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 agree ByTheSea-the bonding and attachment in the early years is essential.

I agree with a lot of what Bink said upthread. It's impossible to separate.
I'm more in the nurture camp myself. Of course there are some personality traits that are inherited, but a hell of a lot of how we think about things and react to them is down to upbringing, culture, environment and circumstances. As a zoologist (although this isn't my area) I find this the more satisfactory explanation. We tend to think of nurture as solely parenting, but it is far more than that, including things like birth order, interaction with other children and adults, family circumstances and changes, and and in our day and age, the media too. A lot of this is stuff that is beyond the parents' control, so nurture is more of a "lucky dip" than it first seems.

Nature 80%, nurture 20%.

Unless you count nurture as starting in the womb ... perhaps we'd better not go there.

I'm in the nature camp. Although bad parenting and the environment can really mess up children, I think that most of their personality traits are nature and as parents it's our responsibility to help get the good bits out of them. am I making sense?

Both, no idea on percentages (probably depends on all sorts of variables).

But I think the premise that kids in one family are differently behaved is no argument for nature v nurture: any psychologist will tell you that different kids get/pick up different roles and messages in any family - regardless of whether their parents are aware of that or not!