The central question of this book is: How do children get socialized—how do they learn to behave like normal, acceptable members of their society? What shapes the raw material of the infant’s temperament into the finished product of the adult’s personality? These may sound like two separate, almost unrelated questions—indeed, they are the subject matter of separate, almost unrelated schools of psychology—but from my point of view they are two sides of the same coin. For children, socialization consists largely of learning how to behave when they’re in the presence of other people. And an adult’s personality consists largely of how he or she behaves in the presence of other people. In a social species like our own, most behavior is social behavior. I am sitting here all by myself, but nonetheless I am engaging in social behavior. If you weren’t ever going to read what I’m typing into my computer, what would be the point?

Children have to learn to behave in a way that is appropriate for the society they live in. The problem is that people in their society don’t all behave the same way. In every society, people behave differently according to whether they are children or adults, males or females, single or married, princes or peons. What children have to do first is to figure out what sort of people they are—which social category they belong in. Then they have to learn to behave like the other members of their social category.

You’re trying very hard to show everyone what a great person you are, and the best way to do that is if everyone else is drinking therefore they think that’s the thing to do, then you might do the same thing to prove to them that you have the same values that they do and therefore you’re okay. At the same time, the idea of peer pressure is a lot of bunk. What I heard about peer pressure all the way through school is that someone is going to walk up to me and say “Here, drink this and you’ll be cool.” It wasn’t like that at all.

As Lightfoot summed it up, “Peer pressure is less a push to conform than a desire to participate in experiences that are seen as relevant, or potentially relevant, to group identity.”24 Teenagers seldom need to be pushed to conform to the norms of their group; that got settled a long time ago, in childhood.

The prodigy is an interesting case; many of these kids seem to come with their own built-in motivation. If it isn’t there to begin with, I doubt a parent could provide it. In fact, often it is the child who is the prime mover and the parent who becomes the servant of the child’s consuming interest. Intellectually gifted children receive certain things from their parents that less gifted children do not get—books, computers, trips to the museum—but they get them because they demand them. It is not the parents who are pushing: it is the child.

The danger in raising a prodigy is that many of these kids lack a peer group—they miss out on normal relationships with other kids their age. Children who do not have normal peer relationships are at risk of turning out peculiar. Though garden-variety gifted children generally fare very well, the true prodigies—the ones who are off the chart—have more than their share of psychological problems.14 Sometimes there is not much a parent can do: some kids are so intellectually advanced that they have nothing in common with their agemates. Some kids really don’t want to do anything except practice golf or gymnastics or chess. But if parents were more aware of the importance of peers, perhaps they would try harder to see that their kid had some.

Not that being rejected by one’s peers is the end of the world. It hurts like hell while it’s happening and it does leave permanent scars, but it doesn’t keep a kid from being socialized (you can identify even with a group that rejects you), and I’ve noticed that many interesting people went through a period of rejection during childhood. Or got moved around a lot, which has similar effects. I was moved around a lot as a child and went through four years of rejection, and there is no doubt that I would have been a different person if it hadn’t happened. A more sociable person, but more superficial. Certainly not a writer of books—a job that has as its first requirement the willingness to spend a good deal of time alone. [...]

People sometimes ask me, “So you mean it doesn’t matter how I treat my child?” They never ask, “So you mean it doesn’t matter how I treat my husband?” or “So you mean it doesn’t matter how I treat my wife?” And yet the situation is similar. I don’t expect that the way I act toward my husband today is going to determine what kind of person he will be tomorrow. I do expect, however, that it will affect how happy he is to live with me and whether we will remain good friends.

You can learn things from the person you’re married to. Marriage can change your opinions and influence your choice of a career or a religion. But it doesn’t change your personality, except in temporary, context-dependent ways. A man might be tender with his wife and tough with his employees, or vice versa. A woman married to a man who constantly belittled her might look sad or worried whenever she was near him. If she stuck with him despite the belittling and wore a hangdog expression even when he wasn’t around, you couldn’t be sure—could you?—whether her personality problems were the cause of her unhappy situation (the reason why she married this jerk and why she doesn’t leave him) or an effect (the result of all the belittling). In fact, you might blame her depression and passivity on her mother, who got her used to being belittled when she was a child. You would be wrong, but you would be admitting that she had these problems before she married the jerk.

The idea that we can make our children turn out any way we want is an illusion. Give it up. Children are not empty canvases on which parents can paint their dreams.

Don’t worry about what the advice-givers tell you. Love your kids because kids are lovable, not because you think they need it. Enjoy them. Teach them what you can. Relax. How they turn out is not a reflection on the care you have given them. You can neither perfect them nor ruin them. They are not yours to perfect or ruin: they belong to tomorrow.

The nurture assumption has introduced an element of phoniness into family life. It has made sincere expressions of love meaningless because they are drowned out by the obligatory, feigned expressions of love.