Home does matter

Judith Rich Harris's article (Prospect, May 2007) on nature, nurture and the BBC's Child of Our Time project—which follows a cohort of 25 children every year from their birth in 2000 to adulthood in 2020—argues that the series doesn't acknowledge the power of peers. This is odd, since the series starts with several examples of peer influence. The first comes from six-year-old Parys, who declares his intention to stop eating brown bread because all his friends prefer white. At six, our children, like their peers, want to fit in.

The fact that children are influenced by their peers is not contentious, but Harris goes further, arguing that parents have no important long-term effects on the development of children's personalities. The influences that make us who we are fall into two categories: our genes and our environment. So far Harris and I agree. Genes are important in the creation of personality; some more so than others, with IQ generally believed to be at the top of the list and matters of conscience at the bottom. But I part company with Harris over the relative importance of peers, teachers, society and, in particular, her dismissal of parents.

Success in education, for instance, is dependent not just on IQ but also on resilience, ambition and a feeling that education matters; forces that are levered first by the family and second by schools. Peers are much less influential here. The Institute of Education's Effective Provision of Pre-School Education Project has studied the factors affecting educational outcomes, and began with a cohort of three year olds in 1997. The children are now 11 and, the study shows, still benefiting from learning activities they did at home before they were five. The effect is independent of wealth or parents' education. In short, it is what parents do—not just who they are—that matters.

The current series of Child of Our Time, which begins later this month, provides potent examples. Six-year old William (see right), a vet's son who studies at a prestigious private school in Yorkshire, is eagerly learning the three Rs and French, and enjoying a range of extracurricular activities. William is confident he will be one of life's winners, and history tells us he is probably right. Compare him with James, a boy from a south London estate where crime is rising quickly and three quarters of the families are on benefits. James has been one of the beneficiaries of the government's provision of education for three to five year olds and has had great teachers, so he is also doing fine at school. But there are signs he may not stay the course. Why? Because exams are coming up, his teachers are pushing him, and James, with a history of violence at home, just isn't resilient enough. The differences between these two boys can be summed up in their own words. William wants to be a policeman. James's ambition is equally as simple. He wants to be a robber.

To support her thesis, Harris points to the children of immigrants to the US, arguing that they rapidly learn the language and accent of their host country and, outside the home, becoming virtually indistinguishable from native kids. This situation also arises in Britain, where children of immigrants with little money and no job may find themselves in a failing school full of other disadvantaged children. So what happens? Such children, if they come from families with high expectations and a strong home learning environment can still do well at school. Harris would argue that this is solely the result of the genetic effect of IQ, but even IQ is mutable, brought down by a bad home environment and pulled up by a good one. And attainment at school is dependent on more than IQ; it is also about motivation, determination and ambition. Under the circumstances described above, a motivated child of immigrants might feel unhappy in his new peer group, and will certainly adopt parts of the group mentality, but, given enough support at home, he or she will be able to weather the situation and move on.

Harris's concentration on the power of peers is welcome, not least because in research terms, it is the poor relation. It alerts us to the importance of support from outside the family, especially for the disadvantaged. In Britain, this is mediated through our tradition of mixed communities, which still survive, even in big cities. But this situation may not last, according to the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Advantaged families increasingly settle in dual careers, have children late, and are relatively richer than they were 20 years ago, while disadvantaged families tend to have babies in their twenties without establishing careers. This polarisation is exacerbated by the loss of council houses, leaving ghettos of extreme poverty and parents whose children have no one else to turn to.

Go back to our two Child of Our Time families. William's mother Gillian escaped her disadvantaged roots partly because she left it later to have babies and gain some education, but also because she has lived all her life in the Yorkshire dales, a mixed environment that gave her access to role models and made it easier for her to make the shift from low to high socioeconomic status. James (see right), in south London, has no such outlet. James comes from a narrow, ghettoised background, where typical cognitive and behavioral scores of three year olds are frighteningly low, and where parents have often lost hope. His prospects are less rosy than they might once have been.

There are still some children who, lacking a strong home learning environment, have been able to compensate by leaning on other adults and, indeed, their peers, who pick up the pieces. The mixed communities we have lived with for many years are a real source of strength. Losing them is further polarising the underlying opportunity structure and lead to a waste of spirit in too many of our children.