Customer Reviews

Stranger in the Nest: Do Parents Really Shape Their Child's Personality, Intelligence, or Character?

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David Cohen presents an outstanding look at what makes us who we are. This book has a strong academic foundation, presented in an intelligent and humorous style making it a pleasure to read. Cohen's last book, "Out of the Blue" has become a classic reference for the clinician interested in depression. Stranger in the nest seems destined to become an indispensable volume in the ongoing debate about nature versus nurture and the role of parents in a child's development. Many diverse issues are discussed and many difficult questions are articulated. This is a very satisfying contribution to a field where important questions abound and research continues.

In Stranger in the Nest, David Cohen skeptically examines the role of parents in shaping their childrens' lives. The book is loaded with examples from dozens of studies of twins, adoptions, and family life. Cohen concludes that children are shaped by their genetic endowment more than their parents' style of rearing.

Although he does an excellent job of highlighting the confounds, difficulties, and overgeneralizations from many areas of psychological research, his contribution to the field is neither novel nor particularly readable. Cohen points out that correlations between parental behavior and child behavior are confounded by their relatedness, and in so doing illustrates the fundamental problems with research in this area. He returns again and again to relatedness, or genetics, as the answer to why children resemble their parents.

In this regard, Cohen was beaten to the punch by Judith Rich Harris' book, The Nurture Assumption. The Nurture Assumption is a much better book than Stranger in the Nest, in part because it covers both the child's peer environment, his home environment, and his genetic endowment all at the same time and in greater depth than Cohen does. Cohen's book is also defective in that it presents no organizing hypothesis or overarching framework: it is a series of detached anecdotes and synopses of various studies, interspersed too liberally with rhetorical questions.

I agree with Cohen's thesis that genetics matters more to childhood outcomes that we usually acknowledge, and often more than parental nurturance. I found the author's style too dense and punchy, skipping from point to point and not analyzing each major aspect of parenting in sufficient depth.

Those interested in this book would find essentially the same argument and a lot more from Judith Rich Harris, and a more enjoyable and better organized book, to boot.

As a teacher, I was struck by Cohen's ability to communicate highly technical research findings in a clear, vivid, and highly readable manner to an educated lay readership (the intended audience). As a scientist, I was deeply impressed by the rigor and intellectual honesty with which you approached the central issues at have. And as a parent, I was grateful for the opportunity to understand more fully the limits of my own influence over the personalities and characters of my two children.

The central theme of the manuscript obviously runs counter the most of the conventional wisdom about child rearing and its effects. But when one considers the heavy and unfair burden of responsibility that many parents have felt when their children have suffered from such maladies as autism, drug addiction, and sociopathy, it is high time that this conventional wisdom-with its almost complete absence of scientific foundation-must be challenged by responsible scientists.
This is a profoundly compassionate book. . . . I will recommend it enthusiastically to friends and colleagues who themselves have experienced similar family problems. In writing this book, which I know has been a labor of love, Cohen has performed a great service, both intellectually and morally.

Today the result of our obsession with NOT being responsible.....has reached ghastly proportions.....three year olds being drugged to the gills because parents are keen to note abnormalities they might have been able to accept.......kids being drugged before any symptoms show....people dying from misuse of these drugs...etc...etc....

I mean what did we expect?

Psychotherapy has failed because the talking cure doesn't help most people and it is too expensive and everyone is so screwed up most people couldn't get a good shrink if they waited (or saved up) for twenty years.

And now we know most problems aren't "psychological" anyway (except in the results!!) but "genetic".

This begs the question, and encourages the misuse of the unethical pharmaceutical technology, as well as an approach to childrearing that is too sophisticated for most parents. Too many built in contradictions. Too much unreality. I mean if a child is failing in school what parent is going to love the kid MORE because of "bad genes"....when logic dictates the parent will feel MORE helpless, and MORE at a loss re: any interventions....and communicate this to the child. Even while collecting prescriptions for any ominous-sounding drugs!

The "science" of gene mapping has gotten way out of hand, and this is only one result.

How about lets clean up the environment of the deadly toxins that cause genetic mutations and strange phenotypic outcomes....and quit assuming that in this toxic soup of a planet, more chemicals piled on top of already overpolluted and toxic kids will produce outcomes more in line with our narcissistic daydreams of personal success and personal happiness.

Dr. Cohen seems like a nice guy but he had no idea what the implications of his beliefs were...any more than any other ivory-tower type who confuses "artifacts" with "results".....and pretends to be objective when it is ALWAYS easy to be "objective" when describing the phenomenon of a degraded human spirit...due to things that are understandable and controllable...compared the dissolving mystery of the human genome....and then the silent question "What now?"

In the absence of environmental solutions the dissolving mystery of the human genome will just be one more problem.....now that we know why we are the genetic creatures we are, who can help us with our massive and growing social psychological and spiritual disconnect from a world we can only now dream about....?

Dr. Cohen has written a very compassionate-seeming book....but mostly it just reiterates the "Puritan Ethic"...which states that if you get what you need instead of someone else getting it, it it because you were more virtuous and therefore one should not have strive to make it possible for more (or most) of us to get what they need. Pride of accomplishment....a feeling of being the "best" in some things...etc....are only things achieved on one's own.....and I say EVERYONE wants what the luckiest have. Most people are also too humble to admit it.

But some people who should know better actually know better. If massive environmental assaults are hurting the land and water and air and other species.....why should we humans be exempt? And why does ignoring a global assault on the well-being of all life....protect ANYONE...least of all those who have played the genetic crap shoot and won?

Maybe people feel "honored" when other people use esoteric and little-understood concepts to "explain" human behavior, and maybe that's why they latch onto them.

Bad reason though.

Maybe we can learn enough so that the kids would not be born that way to begin with...... except for the occasional Ethan Hawke character in "Gattica"....who had enough basic intelligence and character to succeed in spite of all predictions. But I'm referring mostly to those who could never ever be anyone's role model on any level.

And make no mistake....these people are very much blaming themselves.

It's not a pretty picture.

And there is NO drug to help these ones. A more humane society would go a LONG way to help..... As well as DOING something with genetics-education that amounts to more than continuing with the same old thing....rewarding our gifted children and shaming the rest of them.

We HAVE got to do better than this!

The distinctive point in this book is that the "somewhat chancy interactive effects of nature and nurture are surprisingly perverse." This is a crucial point for the so-called 'nature-nurture' debate. There is a lot yet to be understood about gene-environment developmental transactions. This book is worth reading as a step along the way.

I couldn't put this book down. Dr. Cohen gives a lot of fascinating evidence in the nature vs. nurture debate. Written in highly entertaining and accessible prose!

"Stranger in the Nest" really has impact. I've been quoting it every day. Cohen makes a great case: we do not-and cannot control as much as we thought-and it's okay. Hell of a book! I'm still thinking about it. This book will really throw some heads.

This books gave me a better understanding of my adopted sister. It is a must read for those touched in any way by adoption.

Terrific 360 narrative on nature/nurture issues augmented by Dr. Cohen's personal insights. Great questions raised and answered. For instance, "Is a balanced view of nature/nurture really necessary?" Deliciously funny, too, making it a very good read.