a little boy 30 WQ Winter 1999 A Meeting (undated), by Marie Bashkirtseff pretending to shave. Little boys imitate The Magic Years was popular in the 1960s: their fathers, little girls imitate their moth- ers, and, according to the theory, that’s Thirty-month-old Julia finds herself how children learn to be grownups. It alone in the kitchen while her takes them a while, of course, to perfect mother is on the telephone. A bowl the act. of eggs is on the table. An urge is It’s a theory that could have been experienced by Julia to make thought up only by a grownup. From the scrambled eggs.... When Julia’s child’s point of view, it makes no sense at mother returns to the kitchen, she all. What happens when children try to finds her daughter cheerfully plop- behave like grownups is that, more often ping eggs on the linoleum and than not, it gets them into trouble. scolding herself sharply for each Consider this story, told by Selma plop, “NoNoNo. Mustn’t dood it! Fraiberg, a child psychologist whose book NoNoNo. Mustn’t dood it!” Raising Children in America 31 Fraiberg attributed Julia’s lapse to the Consider the experiments of develop- fact that she had not yet acquired a super- mental psychologist Carolyn Rovee- ego, presumably because she had not yet Collier. A young baby lies on its back in a identified with her mother. But look at crib. A mobile with dangling doodads what was Julia doing when her mother hangs overhead. A ribbon runs from the came back and caught her egg-handed: baby’s right ankle to the mobile in such a she was imitating her mother! And yet way that whenever the baby kicks its right Mother was not pleased. leg, the doodads jiggle. Babies are delight- ed to discover that they can make some- hildren cannot learn how to behave thing happen; they quickly learn how to Cappropriately by imitating their par- make the mobile move. Two weeks later, if ents. Parents do all sorts of things that chil- you show them the mobile again, they will dren are not allowed to do—I don’t have to immediately start kicking that right leg. list them, do I?—and many of them look But only if you haven’t changed any- like fun to people who are not allowed to thing. If the doodads hanging from the do them. Such prohibitions are found not mobile are blue instead of red, or if the only in our own society but everywhere, liner surrounding the crib has a pattern of and involve not only activities such as squares instead of circles, or if the crib is making scrambled eggs but patterns of placed in a different room, they will gape social behavior as well. Around the world, at the mobile cluelessly, as if they’ve never children who behave too much like seen such a thing in their lives. grownups are considered impertinent. Sure, children sometimes pretend to be t’s not that they’re stupid. Babies enter adults. They also pretend to be horses and Ithe world with a mind designed for monsters and babies, but that doesn’t learning and they start using it right away. mean they aspire to be horses or monsters But the learning device comes with a or babies. Freud jumped to the wrong con- warning label: what you learn in one situ- clusions, and so did several generations of ation might not work in another. Babies do developmental psychologists. A child’s not assume that what they learned about goal is not to become an adult; a child’s the mobile with the red doodads will work goal is to be a successful child. for the mobile with the blue doodads. What does it take to be a successful They do not assume that what worked in child? The child’s first job is to learn how the bedroom will work in the den. And to get along with her parents and siblings they do not assume that what worked with and to do the things that are expected of their mother will work with their father or her at home. This is a very important the babysitter or their jealous big sister or job—no question about it. But it is only the kids at the daycare center. the first of the child’s jobs, and in the long Fortunately, the child’s mind is run it is overshadowed in importance by equipped with plenty of storage capacity. the child’s second job: to learn how to get As the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker put along with the members of her own gener- it in his foreword to my book, “Rela- ation and to do the things that are expect- tionships with parents, with siblings, with ed of her outside the home. peers, and with strangers could not be Almost every psychologist, Freudian or more different, and the trillion-synapse not, believes that what the child learns (or human brain is hardly short of the compu- doesn’t learn) in job 1 helps her to succeed tational power it would take to keep each (or fail) in job 2. But this belief is based on one in a separate mental account.” an obsolete idea of how the child’s mind That’s exactly what the child does: keeps works, and there is good evidence that it is each one in a separate mental account. wrong. Studies have shown that a baby with a > Judith Rich Harris, the author of The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (1998), is a former writer of college textbooks on child development. The essay that led to her controversial book won an award from the American Psychological Association. Copyright © 1999 by Judith Rich Harris. 32 WQ Winter 1999 depressed mother behaves in a subdued but the children reply in English. What fashion in the presence of its mother, but the children of immigrants end up with is behaves normally with a caregiver who is not a compromise, not a blend. They end not depressed. A toddler taught by his up, pure and simple, with the language mother to play elaborate fantasy games and culture of their peers. The only does not play these games when he’s with aspects of their parents’ culture they retain his playmates—he and his playmates are things that are carried out at home, devise their own games.
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