The changing social world that children make: Reflections on Harris's critique of the nurture assumption.

• Children's peers may be less sympathetic than parents, making reputation management a prominent concern. • Modern parental protectiveness, smaller families, and increasing age segregation have weakened childhood peer culture. • Each generation of children thus has to invent its own culture rather than inherit it from older children. • Age segregation also removes some early experiences of social hierarchy. If children are socialized less by their parents than their peer group, psychology may fruitfully adapt social psychology's exploration of group processes for understanding how children develop. Concerns with self-presentation, reputation, and learning subtle norms may emerge earlier and more strongly than would be the case if children were primarily interacting with their parents. The peer group culture of childhood may be a self-perpetuating culture that is somewhat independent of and possibly in opposition to the adult culture and parents' attempts to prepare children for adulthood. Modern trends such as increasing age segregation and play-dates with adult supervision may hamper the transmission of children's and adolescents' peer culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]