As a parent, what is your gut feeling about nature/nurture?

[deanychip]

Dont know if you have read any of my recent posts, but i had a HUGE falling out with my sis recently.

she insists that my boy is the way he is because of me and my parenting.
i am adamant that it is 90% personality, 10% my parenting.

what do you think about this based on your experience?

I'd go with about 60/40 nature.

Some nature traits are a hell of a lot harder to nurture "good" though (does that make sense????)

50/50, or even 60/40 in favour of nurture

am v uncomfortable with the idea of personality being set at birth - what;s the point of parenting if not to help your children achieve their potential?

effieperine, personality is not the same as attitude (ie. moral values, etc)

I think the two (nature and nurture) are much harder to separate than we sometimes realise. For instance, my DD is quite shy, so am I (erm, ridiculously so in some ways, I can't speak to shop assistants). Was she born 'shy'? Is she learning to be 'shy' because of my reticent behaviour? I would love to nurture her to be more outgoing, but I simply cannot do it - I can say 'oh, go on, go and talk to those children', but I cannot model the behaviour myself. Then you see why the science is so dependent on twins separated at birth, because only by putting the same child into a family of mad extroverts could you even begin to see what is nature and what nurture.

I don;t know about percentages but as DS was adopted I do think about this quite a bit. Since having him I have moved much closer to nature having a MUCH bigger part to play in your personailty than I ever thought before. I look at DS sometimes and just know that so much of who he is is nothing to do with me and everything to do with thousands of years of ancestors coming together in him.

I think nurture helps your child learn who they are, be comfortable with that and be as happy as they can be.

Saynig thats nature is very important doesn;t devalue the nurture element at all. You only have to look at children who are intelligent/gifted/sporty etc and neglected to see that it doesn't make you happy unless you have a nurturing framework OR an exceptionally resilient character.

Hecate - I was thikning something similar about DS's temper. He has quite a temper, I don;t think you can change that, but I do think that good paretning can help your child manage their anger.

Agree mostly nature. Abbey I laugh too at those smug parents with perfect first borns only to end up gettin another one like my first born

Moral values, etc are clearly nurture.

Innate reactions to things have to have an element of nature, surely?

DS(5) is a gentle shy (over)sensitive soul at heart and a throroughly normal boisterous intelligent boy on the outside.

DD(20mths) is a bossy mare strong character but a complete charmer as well and I can see that we will nurture them in different ways but that is as much as anything a reaction to their nature - DS will always need his confidence building and support and reassurance while DD will need more boundary setting. I do wonder whether we have in some way 'made' each of them the way they are but the difference is so marked that I find it hard to believe that it is not largely innate.

As a mothert of twins I think a lot of it is down to nature. From the first moment my two had such very different personalities.
Also I used to work with children in care and even when they were placed in stable homes there continued to be heaps of problems - although that may be to do with how much damage they had already suffered.

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I haven't read the other posts (will do in a minute) but I would go much more strongly toward nature. My two dds are very differnt, as are me and my sister. I haven't treated my dds very differently, obviously there are some things you do differently second time around but I don't think this accounts for their differences. Also in terms of their interests and abilities they are VERY different. I think it is so important to accept the way your children are and not try to chnage them....I try very hard to do this (not always easy).

"And if it's all nurture, why do all babies behave differently from birth? You'd think if it was all nurture, they'd all be the same." - colditz, isn't it down to genes too?

genes being nature and environment being nurture, I don't really see what you're driving at, Cardy. I said that I do not believe nurture (environment) to be all, or all newborns would be the same. They aren't, so clearly nature (genes) must play a part

Mostly nature. Bink's point was very interesting about things not being static. I also loved OrmIrian's point about children not being "clay to be moulded".

I think nurture is more important than nature. Nature has given my son a certain temperament, but how it develops and into what is totally down to his environment. That's my view.

really a bit about discussions of size of bits of the brain and connections as these respond as much too anything to external stimuli. An extrovert having a different shaped brain says nothing more than the fact that behaviour traits of extroverts are reflected in their brain

cooking analogy is the right one imo. Take pastry and pasta (at least 50% flour) but have all been "nutured" in different ways to get different results. Take boiled and scrambled eggs. 100% eggs but very different.

nature causes differences across children by making them react differently to the same things

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meant that brain shapes change with stimuli and behaviour so different brain shapes don't nec. say anything about nature and nuture

well neural pathways are built though exposure to stimuli so not sure about that argument (what was the experiment with the kittens?)

Children are distinct personalities at birth but it is the nurturing that helps them reach their potential. For example DS1 is a perfectionist and takes failure badly, it has taken a long time to show him that failure can be useful as a learning tool and that he should take risks, in that if nothing is ventured, nothing is gained.
I am always amazed that you can get lovely DCs from deprived or abusive backgrounds, equally you can get ones that I don't like at all from backgrounds where you would think that they have every advantage. That must be down to nature.

Ah I see.

I thought about 50/50 until I had dd and then from day 1 her personality just seemed so obviously in place-- I lean more to OP's 90/10 now.

That said, I think one thing that plays a huge role is birth order, though whether that's due to the simple fact of having older or younger siblings or the parents' treating each child slightly differently I have no idea.

The longer I'm a mother of 4 children, 1 biologically neither mine nor DH's, 1 biologically DH's but not biolically mine, and 2 who are both biologically mine and DH's, the more I see it's predominantly nature (more than 50%) and maybe only 25% nurture and the other 25% who knows? That said, I think nurture, bonding and attachment in the first year or two will make or break a child and if they don't get that, their nature can be fabulous in every way and they still may have major personality disorders.