Young, E. (1995, April 23). Teen parents urge peers to think first. San Diego Union Tribune.

OVERVIEW

When Vincent Dekker’s 18-year-old girlfriend told him she was pregnant, he thought he was too young to have a child. He was like many other teenagers in high school. He liked to party with friends. His future was open. But Dekker and his girlfriend, Stacie Berardini, decided to have the baby. Life has changed dramatically. Dekker sometimes works 12 hour days as a security guard to make ends meet, while Stacie, now his fiancee, studies to become a nurse. Says Dekker, ‘I wear myself out a lot.’ Says Stacie, ‘There isn’t time for anyone. It’s her (the couple’s daughter) and no one else.’

The young parents’ story of trying times was echoed by other teenage parents at a forum on adolescent pregnancy prevention and the risk of unprotected sex. The key point of the teenage panel is that people have an alternative to teen pregnancy; intimacy without sex is possible. At the same time, panel members acknowledge that sex is a fact of life for some teens, and thus advocate the use of condoms and other types of birth control to prevent pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted disease.

In addition to the panel, a troupe of young actors organized by Planned Parenthood performed three skits dramatizing the hazards of sexually transmitted diseases and underscoring the option of abstaining from sex. The discussion and skits, with frank and poignant messages regarding teenage sex, illustrate how the discussion of young adults and sexual intercourse has evolved. Dadisi Elliott, who began a program called, "Developing Adolescent Dads for Success," says the issue of sex and its consequences is ‘really out of the closet.’ He adds, ‘It’s imperative that we talk directly to teens about this. The realization is that teens are having sex, and we need to address the consequences of teen sexuality.’

About 1 million female teens get pregnant each year in the United States.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Was Vincent Dekker’s response to his girlfriend’s pregnancy unusual? How would you have counseled Vincent and Stacie?
2. How do you respond to Planned Parenthood’s dramatic presentation to a teenage audience—many of whom are sexually active?

IMPLICATIONS

1. Jesse Jackson has spoken frankly and effectively about kids having kids.
2. There is strong evidence that a significant segment of the adolescent population is considering this crisis and making commitments to eliminate life-limiting consequences.
3. We have a responsibility to sexually active and pregnant teenagers in a society that has strongly encouraged sexual activity.

Sheila Walsh cCYS

Harris, J.R. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do: Parents matter less than you think and peers matter more. New York, London, Toronto Sydney: The Free Press.

OVERVIEW

How important are family and parental instruction? This book attempts a bold refutation of the deeply held belief that nothing is more important to children’s future than what is given them by their parents. In fact this book labels as cultural myth the idea that parents are the crucial instructors of children; it calls this myth the nurture assumption. Judith Harris challenges opinions held—and advice given—by doctors, counselors, and developmental psychologists. She says children do not turn out the way parents bring them up; in fact, they never have in the traditional societies of history. Experts say parents matter most, but I (the author) say nature (or genes) matter much and peers (and the outside world) matter more.

Judith Harris takes some pride in her role as an iconoclast. She enjoys telling how she was rejected for doctoral studies in psychology at Harvard but went on to win a prize (in the very name of the man who wrote the letter of rejection!) for the article which preceded this book. She gladly takes on Freud, developmentalists like Arnold Gesell, behaviorists, John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, and most socialization researchers. (pp. 5-8, 12)

Harris is arguing against psychological researchers and a host of "advice givers" who see human behavior as determined primarily from nurture—or lack of nurture—provided children by parents. This nurture assumption has turned children into "objects of anxiety...introduced an element of phoniness into family life," heaped loads of blame on hapless parents, and stifled scientific study of the family. Harris writes to relieve parents of unnecessary guilt. (p. 352)

Harris’ alternative position she calls the "Group Socialization Theory."

Experiences in childhood and adolescent peer groups modify children’s personalities in ways they will carry with them to adulthood. Group socialization theory makes this prediction: that children would develop into the same sort of adults if we left their lives outside the home unchanged—but switched all the parents around. (p. 359)

Three observations impressed her and turned her from widely held theories:

• Kids of Russian immigrants living in Cambridge, Massachusetts didn’t look, act, and certainly didn’t talk like their parents, but like the kids with whom they hung out.
• English upper class boys raised by nannies and sent off to boarding schools grew up to act, not like the nannies, but like their fathers.
• The fact that we do not allow children to act like their parents; they watch us doing all sorts of things we tell them they can’t do.

