For decades, millions of parents have been told that they are primarily responsible for things gone wrong with their children. Mothers and fathers have internalized this message, producing an unrealistic and damaging sense of guilt, and even betrayal. Parents do affect their children, but how much? Our children are not born as blank slates.

They come to us encrypted with their own predilections, biases, strengths, and weaknesses, many of which are as beyond the control of parents as determining their child's gender or eye color. Here, for the first time, is a scientifically grounded examination of the controversial idea that nature - in the form of genetic blueprints - may have far more influence on how children develop than a particular style of parenting.

Parents reeling from the idea that they don't have much impact on how their children think, feel, and behave, will find both surprise and comfort in psychologist David Cohen's account of the importance, and limits, of inborn traits.