Pinker puts the number around 10% as I remember. And, yes, he's aware of all the qualifications that attend such a crude number.
The ability to talk is obviously a significant trait. But it is not an extraordinary one. Everybody uses language in some form (a subject in which Pinker is strongly versed.) What language you speak is decidedly less significant and something most parents don't get to choose. I'd be surprised if the differential impact among parents on this point was even 1%. Most kids don't end up speaking like their parents. They end up speaking like their peers.
Dropping a kid on her head or locking her in a closet for her teenage years (with or without a violin) are obvious ways a parent could have a more extraordinary impact on her child's development, but, happily, they are not very typical.
Harris and Pinker's point is that parents have a pretty perfunctory role in a child's development (feed, protect, provide the rudiments of cognitive development) and much less influence than most people generally suppose (probably, most of all, parents that think they are having an impact). What influence they do have is regularly mixed up with genetic characteristics that the child has inherited.
Chua's argument seems to reinforce the point: to move the needle requires draconian measures.
My point with language was it's simply an obvious one. There are a great many traits from our parents that affect us strongly on a subconscious level.
Besides, saying "yeah, we have parents, but we all end up the same regardless" is a total cop-out when you turn around and say "yeah, we have genes, but they count for a wild fluctuation of 50% - far more important in the development than any other factor". Which is odd. We all have eyes. Arms. Legs. Lungs. Run, walk, cry, think, breathe, eat, excrete, suffer cold and hot. If you're trying to paint this theoretical 100% influence total as "that which makes us individual from each other", then it's farcical to say "parents don't count because we all end up with the basics" but somehow genes get special treatment. The fact that some of us have red hair and some don't doesn't count for 50% of our individuality.
If such minor differences between people really counted for 50% of our differentiation, then there'd be far more homogeneity in personality for people of average height, average build, and average attractiveness. Those numbers are simply plucked from the air.
The ability to talk is obviously a significant trait. But it is not an extraordinary one. Everybody uses language in some form (a subject in which Pinker is strongly versed.) What language you speak is decidedly less significant and something most parents don't get to choose. I'd be surprised if the differential impact among parents on this point was even 1%. Most kids don't end up speaking like their parents. They end up speaking like their peers.
Dropping a kid on her head or locking her in a closet for her teenage years (with or without a violin) are obvious ways a parent could have a more extraordinary impact on her child's development, but, happily, they are not very typical.
Harris and Pinker's point is that parents have a pretty perfunctory role in a child's development (feed, protect, provide the rudiments of cognitive development) and much less influence than most people generally suppose (probably, most of all, parents that think they are having an impact). What influence they do have is regularly mixed up with genetic characteristics that the child has inherited.
Chua's argument seems to reinforce the point: to move the needle requires draconian measures.