To think that the way a person turns out is more nurture than nature?

[ethelfleda]

Being pregnant with our first child, I've found myself asking what sort of personality traits I would like them to have and whether or not they are a product of their genes or their upbringing. For example, I would like my son to have confidence as well as empathy... are they things that you can reach your child or is it completely down to genetic make up in your opinion? Have you or do you know anyone who has two or more children that were raised the same but are completely different?
I would imagine there is definitely an element of which genes they inherit but I have always thought the way a child is raised and their experiences shape who they are. I believe I am more like my father than my mother for instance but I believe that is because I followed him around like a puppy all the time and was MUCH closer to him than my mom.
Really interested to know people's opinions on this one!

Well I have twins (non-identical so not exactly the same genes), exact same environment and parenting for both of them obviously. They are so different!
One is shy, the other isn't. One is chatty and sings all the time, the other is more of an introvert. The lust goes on.
So nature over nurture for me.

List not lust...

I'd suggest reading Freakanomics - there's a really interesting chapter in there on nature vs nurture.

In summary, genetic are extremely important as are a few other things in childhood outcomes BUT nurture catches up and you can 'outrun' bad genes with a good upbringing.

There was a fascinating series on BBC Four a few years ago called "The Brain with David Eagleman". I'm not sure if it's available to watch on Netflix/YouTube/etc but the first episode talks solely about brain development in children and is definitely worth watching.

The relationship between genes and environment is complex and interact with one another.

Factors thought to be environmental, like child neglect or abuse have a genetic component. Some environments can have an epigenetic effect - ie they can change gene expression.

But genes are not destiny. Someone can be genetically predisposed to a trait but certain protective factors in the environment, like parental warmth, stability can prevent adverse outcomes.

I have 3 kids, from the minute they were born, in fatc even in the womb they had their own personalities.

Same parents, same parenting, 3 totally different kids.
So, if it is genes, they have the same ste of genes!
If it is nuture, they have been raised the same!

The potential number of different combinations of genes from 2 parents is huge. Apart from ds having dh's hair and my body shape, he also has my outspoken stubborness, and none of dh calm objectivity.

dd1 is the spitting image of my grandmother, both physically and personality wise. Where did that come from? How come my genes and dh genes have combined to produce my grandmother!

Nuture is much more about allowing who we are to flourish, training our kids in the social norms (politenes, culture norms of behaviour). And not doing anything to crush them.
We can instill moral values, but they still interact with the personality of the child.

Some ares are very strongly nuture, babies and small children need love and security, and without them children can suffer for the rest of their lives.

It's funny how the eldest ones are always the "naturally clever" ones, isn't it? I wonder if there's any possible reason for this? 😉

Not in mine and my sister's case

IMO nurturing helps to give a foundation to the child. However, as they grow older and exposed to the outside world, there'll be other factors that will 'transform' them once they start school. Peer pressure, self esteem and self control. Hell..even all forms of media plays a part.

Peer pressure 'transformed' my brother to be a drop out trying to be and what deems to be cool among his friends. Another turns out to be narcissistic and big headed after hearing everyone praising her beauty and expects to be held on a pedestal.

Brilliant program a few years ago.
MRI scans on prisoners who were are psychopaths. It produced a set of result which showed that all the psychopaths had a similar brain structure, which was not normal in normal population.

The researcher wanted more brain scans to compare with, particularly related people, so he asked his whole family and extended family if they would have a scan, and he had one himself.

It turned out that he had the psychopathic brain structure. But he was a normal empathetic man, happily married with kids. Why wasn't he a psychopath?
He explains it as the brain structure means that the POTENTIAL for becoming a psychopath is very high. But the nuture he received as a child, and the caring loving childhood he had stopped the psychopathic tendencies expressing themselves.

I think this complex interaction between genes and environment is very hard to unpick

It's funny how the eldest ones are always the "naturally clever" ones, isn't it? I wonder if there's any possible reason for this?

ummm - nope, not true in my family, or dh, or among my kids or neices and nephews.

Odd comment to be honest

I'd count outside influences as "nurture" although of course the parents aren't to blame for them.

Nature and nurture both play a role, but I find it disgusting when people accuse mothers for male violence. Male violence is genetic AND taught to boys by their peers and adult men, and mothers can only attempt to counter it.

I definitely know sibling pairs who are very different in things that matter - like likelihood of committing a crime - where they were raised by the same parents, in the same house, and under the same conditions, though possibly had different peer groups.

You can teach empathy and you can encourage confidence, but with some children you may have to try a lot harder just to get them to normal level.

