Nurturing Tiger Moms

Bryan Caplan discusses Tiger Mother Amy Chua and I’m completely on-board until he says the following:

But hasn’t all the musical practice indelibly shaped Chua’s children’s characters?  Highly unlikely.  Behavioral genetics finds roughly zero effect of parents on personality.

I think this is a misinterpretation of The Nurture Assumption. The theory states that a large part of a child’s personality is environmental, that is, “nurture” but that this influence is mostly from peers rather than parents or teachers. What I think Caplan forgets is that parents can have an impact on children by indirectly influencing who their peers will be.

For instance, parents can influence their children’s personalities indirectly by the neighbourhood they choose to live in. If I remember correctly, Judith Rich Harris claims that the age of the parent(s) and whether a child is raised by a single parent has zero impact on child personality once you correct for the neighbourhood influence.

In her WSJ article, Chua says the following:

Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

How many of these rules do you think will significantly affect the relationship these children have with their peers? I’m guessing it is non-zero and possibly as important as neighbourhood/school choice.