The Nurture Assumption, by Judith Rich Harris (Bloomsbury, £9.99)

"They [you-know-what], your mum and dad, they do not mean to but they do" having become probably the most common poetic epigraph of the late 20th century (it even appears on the front page of Gary Indiana's superb Resentment, which seems odd considering the novel is set in Los Angeles and not Hull), it is pleasant to read a book which argues that this is not the case at all.

Harris's book comes emblazoned with a quote from Stephen Pinker, celebrity brainbox and particularly expert in child language acquisition: "a turning point in the history of psychology". In his foreword he tells of how an article by Harris in Psychological Review, the germ of this book, "forever changed the way [he thought] about childhood and children." Harris's thesis - resisted by many who read the Psychological Review piece because she was (gasp!) not connected to any university - is that parents don't matter, not that much, when it comes to what or how their children turn out like; that what matters much more is their peer group.

This is perhaps not as big news as Harris and Pinker make out, for most of us have an intuitive sense of how we are not like our parents, or the variables that make us largely unpredictable; but there is something necessary about the thrust of this book, which goes against the current of contemporary received ideas: namely that, one way or another, we are completely helpless, incapable of influencing our destiny in the face of either our genetic or our psychological inheritance. (And those gurus who say that we are capable of changing ourselves, the self-help crowd, are so moronic or inanely gung-ho that no sane person takes them seriously for a second.)

Actually, Harris still says we are helpless, that it is our peer group that influences us most as children; and that, since it all happened a long way back, as far as current parents are concerned, there is no sense in beating yourself up about these things. Harris has some fun, as is so easy to do, with previous child-care experts. Such as John B Watson, who thought that hugging children turned them into milksops. "If you must," he wrote, "kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning." (The big softy.) "Give them a pat on the head if they have made an extraordinarily good job of a difficult task." Going a bit too far in the opposite direction is Dr Marianne Neifert, who writes under the pseudonym "Dr Mom", which is I think enough for you to know right now, especially if you are reading this over breakfast.

There is a more serious side to Harris's argument, and there is a reason to recommend it even though it has its flaws (and is written in a kind of jokey, sub-Pinkerish manner which is not quite as funny as she thinks it is, although it has its moments). It is the fact that our government seems to be keen on embracing the notion that parents can be held as not only responsible but accountable for their wayward children's actions. The truant's parents are fined for their child's transgressions. Even the most cursory reading of Harris - by, say, a junior civil servant, who could place a precis on a minister's desk in an afternoon - will show that, if the child is over 10 years old, the idea is a non-starter; and will lead to far more problems than it purports to solve, and could lead to an almighty and intractable mess. But at least we don't have child-care columnists called "Dr Mom". I mean, Jesus.