More from Judith Rich Harris (Excerpts from pages 50-100):
"The patterns of behavior that are acquired in sibling relationships neither help us nor hinder us in our dealings with other people. They leave no permanent marks on our character. If they did, researchers would be able to see their effects on personality tests given to adults: firstborns and laterborns would have somewhat different personalities in adulthood. As I reported in the previous chapter (also see Appendix 1), birth order effects do not turn up in the majority of studies of adult personality. They do, however, turn up in the majority of studies of one particular kind: the kind in which subjects’ personalities are judged by their parents or siblings. When parents are asked to describe their children, they are likely to say that their firstborn is more serious, methodical, responsible, and anxious than their laterborns. When a younger brother or sister is asked to describe the firstborn, a word that often turns up is “bossy.” What we’re getting is a picture of the way the subject behaves at home. At home there are birth order effects, no question about it, and I believe that is why it’s so hard to shake people’s faith in them. If you see people with their parents or their siblings, you do see the differences you expect to see. The oldest does seem more serious, responsible, and bossy. The youngest does behave in a more carefree fashion. But that’s how they act when they’re together. These patterns of behavior are not like albatrosses that we have to drag along with us wherever we go, all through our lives. We don’t even drag them to nursery school.”
“If immigrant parents insist that their children continue to address them in their native language—that is, the parents’ native language—the children may do so, but their ability to communicate in that language will remain childish, while their ability to communicate in the outside-the-home language continues to grow. Here’s a young Chinese-American woman, the child of immigrants, who went to Harvard:
I had never discussed literature or philosophy with my parents. We talked about our health, the weather, that night’s dinner—all in Cantonese, since they do not speak English. While at Harvard, I ran out of words to communicate with my parents.
I literally did not have the Cantonese vocabulary to explain the classes I was taking or my field of concentration.
Many immigrant parents see their children losing the language and culture of their homeland and try very hard to prevent it.
They dream in English. It makes no difference whether the first language they learned from their parents was English or Bengali, English has become their “native language.” Joseph spoke nothing but Polish for the first seven and a half years of his life, but if he remains in the United States his “native language” will not be Polish. As an adult he will think in English, dream in English, do his arithmetic and his calculus in English. He may forget his Polish entirely. Parents do not have to teach their children the language of their community; in fact—hard as it may be for you to accept this—they do not have to teach their children any language at all. The language lessons we give our infants and toddlers are a peculiarity of our culture.
Bilingualism is simply the most conspicuous marker of context-specific socialization—socialization that is tied to a particular social context.”
“Our ancestors spent the past six million years—all but the last little bit of it—as hunter-gatherers, living in small nomadic groups. They survived by triumphing over a hazardous environment, and the greatest hazard in that environment was the enemy group. The lives of hunter-gatherer children depended more on their group’s survival than on their parents’, because even if their parents died they had a chance of surviving if their group did. Their best hope of success was to become a valuable group member as quickly and convincingly as possible. Once they were past the age of weaning they belonged, not just to their parents, but to the group. Their future prospects depended, not on making their parents love them, but on getting along with the other members of the group—in particular, the members of their own generation, the people with whom they would spend the rest of their lives. The child’s mind—the mind of the modern child—is a product of those six million years of evolutionary history. In the next chapter you will see how it reveals itself in the child’s social behavior."