is born in Daytona Beach, Florida, and his mother abandons him at the age of two. His father has a good job in sales but is a heavy drinker. He often beats the little boy with the metal end of a garden hose. One night when the boy is eleven, he is decorating a tabletop Christmas tree-the first one he has ever had-when his fa- ther starts beating up a lady friend in the kitchen. He hits her so hard that some teeth fly out of her mouth and land at the base of the boys Christmas tree, but the boy knows better than to speak up. At school he makes no effort whatsoever. Before long he is selling drugs, mug- ging suburbanites, carrying a gun. He makes sure to be asleep by the time his father come home from drinking, and to be out of the house before his father awakes. The father eventually goes to jail for sexual assault. By the age of twelve, the boy is essentially fending for himself. You dont have to believe in obsessive parenting to think that the second boy doesnt stand a chance and that the first boy has it made. What are the odds that the second boy, with the added handicap of racial discrimination, will turn out to lead a productive life? What are the odds that the first boy, so deftly primed for success, will somehow fail? And how much of his fate should each boy attribute to his par- ents?       One could theorize forever about what makes the perfect parent. For two reasons, the authors of this book will not do so. The first is that     neither of us professes to be a parenting expert (although between us we do have six children under the age of five). The second is that we are less persuaded by parenting theory than by what the data have to say. Certain facets of a childs outcome-personality, for instance, or creativity-are not easily measured by data. But school performance is. And since most parents would agree that education lies at the core