Preface to the Revised Edition 12
Recommendation by Steven Pinker 23
Reviewed by Hwang Sang-min, 28
Preface to the First Edition 32
1.
Parenting is not the same thing as environment 39
2.
Evidence of Nature and Nurture 57
3.
Nature, Nurture, and the Third Possibility 83
4.
Separated World 113
5.
Another time, another place 148
6.
Human Nature 174
7.
Us vs. Them 213
8.
245 in a group of children
9.
Cultural Transmission 300
10.
Gender Determines 350
11.
School and Children 384
12.
Growth 420
13.
Dysfunctional Families and Problem Children 457
14.
516 Things Parents Can Do
15.
Parenting Hypothesis 550 on the Judgment Bench
Appendix 1: Personality and Birth Order 569
Appendix 2: Testing Child Development Theories 591
Acknowledgments 610
Translator's Note 611
Americas 613
Reference 642
Search 680

Why don't children grow up the way their parents raised them?
The influence of parents and peer groups on human socialization, as discovered in various fields ranging from evolutionary psychology to behavioral genetics.

Presenting a new paradigm for the trap of parenting!
A book that relieved the guilt and gave a sense of liberation to countless parents.
Escape the culture-defined, anxiety-inducing, and labor-intensive parenting style!

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, an Economist Outstanding Book, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction

“I was shocked when I read this book… I anticipate that this book will be a turning point in the history of psychology.” - Steven Pinker
“This book changed my perspective on the world.” - Malcolm Gladwell
“If we can accept the idea that ‘children create their own lives together with their peers,’ … we will be able to easily find solutions to problems between parents and children, or to problems in education.” - Hwang Sang-min

A Big History of Developmental Psychology, Written Through the Eyes of an Independent Researcher Who Was Pushed Out of the Mainstream Psychology

Since its publication in Korean in 2017, "Parenting Hypothesis," which has helped countless parents feel less guilty and more liberated, is now available in a more readable format.
This book, which has been translated and published in 22 countries around the world over the past 20 years since its first publication in 1998, has caused tremendous shock and controversy. It is a critical study of the parenting hypothesis, which means “the assumption that the way parents raise their children has a decisive influence on the children.”


In this book, author Judith Rich Harris argues that “parental influence on human socialization is not absolute.”
However, it is very difficult to overturn the beliefs that most people around the world firmly believe.
So, he conducted a meta-analysis of a vast amount of material (805 endnotes and 770 references) from various fields and cultural contexts, ranging from genetics, criminology, developmental psychology, to folktales and comics, and revealed that many of our preconceived notions were actually derived from flawed research.
It has mercilessly shaken up the hypothesis that has dominated developmental psychology for half a century.

Farming Needs More Than Just Farmers: Theory of Group Socialization

Korean parents pour so much of their family resources into their children's education and growth that it's almost as if they're saying they're farming their children.
As a result, parents expect rewards from their children and become overly involved in their children's future.
A child's success is seen as solely due to the support of their parents, and socioeconomic failure is often seen as the parents' fault.

The most important factor in shaping human personality, as discovered at the end of logic, is the peer group.
Children choose their peer groups, become socialized within those groups, and shape their own lives.
We can see that even children raised by the same parents grow up differently.
Also, the child loves his parents, but wants to hang out with his friends more.
Although they may imitate their parents' behavior, when they are with their peers, they tend to imitate their peers' behavior.
Because I don't want to be labeled as a weird kid within the group.

Mencius's mother's three thousand teachings to create a good peer group?

Many people who read this book pointed out the limitations of the book, saying, “The conclusion is that in order to create a good peer group, you have to teach Mencius three thousand times.”
However, children are not machines, and the idea that parents can shape their children into the way they want is an illusion.
Even if parents intervene to place their children in a good group, there is no guarantee that they will occupy a good position within that group and be positively influenced as the parents intended.