Here, in her own words, is what Judith Harris is saying: "The nurture assumption—the notion that parents are the most important part of a child’s environment and can determine, to a large extent, how the child turns out—is a product of academic psychology. Though is has permeated our culture, it is not folklore. In fact, folks didn’t use to believe it" (p. 15).

Children are born with certain characteristics. Their genes predispose them to develop a certain kind of personality. But the environment can change them. Not "nurture"—not the environment their parents provide—but the outside-the-home environment, the environment they share with their peers (p. 147):

Socialization research [which leans away from nature to the nurture side of the classic argument] is the scientific study of the effects of the environment—in particular, the effects of the parents’ child-rearing methods or their behavior toward their children—on the children’s psychological development. It is a science because it uses some of the methods of science, but it is not, by and large an experimental science...since socialization researchers do not, as a rule, have any control over the way parents rear their children...cannot do experiments. (p. 15)

To relieve parents of "problem kids" of guilt and those with "good kids" of pride, Harris explains what the researchers have put on us. "Socialization researchers start out with a preconception: the idea that there are good child-rearing styles and bad child-rearing style, and that parents who use a good child-rearing style will have better children than those who use a bad child-rearing style...the results come in the form of correlations, and correlations are intrinsically ambiguous" (pp. 17, 18).

Knowing her thesis will be contested, Harris buttresses her argument with examples besides those given above (the three observations). Evidence has built up regarding identical twins separated at birth. When brought together in their twenties, thirties or forties, they find they are amazingly similar in characteristics, choices, and interests.

Study after study shows the same thing: almost all the similarities between adult siblings can be attributed to their shared genes. There are very few similarities that can be attributed to the home in which they both grew up.

Growing up in the same home does not make siblings alike. If there really are "toxic parents," they aren’t toxic to all their children. Or they aren’t toxic in the same way. Or, if they are toxic in the same way, each child reacts to the toxicity differently, even if they are identical twins. (p. 37)

Another example is taken from deaf culture.

Most deaf people marry other deaf people, but more than 90 percent of the babies born to these couples have normal hearing. These babies miss out on some of the experiences we consider crucial to normal development. No one comes running when they scream in terror or pain. No one encourages their coos and babbles or makes a big deal of our their ‘mamas and dadas.’ Nowadays most deaf parents use sign language to communicate with their hearing children, but there was a period when the use of sign language was frowned upon, and during that period some deaf parents didn’t communicate with their young children at all, except in the most rudimentary ways. And yet, these children suffered no harm. Despite the fact that they didn’t learn any language...from their parents, they became fluent speakers of English. (p. 70)

Harris draws extensively from the exhaustive review of socialization research by Stanford professors, Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin (1983). The concluded that "either parental behaviors have no effect, or that the only effective aspects of parenting must vary greatly from one child to the other within the same family" (p. 38).

Harris sets out three options: "either (1) the parents’ child-rearing style has no effects on children, or (2a) the parents do not have a consistent child-rearing child, or (2b) they have a consistent style but it has different effects on each child" (p. 48).

Harris herself does not believe that "parents have a consistent child-rearing style, unless they happen to have consistent children...It’s not that good parenting produces good children, it’s that good children produce good parenting" (p. 48).

Styles of parenting differ as to the character of the child and the culture, Harris believes.

Here’s what I think. Middle-class Americans of European descent try to use the Just Right parenting style, because that’s the style approved by their culture...If the kid has problems, the Just Right parenting style might not work and the parents might end up switching to the Too Hard method, So,...parents who use a Too Hard child-rearing style are more likely to be the ones with problem kids. This is exactly what the style-of-parenting researchers find.

