The Parent Trap

If "The Nurture Assumption" acts as a corrective to the hectoring message of so many books on child rearing, then it will have served a noble function. It lands at a time when many parents are terrified that failing to lock eyes with their newborn or not playing Mozart in the nursery or--God forbid--losing it when their kid misbehaves will ruin him for life. One of Harris's "primary motivations for writing the book," she says in an e-mail, was "to lighten the burden of guilt and blame placed on the parents of "problem' children." Her timing is perfect: millions of baby boomers, having blamed Mom and Dad for all that ails them, can now be absolved of blame for how their own children turn out. Harris is already receiving their thanks. As one mother wrote, "We parents of the difficult children need all the support and understanding we can get." Clearly, the idea that actions have consequences, that behavior matters and that there is such a thing as personal responsibility to those who trust you is fighting for its life. Near the end of "The Nurture Assumption," Harris bemoans the "tendency to carry things to extremes, to push ideas beyond their logical limits." Everyone who cares about children can only hope that readers bring the same skepticism.

Is there a magic formula for raising a successful child? Or is biology destiny? Some famous names talk about the people who made them what they are.

FRANK MCCOURT

Family was his inspiration

I think Freud would laugh at the idea of parents' being irrelevant. I know I wasn't affected by my peers as much as by my family, because I went home and there was sitting by the fire and there was breaking of bread. Our experience was very intense. We got the gift of gab from our parents. Everybody told stories because there was nothing else. Son, mother, father, daughter: this is the stuff of literature. Every memoir I know is an exploration of family. It begins with the child at the breast. You can't deny that. You can't say the kid is looking over the mother's shoulder. The baby is completely absorbed in what it's getting from the mother. When can you say that stops? Who is ever weaned?

JAMIE LEE CURTIS