Jay Belsky, "Nature of Nurture: Rethinking Why and How Childhood Adversity Shapes Development" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Children who grow up in troubled circumstances―experiencing

deprivation or instability, living in a dangerous neighborhood or an

abusive family―are more prone to aggression, recklessness, and sexual

promiscuity later in life. To most of us, the lesson is clear: adverse

childhood conditions make human development go awry.

In The Nature of Nurture: Rethinking Why and How Childhood Adversity Shapes Development (Harvard

University Press, 2026), renowned developmental psychologist Jay Belsky

challenges this interpretation and offers an exciting alternative based

on Darwinian theory. There is no reason to assume, he points out, that

the psychology of “well-behaved” people is normal while that of

“antisocial” adults is aberrant. Instead, the supposedly dysfunctional

behaviors correlated with childhood adversity could well be ingenious