Among Asian and African Americans...cultural norms differ. Chinese Americans, for example, tend to use the Too Hard parenting style...not because their kids are difficult, but because that’s the style favored by their culture. Among Asian and African Americans, therefore, parents who use a Too Hard child-rearing style should not be more likely to have problems kids. Again, this is exactly what the researchers find.

What they find, in fact is that Asian-American parents are the most likely of all parents to use the Too Hard style and the least likely to use the Just Right style, and yet in many ways Asian-American children are the most competent and successful of all American children. (p. 49)

STUDIES OF SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF PARENTING

Studies by Flaks, Ficher, Masterpasqua, & Joseph (1995), Patterson, (1992, 1994), and Gottman (1990) indicated that children of same sex parents do as well as those with parents of different genders. And they found girls raised by homosexuals to be as feminine and boys as masculine as those raised by heterosexual parents. It has not yet been determined if the biological children of homosexuals are more prone genetically to become homosexual.

From this evidence Harris concludes that "major differences between families have no predictable effects on the children reared in them" (p. 52). She does admit the evidence that dysfunctional families can produce dysfunctional kids but argues that genes and another factor (peers) are what really matters. (p. 53)

A Swedish study (Rydell, Dahl, & Sundelin, 1995) found a third of the sample were picky eaters either at home or at school, but only 8% were picky eaters in both places. (p. 62) "It is common for immigrant children to use their first language at home and their second language outside the home" (p. 65). Another example of learning in two separate contexts is swearing with friends and eliminating such expressions with family and teachers. (p. 66)

So there is strong tendency for children to keep their home lives apart or secret from their lives outside the home and visa versa, although the desire to keep their home lives secret from the world is stronger than keeping their outside lives hidden from the home. The media helps them to understand how normal is their home life. But if television, for instance, portrays family life far different from the reality of family life in the neighborhood, they will accept the reports from friends over the picture offered them by TV. Kids get nervous when parents come out from home into the world of their peers, lets somehow they appear abnormal.

Parents are usually blamed by teachers and others if kids misbehave; there are even laws that punish parents for the misdemeanors of their children and adolescents. But according to Harris: "if children fail to transfer things their parents taught them to other social contexts, it is not their parents’ fault" (p. 73).

An old study showed that children can act differently in different contexts. A child or teenager may be honest and well-socialized at home but dishonest and "unsocialized" in another context. Hartshorne & May (1928) "gave children opportunity to cheat or steal in a variety of settings: at home, in the classroom, in athletic contests; alone or in the presence of peers. They discovered that children who were honest in one context were not necessarily honest in others. The child who was honest at home might lie or cheat in the classroom or on the athletic field" (p. 73).

This book is not all research; folklore and stories keep the reader’s interest. Harris uses the story of Cinderella (in Ch. 4, "Separate Worlds") to show how treatment (abuse) Cinderella received in her home was countered by her brief neighborhood experiences (she did not spend all her time in the house). Her household demeanor was abject, submissive, unattractive. But her fairy godmother (a neighbor?), and the prince, recognized another way she was outside the home...attractive and a potential queen. Her sisters did not recognize this beautify lady at the ball, nor did the prince recognize her in her home—the fit of the glass slipper was his only clue. The real Cinderella was not what she had been taught at home, but what she learned elsewhere.

Bringing together the observations of many cultures from several ethnologists, Harris makes the point that babies in traditional societies are kept with the mother but not taught much. When weaned at about the age of three, these children were usually handed over to older siblings and gradually joined the play groups of the village or farm. It was in this context they really began to learn...language, rules, and consequences. And children of traditional societies seem to turn out quite well.

Parents in our society try so hard to get their children to love each other and what they get is constant squabbling. Parents in traditional societies make no effort to get their children to love each other and it happens as a matter of course. There are two reasons, I believe, for this difference. (p. 93)

• Children don’t have so much to fight over and play with what’s available.
• Older children in traditional societies are allowed to dominate younger ones.

The central question of this book is "How do children get socialized—how do they learn to behave like normal, acceptable members of their society?" This question is based on the assumption that in every culture "children have to learn to behave in a way that is appropriate for the society they live in" (p. 168). Harris adds good caution to the term "socialization." It is not primarily something adults or adult systems do to children. "What I am talking about," she says, "is something that children, to a large extent, do to themselves" (p. 169).

