To add to the nature vs. nurture debate: One proposal that in some cases, nature will always win out. Dr. Richard Friedman, intrigued by reports from patients he knew to have been “more or less decent parents” that their adult children were mean, unkind, unsympathetic, and rude, suggests in the New York Times that “for better or for worse, parents have limited power to influence their children.” Maybe, he says of one patient’s child, “this young man was just not a nice person.”

Here in Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average, we find that hard to hear.

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