I think it's an even split on a population level, even if not 50/50 for every individual. Genetics alone are fascinating even without the nurture complicating them.

I did read something interesting a few years ago involving competition horses. In short it was an experiment to use surrogate mares so the mare they wanted to breed from could carry on competing. And the conclusion was that the nurture from the more laid back brood mares had too much of an influence. Not that the nurture cancelled out the nature entirely, but that the extra edge that made a top competition horse just didn't appear without the influence of the right personality to nurture it. It was quite telling because it's much easier to replicate a foals experiences than a child's, so it was a fair comparison. But iirc it was a spin off from a breeding programme rather than conducted as a scientific experiment so not conclusive.

I was raised by pretty poor but intelligent parents, along with my db's
Same mum, same dad. Raised the exect way.
We was all terrible children. Like really naughty. Expelled, trouble with the police. My eldest brother was sent to a secure unit at 14. The other was sent to a YOI a week after his 15th birthday. When I turned 16 everyone was saying "ooh your turn now."
It was definitely a possibility I would have sent to prison before I reached 17 if I hadn't got pregnant.
I decided right there and then i was going to break the chain (both my parents had been in prison too )
I wasn't going to prison and neither was my child.
I raised my dd on my own. Her father too in prison.
So wether nature or nurture she should be at least on Her way to destroying her life by now.
She's amazing! Bright, intelligent, kind,emperthetic, she's just finished school and has 3 detentions in her whole life. All of which for being late because of the buses.
I do believe she is what I would have been though if I'd been raised right.
My eldest brothers kids though are going the same way he did. It's actually like history repeating itself.
My other brother is an is a very interesting story. I'll continue below because this post is getting very long

Life and times of funnyfarmer part two

My brother as I said was a little shit. 1st arrested at 10. Arson , criminal damage, TWOC, burglary. Everything you'd expect from the shit head torag off an council estate. But very, very intelligent.
My mum always remembers his primary school teacher saying " I know I'm going to read about that boy in the papers one day. Either for doing something amazing, or doing something terrible." She was right. Sadly it was the latter.
He's been in out of prison as I said since 15. He got a life sentence at just 19 years old.
Now 17 years into that life sentence.
He writes beutiful poetry, stories and songs. Even composes his own music.
He plays the piano and guitar amazingly.
He draws, paints, brilliant cook, fantastic baker and inspiring magician.
I honestly think he's read nearly ever printed ( might be slight exaggeration)
He won't stop at any off these challenges until he's the best. Or at perfection in his eyes. And he's a real perfectionist.
I really believe what ever life he was born into he would have stopped at nothing to be better than everyone.
If he was born into a wealthy family and maybe went to private school. He would have to have been the best at everything in the school. Music, rugby, general education.
But because he was born into povity on a council estate. He had to be the baddest of the bad. He had to be "better" than all the other thugs.
I'm not saying he still wouldn't have ended up where he is because he proved the extremes he would go to to achieve status.
So although he probably would have had a very different life. I think in the end the results would have probably been the same.

I think you come out as who you are (all 3 of mine are utterly different, not startlingly like me or dh in personality etc). But I think nurture plays a huge part.

I was adopted but got to know bio mother in my early 30s. We are now close. We look like each other a bit. We have some traits in common - like we like to organise the same way, we are both more logical than emotional etc. but nothing startling. I suspect I may have gotten some of my intellectual stuff from useless bio-father but since he couldn't be bothered to ask to meet his own child, I won't know for sure.

What I do know is that my adopted sister (no relation) and I couldn't be more different but the way we live our lives is startlingly similar. We picked really really decent loving (although very different) men to marry (thanks Dad for showing us what a good man was like), we stay connected to family/cousins etc because we were shown that that was a good thing, we give to charity and try to help people because both parents made this a part of their lives every single day. We live the values of my parents even though none of us were related to each other.

Nature matters - a lot. I was better at school than my sister - nature, not nurture. She is slimmer than me and finds it easy to stay slim - nature, not nurture. But the things that matter - being kind, not putting up with shit in a partner, valuing ourselves, were all nurture.

Funnyfarmer I can see how your brother could have had an entirely different path if born into a different family

I really believe what ever life he was born into he would have stopped at nothing to be better than everyone.

In middle/upper class families this usually doesn't end up in a life sentence - instead the worst will be a spot of time for fraud.

I am sorry for the victims of his crimes and for him that this is where he ended up. It is why I think "there but for the grace of god go I" rather than "I deserve all of my good fortune".

extremes in parenting have a big impact on outcomes as well as poverty and wealth. Add in a few adverse life events and the impact becomes massive.

for most people nature, I believe, is the overriding factor.