One of Harris’ most important contributions is highlighting the importance of peer groups—not just adolescent peer groups, but even more importantly, she says, the play groups of children.

We tend to think of adolescence when we hear the term "peer pressure," but pressure to conform is most intense in childhood...Those who will not or cannot conform to the rules, or who are different in any way, may be excluded, picked on, or made fun of...The nyah-nyah song is heard all over the world...By the teen years it is seldom necessary to punish the nonconformer. Teenagers are not pushed to conform—they are pulled, by their own desire to be part of the group. (p. 133)

Feminists will take no pleasure in Harris’ insistence on the essential difference of boys and girls. It is not nurture nor society that makes the difference; it is the Y chromosome. (p. 220)

Boys and girls are alike in many more ways than they are different, but there are differences...In every society we know of, the behavior of males and females differs. It differs far more in most societies than in our own. And the pattern of the differences is the same all over the world. Males are more likely to be found in positions of power and influence. Females are more likely to be found tending to other people’s needs. Males are hunters and warriors. Females are the gatherers and nurturers. (pp. 221, 224)

From many studies and in many ways, Harris has shown that personality is strongly shaped in the same-sex play years. (p. 173, etc.) Children prefer same-sex playmates because they are different, and according to their gender category, they are further socialized.

The author intends to free parents from unnecessary guilt...to foster a more natural and realistic kind of parenting and family life. Here concluding argument as to why people grow up thinking their parents were more influential then their childhood friends is one of the weakest of the book.

I believe the human mind has at least two different departments for dealing with social behavior. One has to do with personal relationships, the other has to do with groups...The department of the brain that keeps track of relationships is accessible to the conscious mind. The department of the brain that adapts your behavior to that of your group is no less important but it is less accessible to the conscious... (p. 361)

The bond between parent and child lasts a lifetime...our childhood friends have scattered to the winds and we’ve forgotten what happened on the playground. When you think about childhood, you think about your parents. Blame it on the relationship department of your mind, which has usurped more than its rightful share of your thoughts and memories. As for what’s wrong with you; don’t blame it on your parents. (p. 362)

So ends this challenging book. It is important, not only for parents, but for teachers, youth workers, and all involved in the socialization of the young.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What do you consider the main influences on children growing up?
2. What point do you find most convincing from this description of the book?
3. Where do you disagree with this author?
4. How can insights about the socialization of children be helpful to you?

IMPLICATIONS

1. This book brings up, in a fresh and provocative manner, important issues about socialization and child rearing.
2. It makes important points about peer influence from childhood on, gender differentiation, and the limitations of parental nurture.
3. Despite its cogent arguments and appeal to research, its use of research is highly selective and it oversimplifies the complex issue of socialization.
4. The book is a corrective which seems to go too far in minimizing the important role of parents in the nurture and growing of children.

Please see the following article reviews within this topic: Begley, "Parents Matter Less," and Kagan, "A Parent’s Role is Peerless."

Dean Borgman cCYS

Watson, C. (2000, March 13). Parents’ assistance boosts students. The Daily Oklahoman, p. 1-2B.

OVERVIEW

Recognizing that completing homework is vital to a child’s education, and seizing the opportunity to share time with their children, many parents are taking more active role in their child’s post-school assignments. The author notes that support and encouragement by parents is a "good way to help children become better students."

Some teachers encourage child/parent homework interaction by making " ‘their lesson plans centered around parental involvement,’ " notes Robyn Miller, assistant professor of education at Oklahoma Christian University. There are lots of ways to faciliate such interaction, from "asking students to identify household objects that are square, circular, or cone-shaped," to "making assignments to research family history."

