Alright Already

Scarr's idea of "good enough" parenting suggests parents needn't worry about being perfect, super-involved parents in order to produce the most successful kids possible; as long as they provide their children with a warm, encouraging and safe home environment, the kids are gonna turn out pretty much ok.

Scarr argues that it doesn't matter whether or not parents push their kids to join x-amount of clubs, be the top of the class, the crème de la crème, etc. If anything, parents should be more concerned with their kid's genetic make up, because genes are actually what dictate how your child(ren) will turn out. Don't waste your money on all those parenting books; children are born already coded to be who/what they're gonna be.

 Parents might not take kindly to Scarr's assertions that (with the exception of parents who are abusive/neglectful/outside of the normal range) they perhaps aren't as crucial to/in control of their children's development as they might like to think. They would need a lot of convincing before buying into Scarr's notion of "good enough" parenting. A listener might be convinced if given examples of twin/adoption studies, as mentioned in the Psychology Today article linked in Dr. Risser's prompt. They might also be swayed if they were provided with information concerning the ways genes affect behavior and IQ.

The biggest problem I find with Scarr's "there's no need to be a super-parent, it doesn't matter, do what comes naturally" argument is that it's contradictory;  so called "super-parents" are probably doing what comes naturally to them already.  Every parent (i.e. every parent within the normal range) wants their child to succeed in life, and this want for their children to have better than they did will have some impact on their individual parenting styles. Scarr's stress on one's genetic makeup is, for me, the  most convincing aspect of her argument. Our genes have incredible impact on our development, however I don't think they work independently of our environments. Nature and nurture go hand in hand, as our genes are constantly interacting with our environments.  While Scarr's argument had a few interesting points, I'm not buying it.