Taking Off the Kid Gloves

Some call it dangerous. Misguided. Unscientific. Untenable. Nonsense. A media event. Silly.

Yet, even the harshest critics of Judith Rich Harris’ recent manifesto against parenting advice, “The Nurture Assumption” (Free Press), admit it has something positive to offer: a cool compress for feverish parents who fear their every action--from prenatal music lessons to divorce--will mark their child’s psyche for life.

In her book, Harris, a New Jersey grandmother and former writer of child development textbooks, argues that genes, peers and the neighborhood environment are more influential than any parenting style in shaping children’s character. Featured in the New Yorker and on the cover of Newsweek magazine, the book has sold 50,000 copies to date.

“It’s a welcome relief. Today’s parents are led to believe by mental health professionals that everything their children do stems back to parenting, good or bad,” said John Rosemond, a North Carolina psychologist and busy national speaker who, like Harris and others, has tapped into a backlash against what he calls “psychological correctness.”

UC Irvine professor Alison Clarke-Stewart calls the book another swing of the pendulum.

“Last year, it was the baby’s brain. Now what’s news is the opposite of that. It’s a market overcorrection in the same way the baby stuff was,” she said. “An extreme statement of something that’s partly true.”

During the last 30 years, child-rearing advice has proliferated through TV shows, countless books and magazine articles, Web sites, Internet chat groups and parent training classes. In the U.S., about 10 million books a year are sold on child care and family life, according to the American Booksellers Assn. The experts, usually drawing on clinical experiences or correlational studies, beat a common drum, telling parents to praise their children to help build their self-esteem, give them timeouts instead of spanking them and to spend quality time talking to them and listening to their feelings.

More advice--some of it contradictory--can be found on any aspect of parenting, from sleeping problems to tantrums, whining and how to talk about sex and drugs. Kerby T. Alvy, director of the Center for the Improvement of Child Caring in Los Angeles, said there are so many parent guides on the market now, parents need a guide to the guides.

Alvy observed the backlash has developed in one quarter from parents who dislike others telling them how to raise their kids and in another quarter among parents who object to cookie-cutter advice that they say doesn’t fit their kids in real life.

Others said dependence on expert advice creates a phony atmosphere at home or else leaves earnest parents exhausted and confused.

UCLA parenting instructor Cynthia Whitham said, “Parents have bent over backward listening to feelings, identifying feelings. Parents are afraid and cannot tolerate their child’s anger. There’s a lot of giving in, negotiating or allowing children to manipulate a situation.”

Rosemond believes psychologically correct advice ignores children’s free will and responsibility for making decisions and gives parents the illusion they can control their children.

Some therapists said parents have been walking on eggshells with their own children for decades. What if they haven’t read “Goodnight Moon” to their child at bedtime? Responded to her scribbles with the neutral “Tell me about your picture?” instead of the potentially critical “What is it?”

What if their child watches too much TV without parent analysis? Eats too many dinners at the drive-thru? What if they themselves drink, smoke, get divorced or are otherwise lacking in the role model department?

What if they don’t love all their children equally?

If the children become teenagers who run around with a bad crowd, misbehave and talk back, are unpopular, neurotic or pregnant, psychologists and society--including some school districts and police departments--are quick to blame parents. And parents--particularly college-educated, European Americans--tend to buy it.

According to Clarke-Stewart, Americans are particularly susceptible to parenting advice. Since the Pilgrims, they have believed in the “perfectibility” of children through better child-rearing techniques and have eagerly embraced “experts” who promise to help them achieve it.

The experts, however, have swung back and forth between liberal and conservative agendas, leniency and limits. And parents have commonly twisted advice to fit the goals of the era.

From Blank Slates to Flash Cards

The Pilgrims advocated strict discipline to achieve moral children; 18th century parents followed English philosopher John Locke, who stressed that infants were “blank slates” upon which parents should inscribe loving messages.

In the ‘50s, experts began pushing children’s intellectual development as a reaction to the Cold War and a matter of national achievement; in the ‘80s, parents took up prenatal exercises and baby flash cards as a matter of personal pride and competition with other parents.

The late Benjamin Spock, whose “Baby and Child Care” became the bible of child rearing for several generations of mothers, was reacting against charismatic and popular psychologist John B. Watson, who advised in the 1920s against “too much mother love” and advocated strict feeding and napping schedules for infants.

Experts have also seesawed over the role of mothers, swinging from the idea that infants belong at home with Mom and the idea that infant care should be entrusted only to professionals. Harris’ book has received so much attention partly due to the current debate over how day care, working mothers and divorce affect children.

“For a long time, [mothers] were blamed for all of society’s ills,” said Laurence Steinberg, professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. “People are saying, ‘Hey, enough. It’s not just what mothers do that makes kids turn out the way they do.’ ”

In the late ‘90s, the public has become particularly fascinated with genetic explanations for human behavior, he observed.

According to Harris, who won an award from the American Psychological Assn. last year for integrating research in a variety of disciplines, at least 50% of children’s personality can be traced to the random combination of the parents’ genes. If children are smart, it’s not just that their parents read to them or used “authoritative” parenting techniques, she says. It’s largely because they have smart parents.

Even counting genetic contributions, parents still can’t account for how children turn out, she argues. Otherwise, why would siblings be so different?

A Question of Nature Vs. Nurture

Obviously, parents can and do treat each child differently--and that may have some long-term effects--but Harris contends the reason for unequal treatment depends largely on the child’s in-born temperament.

E-mail has been flying in response to the book’s big splash, Steinberg said, from academics and professionals wanting to publicize their objections to the idea that parents’ influence might be minimal. For instance, while peer groups are important in shaping older children, evidence suggests the home environment often determines which friends they choose in the first place, he said.

Frank Farley, recent president of the American Psychological Assn., said Harris’ conclusions are unsupported by social science and, while sounding common-sensical, may be dangerous.

“Child rearing is tough,” Farley says. “I view it as the most demanding job in our culture. Screaming kids--they’re relentless, 24 hours a day. People get burned out. What if this gives them an out? They might say, ‘Hey, nothing I do matters, so I’m just going to go out, party and have a good time.’

“A person might actually whack their kid where they might not have before. It may have a psychological impact on the kid.”

Others suggested that parents inspired by Harris’ book will now try to perfect their children by trying to control their peer group. Said Whitham: “If you do attempt to intervene in your adolescent’s friends, you’re going to have a fight on your hands you won’t believe.”

Harris suggests overreliance on the experts is harmful. Too much self-esteem training may create unrealistic feelings of invulnerability. Wimpy parents can’t run effective homes. Most of all, it instills a “terrible burden of guilt” on parents who followed all the instructions but still failed to produce a happy, smart, well-adjusted, self-confident person.

In the end, it does matter whether parents treat their children well, Harris concludes. However, the only legitimate end, she says, is to create happy family relationships now and in the future.

“Be nice to your kid when he’s young,” she writes in her book, “so that he will be nice to you when you’re old.”