The National Parent-Teacher Association and the U.S. Education Department suggest the following tips to help enhance students’ academic success:

• Set a regular time for homework.
• Make sure your child has the papers, books, and pencils needed for the assignments.
• Find a quiet place to study.
• Set a good example by reading and writing yourself.
• Stay in touch with your child’s teachers.
• Know what your child’s homework assignments are, how long they should take, and how the teacher wants you to be involved.
• Make sure assignments are completed.
• Read teachers’ comments on assignments that are returned.
• Discuss teachers’ homework expectations at the beginning of the year and during parent-teacher conferences.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Are kids in your youth group assertive about doing their homework? Why or why not?
2. Do you notice a difference in kids whose parents take an active role in their education and those kids whose parents are less involved?
3. How can you, as a youth worker, help kids with their homework?
4. What other suggestions would you offer parents for supporting their children’s education?

IMPLICATIONS

• Kids do need encouragement to complete their homework. Some young people are self-motivated, but most need some support.
• Youth workers can provide the same help that parents do, if parents are unable or unwilling to be involved in their child’s homework.
• Youth workers can help parents understand the educational needs of their children by offering the listed hints.
• In your own youth group, you can assign homework that stimulates parent/youth interaction, just as schools do.

Kathryn Q. Powers cCYS

Berman, C. (1991, February). Adult children of divorce speak out: Casualties of the war between parents, these unwitting victims carry wounds that may never heal... Cosmopolitan, p. 187.

OVERVIEW

As a journalist with a serious interest in the field of divorce and remarriage, Berman searches for the answer to the question, "What happens to the children?" She interviewed over forty men and women ranging in age from 24 to 66 who, as children, experienced the divorce of their parents. This article is based on the book, Adult Children of Divorce Speak Out. (Berman, C. [1991]. New York City: Simon and Schuster.)

As she listened to candid accounts of respondents, she developed a better understanding of divorce and its aftermath. The most striking impression learns is that the divorce of parents never goes away. It may have been welcomed. It may have been understood. It may have been integrated into their lives. It may have led to new strengths. But even when it provides a positive solution to a destructive family situation, divorce remains a critical experience for the children. Although there may have been relief that a painful situation ended, there was also regret that a healthy family could not have been created.

The effects of divorce upon children depend on their ages at the time of the breakup, their temperaments and coping strategies, and their parents. Whether the parents, now ex-spouses, are able to maintain a good relationship with one another, whether both remain involved in the care of the child, even whether the child and custodial parent are of the same sex—all of these variables affect how well or how poorly a youngster adjusts to divorce. Accepting the importance of individual differences, Berman was nevertheless struck by the similarities. (Cosmopolitan, p. 187)

The author sees similarities between the adult children of divorce, the adult children of alcoholics, and dysfunctional families. She found seven common characteristics in the people she interviewed:

The author also found that children whose parents have divorced often place a strong emphasis on financial security, have a strong yearning for stability, a high empathy level, are fiercely independent, and have a powerful drive to succeed. (p. 187)

Cassie Stevenson was seven years old when her parents divorced. Now, at twenty-nine, she still feels its effects. When a date called her up to cancel their casual get-together, she exploded. Later, she reflected, "It’s happening again. Someone is breaking his promise to be there for me. Again." (p. 188)

LOW SELF-ESTEEM

According to psychiatrist Clifford J. Sager, "One of the consequences of divorce is that children (especially if those who were young at the time of the breakup) feel that, in some way, they were responsible—either ‘I did bad things’ or ‘I didn’t do enough to keep the marriage together.’ " Such children may grow up with an "If only I had been more worthy..." complex.

"If only I had been better...if I had been more lovable...if I had given less trouble," the child of divorce thinks "my parents would have maintained a life together, my father (or) mother would not have moved out of the home." (p. 188)

At age twenty-six, Nancy Kovach reflects:

I see kids from good, functional families as having more guts and being stronger than I. They approach life with a sense of ‘I can do it.’...But when your security blanket is pulled away from you at the age of six or eight, you don’t have that feeling. The world becomes a treacherous place.

Suspicious of relationships, Nancy has tended to become romantically attracted to people who have been "damaged" in some way—to approach men with an attitude: "There must be something wrong with any man who has shown the poor judgment to be interested in me."

