Limits of Family Influence: Genes, Experience and Behaviour

Most parents believe that their child’s personality and intellectual development is a direct result of their child-rearing practices and home environment. This belief is supported by many social scientists who contend that the influences of nature and nurture are inseparable. Challenging such universally accepted assumptions, The Limits of Family Influence argues that socialization science has placed too heavy an emphasis on the family as the bearer of culture. Similarly, it reveals how the environmental variables most often named in socialization science–such as social class, parental warmth, and one- versus two-parent households–may also be empty of causal influence on child outcomes such as intelligence, personality, and psychopathology.