However, this book does not give parents the right to abuse or neglect their children.
This is not a book that tells children that they don't need parents.
Parents have little control over their children's circumstances outside the home, but inside the home, their children's happiness is almost entirely in their hands.

If the caregiver is happy, the child is happy.

In the preface to the revised edition, the author states that he hopes the book will “make parenting easier and less stressful for parents,” but many parents remain trapped in the anxiety-inducing and labor-intensive parenting styles dictated by their culture.
The author advises not to compromise your present happiness, especially your own, for the sake of your child's future.
Raising children should be a joy for parents too.


“Don’t worry too much, just listen to the advice of the experts.
Love your children, but not because you think you should, but because you love them.
Enjoy parenting.
And teach only as much as you can.
Relax.
The kind of person your child becomes is not a reflection of how much affection you give him or her.
You can neither perfect nor destroy your children.
Your children are not possessions that you can perfect or destroy.
“Children are the future.” (p. 549)

Let's read together and support each other

Because it is such a vast book, the joy of finishing it will be multiplied if you create a reading group and read together, encouraging and supporting each other, rather than reading it alone.


| Reviewer's Note

Princes and princesses who grow up in royal families in European countries that maintain monarchies have unusual childhood experiences and do not grow up to be normal adults.
When they grow up, they act as if they were kings and queens and try to live like that.

This is a fact that can be easily guessed in a society with special family groups such as conglomerates, even if it is not a monarchy.
Above all, the big question is whether the people around them will accept their kingly or queenly behavior.
If the people of South Korea had been able to ask this question a few years ago, they would never have elected Park Geun-hye as president.
However, they believed, on the contrary, that she would become a great president because of her father's influence.
This is because this society places a lot of emphasis on the bond between parents and children and wants to believe in it that way.
Because I am deeply immersed in the ‘parenting hypothesis’.
In the end, the people of this country elected as president a man who was neither a dictator nor a president, but who could never properly perform the duties of a president due to his bizarre behavior.

The more I consult about child education, the more I get asked this question.
“How can I help my child do better?” “Is it my fault for teaching my child wrong that he or she is having these difficulties?” This is the mindset of a parent who will do anything for their child.
As the saying goes, "children are farmed," parents believe that they can successfully raise their children through their own dedication and contribution.
The teachings of Mencius' mother, who moved three times for her children's education, serve as a guideline for the majority of Korean parents regarding their children's education.
This book, titled "The Parenting Hypothesis," argues that the core principles of child education, which are believed to be myths, are "false" or "invalid."


I took my first steps as a psychologist with ‘developmental psychology.’
About 30 years ago, while studying at graduate school, I began to have vague doubts about the claims made in American psychology.
Especially in Korea, where Confucian traditions and modern democratic thinking are strangely combined, the psychology and behavior of Koreans, who each want to live their own lives within a collectivist culture, did not quite match the content naturally expressed in the book.
In particular, I have become increasingly convinced that a child's development is not something that parents can control.
When I first encountered Harris's "The Parenting Hypothesis," published in 1998, I was thrilled by how brilliantly the questions I had vaguely harbored were expressed and explained.

There is a common belief that 'problem parents create problem children.'
The idea is that broken homes, incompetent parents, or immature parents are not able to raise their children properly.
Decades of research and counseling experience as a developmental psychologist have taught me that this common belief is a myth.
The problems in various individuals' lives were not created by their parents, but rather came from each person's vague beliefs and expectations about how life should be lived.
However, no one accepted this idea easily.
This is because it is different from the ‘parenting hypothesis’ that is believed as a matter of course or as a superstition.


When I used the first edition of this book as a textbook in a developmental psychology class at Yonsei University 10 years ago, the students had a hard time understanding it.
It's not just because it was an English book.
It was difficult to accept the surprising and diverse insights in the book that shattered the myths about human psychology and human development that we had taken for granted.
The view that human life and developmental changes are brought about by the socialization of individual children within their peer groups, rather than by the 'nurturing' of parents or adults, is in itself a revolutionary new idea.
It does not stop at explaining the socialization process of an individual.


