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T A B L E_ T A L K

"We can't afford it, honey": How do you explain financial constraints to your children? Join the discussion in Table Talk's Mothers area

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R E C E N T L Y

Drama Queen
Cast your vote for the worst meal a mother ever served
(09/16/98)

I want your sex
By Lisa Moskowitz
Forays into sex selection could result in a nation of girls
(09/15/98)

Words that sing
By Polly Shulman
Children's books that make words sing
(09/14/98)

We're here, we're ... uh ... straight?
By Sallie Tisdale
Using prayer, therapy and makeup to help gays "return" to heterosexuality
(09/11/98)

Rain on the parade
By Jeffrey Obser
Youth march or media circus?
(09/10/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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First, it's a leap from Harris' central point that parents cannot be assured of any specific results to the idea that parenting has little to no effect on a child's life. Actually, Harris is vague in her definition of just what it is that our parenting doesn't affect. Throughout the book, she variously refers to our inability to impact children's "character," "temperament," "personality," "development," "behavior" or simply how they "turn out." Of course, all of these aspects of humanity are distinct from one another and each is uniquely susceptible to various influences. Harris uses her own two adult daughters as an illustration of her case against parental impact by noting that, despite the fact that she believes she parented the girls in similar ways, her biological daughter was friendly, cooperative and well-behaved as a child and teenager, while her adopted daughter was a hellion. See, crows a triumphant Harris, parenting doesn't matter! The problem with Harris' highly personal example is that today, both daughters are well-adjusted, productive members of society with whom Harris enjoys a good relationship. Harris may not have been able to influence her daughters' temperaments, but it appears that her steady, loving parenting did, in fact, likely play a role in how they "turned out."

But while no one would argue with Harris' claim that a particular parenting style cannot assure a particular positive outcome, most people do believe, or in too many cases, know through personal experience, that certain failures or abuses on the part of a parent can cause a wide variety of painful responses in children and the adults they eventually become. Harris, however, breezily dismisses this critical point from her polemic. In fact, she virtually scoffs at the belief that even "super-bad" parents -- which at one point she defines as those who would "abuse their kids so severely that they end up in the hospital, or who leave them unattended in cold apartments stinking with unchanged diapers and rotted food" -- might saddle their children with permanent scars. It is here and in other similar spots in her book that Harris' views become most surreal and disturbing. In essence, she is saying to the many walking wounded survivors of bad parenting among us that "studies now prove that what happened to you didn't really matter."

To take Harris' logic to its extreme, one could point out that any number of young Holocaust survivors "turned out" just fine in terms of becoming productive, gainfully employed, law-abiding adults. However, to extrapolate from that data that their early experiences were essentially meaningless is both cruel and unwise. In the case of my own children, one of the three is clearly possessed of a natural resilience and toughness that would undoubtedly serve her exceptionally well were she ever faced with suffering or adversity. However, that doesn't lessen my responsibility as her mother to protect her from facing those things whenever possible.

The idea of parental responsibility is a concept generally lacking from "The Nurture Assumption." Harris writes that, since our parenting can't be expected to aid in our children's long-term development, we should treat our children "just as well as we would treat our own husband or wife," and that we should "love our children because they are lovable."

The problem with the child/spouse analogy is that children are not the same as adults. They are smaller, weaker and both cognitively and emotionally less developed than their parents. As anthropologist Meredith Small, author of "Our Babies/Ourselves," mentioned to me in a conversation regarding Harris' ideas, human children are not truly biologically independent for a number of years. In other words, children are in need of protection and, yes, guidance, from their parents and the other adults in their lives, and we have a responsibility to provide it to them. And if we base our parenting decisions and commitment solely on our children's "lovableness," rather than on this responsibility, we risk failing them based on external and often random factors. No one, not even one's own cherished child, seems lovable or appealing all the time. Most mothers and fathers I know will tell you that it is at those inevitable times when they are challenged to rise above the unpleasantness of the moment and still continue to meet their responsibility toward their children that they gain the most from their roles as parents. This is when parenting becomes the maturing, ennobling experience that matters to parents and that, in the end, enriches us all.

But perhaps the most unsettling aspect of "The Nurture Assumption" has been the huge and mostly positive response the book has received in the media. Why is it that when book after book is released each year with indisputable evidence concerning the children in our midst who are without adequate food, shelter, health care and, yes, nurturing, the book that essentially lets adults off the hook for our failings is the one that makes the cover of Newsweek? Parenting does matter. Ask any child, parent, teacher, psychiatrist, emergency room physician, social worker or prison warden and she will tell you the same thing. If we accept Harris' assertion that the care and guidance we offer to the youngest and most vulnerable members of society doesn't matter in the long run, we are left with the question of what, ultimately, does?
SALON | Sept. 17, 1998

Coming Monday: Part II. What does Judith Rich Harris take us for -- fools?

Katie Allison Granju's book on attachment parenting will be published by Pocket Books in 1999. Her last article for Mothers Who Think was about the controversial baby-care book "Babywise."