To the Editor:

In commenting on An Unconventional Family by Sandra Lipsitz Bern [“Among the Gender Benders,” January], Wendy Shalit notes that despite the bizarre child-rearing practices of this feminist author, the children basically came out okay, unscarred by the process. What better confirmation could there be of Judith Rich Harris’s thesis in The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (see Mary Eberstadt’s article “What are Parents For?,” in the December 1998 COMMENTARY)? Fortunately, genes and peers triumph over the best intentions of feminist parents.

Richard M. Kuntz
Chicago, Illinois

Mark Venezia
Boston, Massachusetts

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