> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of hkhenson > Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 6:09 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Nature Assumption (was Asbergers) > > At 12:00 PM 6/25/2008, Dan M wrote: > > >I read that, and found holes large enough to drive a tank through. It's > >true that, once kids have a peer group, that group becomes much more > >influential on their behavior outside the home than the parents. > > Well, you got the main point of the book anyway. > > >But, she doesn't even address the obvious question: how does a kid end up > in > >a particular peer group? If it is, and does not involve things about the > >kids that exist outside of and before the joining of a particular peer > >group, than moving should totally shuffle the deck. > > It does. One example she used was a kid whose parents moved from > Poland to Missouri. Did he wind up speaking Polish?
Sigh, she cited an example that eliminated the obvious test. If a kid moves from Poland to Missouri, and there does not exist a peer group that speaks Polish, then he will not become a member of such a group. His choices are stay out of peer groups, or join one that does not speak Polish. But, that deliberately sidesteps the test that was obvious to me (and I'd guess most people trained in the hard sciences). If the family moves from, say, Texas to Missouri is there a correlation between the peer group joined in Texas and that joined in Missouri. We know, from data, the answer is a strong yes. Going back to language, we know that assimilation of immigrants usually takes about 3 generations. The Polish kid had no chance to join a Polish speaking peer group. Hispanics in the Houston area do. I know from both studies and personal experience that there are Hispanics that do both. Those from first generation families where only Spanish is spoken are most likely to join peer groups that speak Spanish. Those from 3rd+ generation families that has English as the primary language at home are much more likely to join peer groups in which English is spoken. A personal example of this is when second cousins (my son Ted and a 3rd generation Hispanic William who lives in the Rio Grande Valley (90% Hispanic) went to Mexico, it was Ted who spoke broken Spanish (from watching Spanish language cartoons) and William who was unable to communicate at all. Clearly the difference between 3rd generation Hispanics and recent immigrants is inherently cultural, not genetic. That's a clear counter-example to Harris's over-reaching conclusions. > To what extent was this group the result of the neighborhood in which > you lived? That is (to an economically limited extent) under parents > control and Judith discusses that influence in depth. The two different groups I was referring after the move was in the same socio-economic neighborhood. > >But, we worked hard and gently on that problem, and she is now a very > self > >assured adult, who seemed to have been known by everyone at college and > is > >genuinely liked. It took years to convince her that she didn't need > other > >peoples approval to be OK, and that other people actually would respect > her > >for that view. Once she got it, she dumped the kids who were mistreating > >her although they were her "friends" and hung out with a much better > group > >of kids. Now, she has tremendous people skills. > > Judith Harris talks about kids switching groups without any parental > input. It's not like parents are without influence, my ghod, in most > cases they contribute all the genes the kids have. But, we were talking about non-genetic influences, things one can do. Harris's problem, like the family therapy/sociologists she attacked is that she takes an OK idea and pushes it to the extreme and labels it TRUTH without looking at the most obvious tests and counter examples. My wife worked for years in the area of dysfunctional families (specializing in incest survivors and abusive homes) and is familiar with the literature. We agree fully that working in this area is an art, not a science. It's not that there aren't useful empirical studies that can be done (heck she did one that was quite insightful for her master's thesis....which showed that the extent of independent economic resources had no measurable impact on the likelihood that an abused woman would return from a shelter to her abuser). Rather, it's that human families are so complex that simple models (such as Harris's and the models she attacked) don't do anywhere near an adequate job of explaining the dynamics. >But her point was > that by the time you factored out the genetics, there just wasn't > room for parents to make a claim either for the successes of their > offspring *or* their failures. Much of this came out of the twin > studies which are by now undisputed. I looked at a number of those studies when her book was first recommended to me and found that, while they did provide extremely valuable information on the genetic basis for addiction, mental illness, etc., they were not large or extensive enough to support her conclusions. Further, adoption studies have countered her assertion. The present data supports child development as some as yet unknown mix of nurture/nature. But, modesty in suppositions is very much out of style in this field (where I once counted almost a score of different paradigms offered at one conference...compared to the three over the last 3000 years in my field). > >So, in conclusion, the Nurture Assumption made a tacit assumption...and > it was false. > > The prevailing assumption for many decades is that parents have huge > influence over how their kids turn out. (This assumption isn't the > case either in our deeper history *or* in other cultures.) The data > just don't support this view in spite of the invaluable skills parent > *can* teach kids. So, data concerning the difference in incest survivors behavior from the "norm" of women/men who were not sexually abused as children doesn't count? >If the kids are adopted out, chances are they will find some other way to >pick up the skills biological parents provide if they are so inclined. So, brining in one of the few areas William and I agree strongly on, you would argue that the second generation astronauts just have astronaut genes? Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
