Talk of the Town

What Shapes Our Children: Parents, Peers and Genes

Thu. May 13 7:30-9:00 pm

With: Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Judith Hall, Dr. Shelley Hymel

"How the parents rear the child has no long-term effects on the child's personality, intelligence, or mental health.... Group socialization is my theory of how kids learn how to behave when they're not at home. How they learn how to behave in public." -- Judith Rich Harris, author of The Nurture Assumption

"A child must be receptive to our parenting for us to be successful in our nurturing, comforting, guiding and directing.... To nurture our children, we must reclaim them and take charge of providing for their attachment needs." -- Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté in Hold On To Your Kids, Why Parents Matter

"Here is the second stunning discovery from behavioural genetics. In measuring the relative effects of a shared and a unique environment we find that the effects of shared environment are small, often not statistically significant, and frequently zero. What this means concretely is that twins who grown up together are no more similar than twins who were separated at birth and reared apart, and that adopted siblings are not similar at all. Whatever experiences siblings share by growing up in the same home within a given culture makes little or no difference to the kind of people they turn out to be.... All those difference among parents and homes have no predictable long-term effects on the personalities of their children. Not to put too fine a point on it, much of the advice from the parenting experts is flapdoodle." -- Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate

Judith Rich Harris ignited a ferocious debate about what shapes our children with the publication of her book The Nurture Assumption in 1998. In it she argued that there is no scientific evidence that the quality of parenting has any effect on a child’s personality, intelligence or mental health. In fact, she suggests that the behaviour and attitudes our children do learn to use in the outside world are likely shaped by peers.

Another field of scientific research has been uncovering the complicated interplay between genes and environment as determinants in shaping personality and behaviour. Steven Pinker writes in The Blank Slate: "General intelligence is substantially heritable and so are the five major ways in which personality can vary (summarised by the acronym OCEAN): openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion-introversion, antagonism-agreeableness and neuroticism. And traits that are surprisingly specific turn out to be heritable, too, such as dependence on nicotine or alcohol, number of hours of television watched and likelihood of divorcing."

And just recently Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté have written a book encouraging parents to reclaim their place as primary influencers on their children, a role they claim parents have abdicated.

So how do these influences, parents, peers and genes interact to shape the kind of adults our children become? Come join us as we explore that question and more at Talk of the Town.

The discussion will take place at UBC’s Robson Square campus. Attendance is free of charge, but please pre-register at info.talkofthetown@ubc.ca or phone 604.822.5675.

Panelists

Dr. Judith Hall is a clinical geneticist and pediatrician. She is presently Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia based at Children's & Women's Health Centre of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. She has published over 250 original articles, 70 chapters and 5 books. She has received a Senior Killam Prize for research and was recognized by American Health as one of the "Best Doctors in America" in 1996 and by the UBC Faculty of Medicine with a Golden Jubilee Award of Excellence in 2000; and she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1998.

Dr. Gabor Maté is a Vancouver physician and co-author with Gordon Neufeld of Hold On To Your Kids. He is the author of the bestselling books, Scattered Minds and When the Body Says No. He has been a family physician for over twenty years, a palliative care specialist and a psychotherapist; he is also staff physician at a facility for street people in Vancouver's downtown eastside. He was a long-time columnist for The Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail.

Dr. Shelley Hymel is a professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia. She has published several articles on peer rejection, harassment and bullying, and school-based intervention strategies. Dr. Hymel is currently co-writing a book on bullying, and co-leading a 3-year Canadian Initiative.

Links & Readings

Links

Hold on To Your Kids

More information on this book is available at the Random House Canada web site.

The Peer Argument

Features a talk with Judith Rich Harris about her book The Nurture Assumption.

Gordon Neufeld

The home page of psychologist Gordon Neufeld, co-author of Hold On To Your Kids.

Behavioural Genetics

Excerpt from Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate at the London Times On-line that presents the case for genetic influences.

The Nature of Nurture: Parents or Peers?

A lengthy and lively dialogue between Judith Rich Harris and distinguished psychologist and author Jerome Kagan.