Judith Rich Harris facts for kids

Judith Rich Harris (born February 10, 1938 – died December 29, 2018) was an American psychology researcher. She wrote important books like The Nurture Assumption. This book questioned the common idea that parents are the most important influence on how children develop. She showed evidence that went against this belief.

Judith Rich Harris lived in Middletown Township, New Jersey.

Early Life and Education

Judith Rich Harris was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1938. Her family moved around the United States when she was young. They finally settled in Tucson, Arizona. The dry weather there was good for her father, who had a health condition called ankylosing spondylitis. This is a type of autoimmune disease that affects the spine.

She finished high school at Tucson High School. Then she went to the University of Arizona and later Brandeis University. She graduated from Brandeis in 1959 with high honors, called magna cum laude. She later joined a Ph.D. program in psychology at Harvard University. However, she left in 1960 because her work was considered too original for their standards. She still earned a master's degree in psychology.

Research and Discoveries

In the late 1970s, Harris created a special math model. This model helped explain how our eyes and brain process what we see. Her work was published in a science journal.

After 1981, she started writing textbooks about how children grow and develop. She wrote The Child (1984) and Infant and Child (1992) with another author, Robert Liebert.

In 1994, she came up with a new idea about child development. She thought that a child's peer group (their friends and other kids their age) was more important than their family in shaping them. This idea was published in a well-known psychology journal in 1995. It even won an award called the George A. Miller Award. Interestingly, George A. Miller was the head of the psychology department at Harvard when she left the program years before.

The Nurture Assumption

Harris's most famous book is The Nurture Assumption. It was first published in 1998, and an updated version came out in 2009.

In this book, she challenged a very common idea. This idea is that how adults act and who they become is mostly decided by how their parents raised them. She looked at many studies that seemed to show parents' influence. But she argued that most of these studies didn't properly consider genetic influences. For example, if parents who are often angry have angry children, it might not just be because the children learned from them. It could also be that the children inherited genes for aggressiveness.

She also pointed out that how parents and children act alike could go both ways. Children might influence their parents just as much as parents influence their children. The book suggests that influences outside the home are very important for how children learn to act in society. Friends and other kids (peers) are especially important in shaping a child's personality.

No Two Alike

Her next book, No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality, came out in 2006. In this book, Harris tried to explain why people are so different. This is true even for identical twins who grow up in the same house.

She suggested that three different systems help shape a person's personality:

• A relationship system helps us tell family members from strangers. It also helps us recognize different people.
• A socialization system helps us learn how to be part of a group. It also helps us learn the group's culture and rules.
• A status system helps us understand ourselves. It does this by comparing us to other people.

No Two Alike built on the ideas from The Nurture Assumption. It also tried to answer some of the questions people had about her first book. For example, Harris said that her message was not "Parents are not important." Instead, she stressed that parents are important in other ways. They help create the first important relationships for their children. They also largely decide the quality of life within the home. Harris believed that a happy home life is good in itself. It's not just good because it might lead to a happy adulthood.

Personal Life

Judith Rich Harris married Charles S. Harris in 1961. They had two daughters, one of whom was adopted. They also had four grandchildren.

From 1977, Harris had a long-term health problem. It was an autoimmune disorder, which means her body's immune system attacked its own healthy tissues. It was diagnosed as a mix of lupus and systemic sclerosis. She passed away on December 29, 2018. Her friend, the scientist Steven Pinker, shared the news on social media.

See also

In Spanish: Judith Rich Harris para niños

• Nature versus nurture