OP, like you I believed that I could mould my child's personality. No one told her that though and she had her own ideas right from day 1!

The literature on separated twins, separated sibling pairs and so on suggests that genes are a huge part of what makes a person the way they are. And that the environment outside the home is probably more important than the home environment.

I don't buy everything that Steven Pinker and Judith Rich Harris said about this... but I think they are onto something when they suggest that the minutae of parenting details that so many people agonize about probably make very little difference.

I think parents can influence academic achievement more than personality.

I also think that prenatal influences are probably more important than previously thought.

for most people nature, I believe, is the overriding factor.

But is it really? If you were born with a very high IQ and a great temperament into a family where your parents are drug addicts, you live precariously, and you go to oversubscribed bad schools who are focused on the ones about to fail, will you really go to Oxford? But the same IQ and temperament in a different family might mean a shoe-in to Oxford.

Nurture matters. Nature gives the raw material but nurture can determine what you can do with your raw material.

And nurture gives the values that you instill in your child.

You can't increase IQ or change a congenital condition or change a child who is born sensitive, for example. But how those children will fare in life will differ hugely depending on how they are reared.

You can still have the high without attending university, Pallisers, it will just be focussed differently, funnyfarmer's brother being an example.

There are four of us. Three of have the AS my father had. The other the narcissism my mother has. One of us chose not to have children, two of us have been really careful not to do what she did. The narcissist has four children, one doesn't speak to him, the other does, but when she wants money, and the other two are under ten. Of the four of us, only the narcissist speaks to my mother.

I think genes play a big role, my DBro and my uncle (mums brother) obviously had different childhoods, they were even raised in different countries but they have such similar personalities. The bit I find oddest though is that they have the same handwriting! In childhood photos that are in colour you can't tell which one my uncle is and which one is DBro.

My dad is from a tiny village in Italy and his family is one of the biggest families there (as in there were 9 siblings and they had kids and they had kids etc...)Anyway, the village teacher was saying that all the X family kids she taught (2 generations) all had some very similar personality traits!

I think I saw somewhere (it might have been a documentary about religion!?) that humans are born with an innate sense of fairness. My DS is only a toddler but he always tries to share his food with me. That may just be a normal toddler thing but I like to think that innate sense of fairness thing is true as it sounds really nice.

I've got a twin sister, brought up in the same way by the same parents in the same household and we are total polar opposites

I don't know the answer.
The nurture nature debate has gone for many years
, and . Will continue to go on for many more Years, to come

You can still have the high without attending university, Pallisers, it will just be focussed differently, funnyfarmer's brother being an example.

Yes but the point is that FF's brother in a family like mine (I mean DH and me) would be seeing therapists from early on, would be going to private schools that could deal with his issues, and I think realistically would be less likely to end up serving a life sentence in jail.

In a different family he would have been steered towards financial markets careers where his ruthlessness and desire to be top dog could be better managed in a way that benefited him.

Nature rules - I have no doubt of that. But nurture really really matters.

Me and my DB couldn't be more different, I am just like my DM and he is (so I'm told) exactly like our father. I say 'so I'm told' because I've never actually met him, he left before I was born and when my DB was two years old so he has no memory of him either.

I only know what I've been told about my dad but my perception of the kind of person he is has been formed by hearing stories about things he did rather than anyone trying to describe his personality if that makes sense. And yet my DB displays many of the same character traits, which makes me think there's definitely something in the idea of nature rather than nurture.

He has different values to me, definitely a different moral code, everything is about appearance and status whereas I couldn't give a toss about those things and he alters his personality to fit in with whoever he's spending time with which is a sharp contrast to my what you see is what you get attitude. We're pretty much polar opposites as adults although that wasn't at all apparent as children.

All those things certainly tie in with the impression I have of my father and I've had a couple of conversations with both DM and my DGM which have pretty much confirmed what I thought. We had exactly the same upbringing so I can only conclude his traits come from nature rather than nurture.

I think nature plays a much bigger part than I realised before.

My eldest two biological children are twins. I parented the same, but they haven't had the same upbringing. DD1 has grown up with a shy and quiet sister with a host of medical problems, where as DD2 has grown up with a confident and sometimes too bloody loud sister.

Those natures have defined their choice of friends, their activities etc.

I think nurture can help, but nature has to be the big one for me. My mother was one of four children and my father one of two. They were the only ones out of all of their siblings who were viscious, abusive parents. It didn't come from nurture for either of them so it must have been nature. Or nature for him and he nurtured it into her.