At what point does wanting to become more affluent become greed and is it a good thing or a bad thing? Is there a cut-off point? It seems to me that we are sending mixed messages to our children.

Great article underlining the period of early childhood's importance. It is unfortunate that this period sometimes coincides with a lack of maturity, stability and skills in the parent. Is this where society should assist the less fortunate? Are we doing enough of that? Would we rather let poorly raised children turn into criminals and then demand tough law and order to punish them? Is the law and order approach over a crime prevention/early intervention effort the best economic decision let alone the best decision for producing a relatively low-crime, secure and successful Australian society? In our demands for lower taxes that lead to a lack of government resources to properly tackle early childhood support, are we just being short-sightedly selfish?

In Britain there is a survey of over 11,000 people all born in one week in 1958 and surveyed regularly ever since (Australia unfortunately has nothing like it). A few years ago I analysed this extraordinary data set to identify which factors in childhood had most impact on job success by age 33. The answer, in a nutshell, was: intellectual ability explains 17% of success; motivation and ambition (the things Nick Gruen is talking about) explains 5%; school and post-school qualifications 6%; parental interest in the child's education when growing up 3%; the parents' social class ("which side of the tracks you are born on") 3%; parents' aspirations for the child 1%. But 65% of success is unexplained by any measurable factor. Conclusion: Your intellectual ability is key, early intervention can probably have some small, marginal impact by raising motivation, but the future is wide open and your life is what you make it.

Interesting info, Peter Saunders. Don't know about your conclusion though. Given that in 65% of cases in the study you quoted could not be explained, shouldn't the conclusion be: 'que sera, sera'; 'pot luck'; or even, 'what the...?'

I think Peter Saunders’ conclusion is that there is no significant payback in throwing money at bad parents.

If only our nanny state and Family Law would acknowledge such things … children may finally get their choice of better parents.

Actually, it's mostly genetics.

Separate identical twins at birth, and adopt them to random parents, locate them whan they are adults and their IQ almost identical... genetics is 80% of IQ.

Social learning is about having a curious mind and an engaging personaility. Social learning is also largely genetic. Tall parents normally have tall kids... curious and engaging parents have curious and engaging kids.

What does impress me is how hard researchers look for obscure explainations to obscure and deny the bleeding obvious...

READ MY LIPS It's genetics