Great Performance !

Most innovations in the field of child safety are affiliated with— shock of shocks—a new product to be marketed. (Nearly five million car seats are sold each year.) These products are often a response to some growing scare in which, as Peter Sandman might put it, the outrage outweighs the hazard. Compare the four hundred lives that a few swimming pool precautions might save to the number of lives saved by far noisier crusades: child-resistant packaging (an estimated fifty lives a year), flame-retardant pajamas (ten lives), keeping children away from airbags in cars (fewer than five young children a year have been killed by airbags since their introduction), and safety drawstrings on children’s clothing (two lives).

Hold on a minute, you say. What does it matter if parents are manipulated by experts and marketers? Shouldn’t we applaud any effort, regardless of how minor or manipulative, that makes even one child safer? Don’t parents already have enough to worry about? After all, parents are responsible for one of the most awesomely important feats we know: the very shaping of a child’s character. Aren’t they?

The most radical shift of late in the conventional wisdom on parenting has been provoked by one simple question: how much do parents really matter?

Clearly, bad parenting matters a great deal. As the link between abortion and crime makes clear, unwanted children—who are disproportionately subject to neglect and abuse—have worse outcomes than children who were eagerly welcomed by their parents. But how much can those eager parents actually accomplish for their children’s sake?

This question represents a crescendo of decades’ worth of research. A long line of studies, including research into twins who were separated at birth, had already concluded that genes alone are responsible for perhaps 50 percent of a child’s personality and abilities.

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Taken From : FREAKONOMICS - A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything