childrens personalities - nature or nurture?

[geniusloci]

How much of a childs personality is inherited and how much is shaped by thier environment? Im interested in your opinions, especially lone parents - how much of the absent parent do you see in your child?

The reason I ask is a very good friend of mine has an 18 month old, whose abusive, vile, controlling dad fecked off when he was 2 months old. Frankly she is better off without him. Now, her ds is lovely in many ways, however he has a hell of a temper and she is worried he will take after his dad. Dont know if this is relevant but she has an older child - different dad - who is lovely and a credit to her parenting.

Ao AIBU in telling her a childs personality is shaped by nurture and not so much nature and that her 18 mo will be fine once he can communicate better?

i am off to walk the dogs but Im interested in your thoughts, thankyou.

My reluctant belief is that it is mostly nature and my thoughts largely mirror teacup's assessment.

I think personality is nature. My dds have different dads and I can see the different ways their personality has been shaped by their genetics. Dd1 has never met her father but he was a confident, musical man, always playing in bands and socialising. Dd1 is also very socially confident, enjoying speaking to other people and sharing her ideas, as well as being musical, playing in orchestras and bands at school. Dd2's dad is much quieter and not one for socialising and dd2 has been a very shy little thing right from being a baby. She is 4 now and still doesn't speak to adults, even ones she knows, if there is more than one person around. She's getting better, and she loves playing with other children, but I don't think she'll ever be a 'people-person'.

How you develop your personality is more nurture. Dd1's father didn't go to school much in secondary because he was never brought up to value it by his mum (and series of step-dads). Dd1 knows how important her education is and she's working really hard because she has ambitions of going to uni and getting herself a career she loves instead of the dead end jobs her father ends up in

Nature, sorry.

My DS has never met his 'bio father' but does show similarities in personality.

Irish I'd understood this more when I was younger.

I have two boys. They Are both raised the same. They couldn't be any different. One is very adventurous and fearless and has been since an early age. My youngest is a complete softy. Very tactile and fearful of things.

It's mostly nature, imho. But nurture can help channel personality traits to be positive instead of negative traits.

Also, I've seen lots of kids with tempers that grew up to be relaxed and mild mannered adults. My DB had one of the worst tempers as a kid, and you'd never know it today. He's one of the most patient people I know. :)

Nature. My DSes have had exactly the same upbringing, schooling, opportunities, love, but differ hugely.

Nature and nurture-There are things you naturally will do/not do due to nature but I think nuture helps develop what we naturally have through nature.

So if a child has a temper, it's the way you deal with it does matter. So if she says "oh dear he's having a temper tantrum. I don't like him doing that, so I'll give in to him" he has learnt that a temper gives him what he wants.
If the reaction to having a temper tantrum is she says "You don't get whatever you wanted-plus you don't get (eg) computer time tonight" he learns that throwing a strop not only means he doesn't get what he wants, but he misses out on something else.

My dm taught identical twins, whom the parents idolised one They refused to believe anything bad of the younger or anything good of the older. Result was by year 11 they had one very badly behaved daughter who thought the world owed her everything, and was going to get very poor results at GCSE. And a lovely, but underconfident daughter who was aiming for a good set of 9 A-C at GCSE.
The school insisted when they got the results that they handed the envelopes to the girls and they opened them then and there because they suspected the parents would swap the results to tell them if they could. They had done this type of thing before.

but you can not make a shy child an extrovert, or make the naturally cautious child suddenly want to be mountaineer or make the child with natural ability for maths into something else

I agree you have to follow the DC lead. However I do think you have to be careful not to use it as a limit.

In my childhood my shyness was used as an excuse to stop me doing a lot of things I wanted to try. My shyness as an adult is still bad – worse as I have to overcome the label and consciously try and not let it limit me.

My DH is shy but was encouraged – not forced – into trying things as a DC. He now has a job where public speaking and being approachable are important and he's been praised for both by collegueges and students and despite being shy there have been times when he's obviously enjoyed being centre of attention.

My own DC despite being shy are fine approaching strange DC in public parks to play with - I think this is years of practise of doing that or being approached. They struggle more at school.

They have done things through school and outside clubs that I worried they wouldn’t enjoy as they were shy but they wanted to try – so we let them and they had a blast.

My babies were different right from the start, in utero even. Personality is nature, behaviour is nurture.

I think half and half. I come from a very mixed up family. I was not raised by my parents. One I saw regularly, the other I met as an adult. I have traits of both, but also differences. When I was with mother, I'd end up acting very differently as she has always had a wonderful knack for rubbing me up the wrong way. Her dominant ways easily triggered tantrums and rebellion.The more laid back and cooperative approach at home brought out the best in me. I think my personality would have different had she bought me up. You can train a reaction.

Studies are increasingly showing that genes are activated by environment, and can lie dormant, rather than having a fixed outcome from the start.

OK, I warn you I lecture on this stuff. Report and have this deleted if I get carried away (as I did on the sexism post)

It isn't unreasonable to think of personality as having two main types fof traits: innate and acquired.

Nature: It has long been believed innate characteristics are really strong. Things like temper, competitiveness, active traits are there from birth. But the Human Genome programme (completed in 2000) couldn't find a gene that connected to Big 5 personality traits (Openess, conscientiousness, extravertism, agreeableness and neuroticism). Don't get taken in my newspaper claims of them finding a criminal gene, they didn't!

But that is directly opposed to the many twin based studies which have found similarities in personality traits in twins - however the majority of twin studies were with twins who were usually brought up in the same household, where it is not unusual to treat identical twins as one entity in two bodies!

I suspect that the Big 5 are our basic tendencies for beahviour.

Nurture: social learning theory and it like have been around for decades and do seem to explain how learned behaviour affects our personalities. We can copy what we see and become carbon copies of our parents. Or dislike their personalities so much we become polar opposites - or anything in between, depending on the personalities of those parents and what they themselves may be conforming to / rebelling against.

Think: am I my mother??

In my case my mum has a horror of becoming her mother. She asked us to tell her if she started to show such traits. She did. We did. She acted wholly within character and didn't speak to us for months!

Think: national characteristics. Where do national stereotypes come from?

So, given all of that - I'm firmly in the humanist camp. We are born with innate characteristics (basic tendencies) that our upbringing modifies and moulds according to where we are, who we are with and who we see as role models. Media, music, parents, teachers, friends and the general social milieu all act upon any innate characteristics we may have been born with. And don't forget personal choice!

We live through a dynamic process that changes the Big 5, jobs, loves, life etc, and we can be somewhat different at different stages of life.

Or should I have just said it is a mix of both?

As a mum of 5 year old twins, I am saying nature definitely!!

Ah thanks everyone for posting. Really interesting.

Mrs Moor - that genes can be dormant or activated by environment will be useful go my friend

No mama - fascinating post. I'm trying to memorise it and re all it to my friend.

I just wish I had proof read it before posting

Must do better...

Ah thanks everyone for posting. Really interesting.

Mrs Moor - that genes can be dormant or activated by environment will be useful go my friend

No mama - fascinating post. I'm trying to memorise it and re all it to my friend.

Nature all the way. DS1 is almost three, is highly sensitive, and has been since day one. DS2 is four months and is such a placid individual, smiling and cooing a great deal, and very happy to just be.

I hope to God it's more nurture. I don't think I'm like my birth mother at all (really hope I'm not), but my parents are quite placid and I do tend to have more extremes iyswim (not a temper, but when I feel angry, I'm very angry, when I'm happy I'm very happy and so on) but I think my MH issues may contribute to that.

I think it is undeniable a mix of both nauture an nurture. It can't be only nurture otherwise newborn babies would be all the same and it can't be only nature otherwise identical twins would have identical personalities.

I have a 17 month old ds, I can see that some of his personality is inate, he held his head up and looked around the room on the day he was born, he has always been in a rush to sit/crawl/walk/run/climb onto the table I have let him do as he pleases as long as it wasn't likely to cause him a bad injury. As a consquence of his natural desire to be up and moving and that I very rarely tell him to be careful (I say concentrate instead) and that I tell him that he is really good at running/climbing helped by his natural physical abilities he is very brave and adventurous, I don't think he is inately brave but I think he has an inate desire to explore and my parenting has helped him become brave. If I had not let him push his boundries or told him "be careful you might fall!" he would still have the inate desire to explore but would possibly be less brave and more careful.

I think your friend needs to sit down and think about the good qualities in her ex, there must have been some reasons why she was having sex with him, maybe he is funny, generous or hard working. She needs to try to see these aspects of her ex in her son as it really really is not fair to be saying that an 18 month old will end up abusive as his dad is abusive.

Skim read but part place marking as am also interested. DD is 2.9 and has no contact with her dad. I think it is amazing what nature can do - she likes the same foods as him, some things are quite particular and identical to him. She has always been and is extremely needy compared to other children and the opposite of me as a child until she plays on her own very suddenly and gets completely absorbed (much more like me). Hard to know if this is him coming through (depressive) or whether it could be due to only having one parent and not much other family. Ex also used to have a weird thing about going to the Dr's - his mum said his medical file alone was the same thickness as the other 3 sons' combined - he had three operations for cosmetic reasons while I knew him and one involved breaking all of the bones in his leg and putting a metal cage around it, purely to lengthen it by 1cm (worries of arthritis due to one leg being longer than the other, regardless that it is for 99% of the population!). Weirdly DD is always on about going to the doc's for ANYTHING. I am wondering if this is the start of that need for attention by medical staff/kudos for being brave, and am trying to nip it in the bud.

Mix of both.

I have spent a number of years explaining to my adopted children that just because Birth father was $%$£&"!£ it doesn't mean they will turn out like him.

So basic character traits like placid, quick to temper etc. maybe nature, but how you learn to cope with them (be more assertive, walk away from arguments) are nature.

I do think there is an element of both.

My younger brother has grown up with our step dad from 2 years old. Some of his mannerisms,facial expressions and general behaviours are so my step dad. Our dad has always had an active role in our lives so it's not just because he didn't have him to model himself on.

I think its nature. I kinda feel like thats how you are made. I am shockingly like my stepdad, but he was not in my life until I was 15. Many people say you are like your dad when referring to my stepdad.

My dd's, although little, personality is nothing like me or my dh. I am very anxious and nervous, she is nothing like that. Which frankly im glad about. I hope to an extent it is not nurture because I would hate her to turn out this way.

On saying that I do think that the way you treat the personality is the nuture side. I think my dd is very confident because of her personality, but also because I dont stop her being confident if that makes sense.

Bit of both, but genetics is a bit part of it in my opinion. Knowing that the boy's father is a twat has a temper, I'd advise your friend to get expert help on how to channel the boy's energies towards more positive personality traits. He is half from your friend, who sounds very sensible, so all is not lost!

I have 4 DC including same sex twins and I would have said nurture before having them.

Definitely nature IMO, not necessarily directly from the parents either. DS2 (a fraternal twin) is so like his grandfather it is unbelievable even down to his walk! DS1 (the other twin) is a total opposite in terms of academic ability, food likes and dislikes, sleeping patterns, interests, music tastes etc.

DS3 is completely different altogether and DD is just an enigma .

Agree that nurture plays an important part in shaping their personalities and frailties either positively or negatively but nature forms their core personality I think.

Nurture determines what path nature takes, good parenting will direct the natural personality in a positive way. Bad parenting directs it in the negative, making it a disadvantage to the child and potentially harmful to others around them. A naturally aggressive, boisterous child will become a criminal if their parent(s) allow them to behave like little shits, don't teach them right from wrong or discipline them, the same child raised by people who can be arsed to parent them will have those qualities moulded to be advantageous to them and potentially beneficial for society. Aggression can make people very courageous, it's a great quality when directed into protecting others. Any quality can be terrible or wonderful depending on how it's channelled.