Peers' versus Parents' Influence

I believe that parents play a vital role in influencing children during the development process as they create a lasting impact on the child’s overall development as well as on the socialization development. As children grow, they encompass a number of factors influencing their attitudes along with the behavior of that child. These attitudes and characteristics are learned initially from their parents. I also believe that when we are in middle school is when we want to be different to fit in with our peers. We see our peers and believe that the things they are doing are cool; we also want them to like us so we start to do the same things as them, which shows then that friends start to influence us more than adults.
Parents who are involved with their children, who know where they are after school and have met most of their friends, have a positive effect on their children’s lives. Parents who are involved in their children’s lives are more likely to have children who are less likely to participate in risky behaviors such as smoking or drinking alcohol. Children with involved parents seem to have better self-esteem and perform better in school. Children observe parents and their behaviors and are more likely to follow in their parents examples. Behaviors demonstrated by parents affect a child’s habits.
An example of how peers can have more influence then parents from my own life who be when I was in middle school, at the time I was hangout with girls who were not a good influence on me, I know this know but at the time I thought my parents were not wanting me to have friends. Those friends would always be late to school and class, at this school we had seven different classes and had five minutes to get to each c...

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...ents go on addressing them in their natural language, but the children reply in English. What the children of immigrants end up with is not a compromise, not a blend. They end up pure and simple with the language and culture of their peers” (pg. 30).
In Howard Garner’s argument, I can see where he has a point when he stated that “Harris and most of the authorities that she cites are not studying child rearing in general, indeed they are studying child-rearing largely in the white, middle-class United States during the last half century” (pg. 43). I believe as I had stated earlier that both our parents and peers could influence us in different points in our lives. However, for Judith Harris to have a better argument she could have used more studies outside of the United States. Nevertheless, either way both peers or parents have a major impact on our lives.