Parenting technique is highly overrated. When it comes to early test scores, it’s not so much what you do as a parent, it’s who you are.
It is obvious that children of successful, well-educated parents have a built-in advantage over the children of struggling, poorly educated parents. Call it a privilege gap. —Dubner and Levitt —Do Parents Matter? (USA Today (will expire))
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I can see how the headline, in connection with the excerpt I quoted, might have given that idea. But I think "it's who you are" really matters, because that shows how choices that we make when we are young form us into the people we become.
This story was nothing like I expected from the section you quoted.
I liked this line:
"A book is, in fact, less a cause of intelligence than an indicator."
I thought this one was a good summary of the article:
"So it isn't that parents don't matter. Clearly, they matter an awful lot. It's just that by the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago ? what kind of education a parent got, how hard he worked to build a career, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children."