Bringing up children is hard work, and you are often to blame for any bad behavior of your children. If so, Judith Rich Harris has good news for you. Parents, she argues, have no important long -term effects on the development of the personality of their children. Far more important are their playground friends and neighborhood. Ms. Harris takes to hitting the assumption, which has dominated  developmental psychology for almost half a century. Ms. Harris's attack on the developmental psychologists' "nurture" argument looks likely to reinforce  doubts that the profession was already having. If parents matter, why is it that two adopted children, brought up in the same home, are no more similar in personality than two adopted children brought up in separate homes? Or that a pair of identical twins, brought up in the same home, are no more alike than a pair of identical twins brought up in different homes? Difficult as it is to track the clear effects of parental upbringing, it may be harder to measure the exact influence of the peer  group in childhood and adolescence. Ms. Harris points to how children from immigrant homes soon learn not to speak at school in the way their parents speak. But acquiring a language is surely a skill, rather than a characteristic of the sort developmental psychologists hunt for. Certainly it is different from growing up tensely or relaxed, or from learning to be honest or hard -working or generous. Easy though it may be to prove that parents have little impact on those qualities, it will be hard to prove that peers have vastly more. Moreover, mum and dad surely cannot be ignored completely. Young adults may, as Ms. Harris argues, be keen to appear like their peers. But even in those early years, parents have the power to open doors: they may choose the peers with whom their young associate, and pick that influential neighborhood. Moreover, most people suspect that they come to resemble their parents more in middle age. So the balance of influences is probably complicated. Even if it turns out that the genes they pass on and the friends their children play with matter as much as affection, discipline and good example, parents are not completely off the hook The developmental psychologists think  _  .
children are more influenced by their peers identical twins raised in the same home are different in personality twins raised in two separate families are different in personality upbringing has a less significant effect on children's personality development