DISTRUST

The late psychoanalyst Melanie Klein notes: "If a child is not afforded enough happiness in her early life, her capacity for developing a hopeful attitude, as well as love and trust in people, will be disturbed." And Dr. Sager adds, "The child thinks, ‘I’d rather live by myself. Nobody else cares.’ " An adult child of divorce in her forties adds:

The bottom line is, that, as a child of divorce you feel alone...The world is not a reliable place, and you have to find a center within yourself. Then you have to protect that center. The way I did it was by not letting anyone in on what I was really thinking or feeling. It has become a lifetime habit, unfortunately, that, from time to time, causes difficulty between my husband and myself. He accuses me of not wanting to share my feelings with him. What he fails to understand is that I am unable to share them with anyone. (p. 188)

Adam Norris is 29; his parents divorced when he was four.

I have a real need for the positive strokes I can get from friends. I require testimonials of friendship. But (and the author claims this statement came up repeatedly in her interviews) I test everyone all the time. If they fall short of my expectations, I drop them. That’s not just a matter of trust. It’s also a matter of control. (p. 188)

FEAR OF COMMITMENT

A manifesto on children’s rights begins, "Children learn what they live." If they live with love, they learn to love, If they live with trust, they learn to trust. If they live with commitment, they do not fear to commit.

Much more damaging than the fact of divorce is the way life after divorce is handled by the parents. If the ex-spouse is continually blamed; if kids are put in the middle; or if a newly liberated, self-centered parent lives with partner after partner, the child continues to suffer losses and fails to experience critical bonding. According to co-founder of the Stepfamily Association, psychologist Emily Visher, "It’s not divorce that’s at fault; it’s what people do with divorce."

Delia Sherman was left by her mother while still an infant and her father had her raised by a series of housekeepers because he was usually away on business. Visits from her mother were "sporadic, few, and tantalizing."

The men I dated were a lot like my mother. They were more devoted to their own needs than to mine. Like her, they could give—but only on a limited, short-term basis. They were there when the going was good.

I began to wonder why I continued to make such choices. At 22 I entered into therapy and promised not to commit until both the doctor and I decided that I was ready to make a healthy decision. (Smiling widely) Phil was my healthy decision. He and I were so committed to each other and to marriage, I can’t imagine something we wouldn’t have worked out. He is my best friend. (p. 189)

SEXUAL CONCERNS

Readiness for intimacy is a characteristic of adulthood. Healthy adults should be able to "give and accept love without fear of hurting or being hurt" (though some hurt may be involved in growth and adjustment). The author found many sexual concerns cited as consequences of growing up as a child of divorce. E. Mavis Hetherington, in a study on the effects of absent fathers found "that girls whose fathers left home before they were five will often try to make up for the loss of that first love by becoming sexually precocious in adolescence." One forty-year-old woman stated:

I became promiscuous in high school. In a curious way, I think it was because I was still being the good little girl trying to hold on to Daddy’s affection. My attitude with the men I met was ‘Just tell me what you want and I will do it.’

My self image was low. I didn’t believe I had a right to say no. That attitude stayed with me through college (where I got involved with some of my professors), through a short-lived marriage, and through many affairs. In all, I was so intent on giving pleasure, I never stopped to think of ME. (p. 189)

GOOD ADJUSTMENTS

The people in these forty interviews found healing, growth, and the overcoming of the above problems through these factors: (p. 189)

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

IMPLICATIONS

1. A woman sat in a group discussing the problems of young people. When a couple of members of the group referred to "broken families," she interrupted angrily, "Well, my husband and I were divorced a few years ago, and my two girls are doing fine, thank you." Her remark may be true, but studies show long-lasting negative effects of divorce upon children. The psychic injury may be slight in some cases—and there may actually be some benefits of early maturity and sensitivity—but the rupture of a family produces some scars we must accept. No school or youth organization can ignore these effects upon those they teach and nurture.
2. It is important for adults to quit blaming their parents for all of their woes. Each person is responsible for behaving as adults and for relating to others in a way that is responsible.
3. "People have to be aware that they do have the power to change their lives," psychotherapist Teresa Adams reminds us. "Since trust of another human being is a learned process, you can learn new data as an adult. But here is the key variable: You must stop sabotaging yourself by choosing people who replicate your past." No one needs to remain in destructive patterns of life because he or she is a child of divorce.