Though I sympathize with Alice Dreger's feelings of powerlessness and relief (''Guilt Trips, and the Art of Blaming Mom for Everything,'' Nov. 3), she has been misled by the media coverage of my book, ''The Nurture Assumption.'' Despite what she may have read about it elsewhere, the book is not a personal memoir.
My theory of child development is based, not on my own experiences, but on my reading of the scientific literature. I mentioned my daughters from time to time in the book only to illustrate a point or to add interest or humor; I did not base the theory on them. Nor is there any need for me to feel guilty about the way I raised them.
My daughters are fine young women leading successful lives and I am very proud of both of them. Unfortunately, as they like to remind me, I can't take any credit for the way they turned out.
Finally, my theory isn't really about peers: It's about the human inclination to affiliate with a group. I use findings from social psychology and ideas from evolutionary psychology to account for the evidence that parents have little or no influence on their offspring's adult personality, intelligence, social behavior or mental health.
Alice Dreger got that right. The parents of troublesome or troubled children too often get blamed and too seldom get the help they need and the sympathy they deserve. That's one reason I wrote the book.