The parenting hypothesis, which states that parents have a significant influence on the formation of their children's personalities and behaviors, is simply what we want to believe, and the assertion that a child's growth and the formation of each child's unique characteristics and personality are actually determined by the environment created by the child's peer group is a paradigm shift in itself.
It is a new theory that an individual's life and experiences are shaped by their own mind and personality.
The idea is that rather than being created as individuals through parental upbringing, children choose or belong to groups on their own and are created within that society or group.
The author's argument that each person is more influenced by the peer group or growth environment that they share with each other in the process of growing up than by the influence of parents or genetic factors itself, rather than Freud's psychoanalytic theory that made people recognize the absolute influence of parents on human development, shatters our overconfidence in the powerful influence of parents on human development.

This book presents a theory about the evolution and formation of the human mind based on the experiences and socialization that a person has with his or her peer group over a long period of time.
And Judy Harris seems to have published a revised edition to shatter conventional wisdom, normativity, and myths about child rearing and human development.
However, people who are obsessed with the traditional parent-child relationship do not pay attention to the individual characteristics of each child.
Because we still believe in the myth that children are made by their parents.
And I ask again:


“What can I do to help my child grow up well and do well?” These parents, however, do not really know what their child’s problem is.
I don't even know how you feel about your child's problems.
Of course, you don't know specifically what changes you expect from your child.
I was just suffering because the current situation was different from what I had expected.
Parents expected their children to be what they wanted, but the children did not live up to their parents' expectations.
The problem was that parents were making wrong 'assumptions' about their children.

The term 'child farming' implies the 'duty' that parents should raise and raise their children as if they were farming.
But it doesn't really tell us much about how farming actually happens.
Just as farming is a result of climate change, child rearing can easily become a result of the child's living environment.
Those who want to believe that it is 'the result of parents' efforts' may be expressing their desire to emphasize the responsibility or role that parents should have.
This common belief, paradoxically, provides a convenient excuse for those who want to believe that their parents influenced their lives or personality traits, or that their lives would have been different if they had just received a little more help from their parents.

The Parenting Hypothesis offers new insights into the lives children create for themselves, rather than the control and management of their parents.
If we can accept the idea that 'children create their own lives together with their peers,' we will be able to easily find solutions to many of the parent-child problems and educational issues currently occurring in Korea.
Unfortunately, even as an adult in this society, I have little idea of ​​what children in this society learn from their peers and how they navigate different periods of their lives.
Young people who can be divided into different cohorts, all of them now increasingly feel like foreigners living in this country to me.
- Hwang Sang-min

Reader Recommendations

This is the most shocking book since "I am the mother of a perpetrator." At the time, I had received a somewhat familiar message that "parents cannot know everything about their children" through a shocking incident. This book overturns the belief that we all (or most) hold as a kind of faith.
…The reason this book is ‘shocking’ is because the things it presents as evidence do not seem absurd.
It is plausible both academically and empirically.
There are some points here and there that I can refute, but in any case, the book did its job by making me ask myself, "Are the things I took for granted really right?" throughout the reading and even after I closed the book, and by making me look back on my own growth process from a frame I had never considered before.
- Reader @to.jinryu

Before reading this book, I had unconsciously thought that children are raised by their parents, but after reading it, my thoughts completely changed.
It was a very useful book that gave members a lot of insight and shook up their views on parenting itself, so much so that it could be said to be the most representative book among those read during the parenting reading group.
- Online parenting reading group Orot

According to this book, we cannot handle children.
(If there is anything I can do) it would be more effective to work for our society rather than my child.
- Reader @amorparty209

It was the most refreshing and interesting book I've read recently.
Of course, I was also grateful that it didn't make me feel guilty.
A book that comforted a mother who sent her child to school in tears in the morning.
- Reader Choi Sang-hwi