Re: poly: Do Parents Matter?

In a message dated 8/18/98 6:21:46 PM, Robin Hanson wrote:

>The Aug 17 New Yorker has a provocative article with the
>above title. Judith Harris, in an upcoming book "The
>Nurture Assumption" argues that parents are largely
>irrelevant for kids development, except in choosing their
>kid's peer groups. Peer groups are what matter. It makes
>a lot of sense, though it strikes deep at my self image
>as a parent.

Does she just argue this, or is there some real data here?
My impression is that people switch from imitating their
parents to imitating their peers at puberty but that they
switch back in their 20's (roughly). I also understand their
are a lot of correlations between parent's and children's
lives in issues like income, number of children, choice to
divorce, timing of major life events like starting a family
and retiring, etc.
Received on Wed Aug 19 06:24:31 1998