nature v nurture

[fabulousmum]

which do you think has the most impact?

Interesting one. Before having ds I would have said nurture, but having had a child, and had a lot more contact with many others (friends children, school friends) I would revise that to say both. I do believe children are born with their own characters, which is why nurture is so important! Example - ds is shy - has always been shy, and even as a quite small baby, I could see traits of shyness, but with much effort in socialising and role moddeling, he has become much less so.
I would not underestimate the impact of either.

Well, I'd say that all the great things about our kids are due to our superior parenting skills, while their less attractive traits are down to their genes (on their father's side obviously)

with regards to MY children agree 100% with AuntEm!!

with regards to me 90% nurture and 10% nature as was adopted from baby and had a nice upbringing - there are one or two traits that don't add up hence the not 100%

I'm with cat, it's 50:50, nature has a higher role is some aspects and nurture in others, but it kind of equals out over everything.

Interesting dizzy. I was adopted as a baby and for me it seems to be 90% nature and 10% nurture.

Acinonyx - was your biological family of the same language and culture as your adoptive family?

I have wondered in the past how different my children would be if someone else was bringing them up

From my own experience I'd say nature is dominant. Ideal nuturing would serve to teach children make the most of their good points and minimise the bad I suppose, but how the ratio works out will probably depend on the strength of the traits in question.

acinonyx the older I become the more am starting to think its the other way round as I cannot understand the behaviour of my parents anymore

am COMPLETE opposite of my brother who is my parents biological child, my mother and I have always been chalk and cheese and had a rocky relationship and am not sure my dad had a whole lot to do with anything as he worked so much only retiring when I left home to go to uni

Anna - no as it happens, they were not.

Dizzy - heritability has been found to increase with age so i think a lot of us probably do actually become more like our bio-parents (or rather, more like our innate selves which is a some sort of recobmination of our ancestry) as we get older.

I suppose that with adoption a lot comes down to the random chances of how alike your adoptive and bio-families happen to be, and how near or far away from the norms they are in various ways. My families were er, neither of them what you might call normal - but in some opposite directions. That makes the chances of my being a fish out of water somewhat higher - and that's what happened. I sometimes think I was like a wolf raised by sheep.

I think nurture is important - but different genotypes interact differently with the same environments so it difficult and misleading to try to seperate the two influences. Twins in different environments will have a degree of difference - but the way in which they are different will be largely influenced by thier genes.

I like the way the philosopher Daniel Dennett describes the relationship - that 'the genotype holds the phenotype on a leash' i.e. your genotype allows many possibilities on interacting with the environment and with random developmental influences - but those possiblities are not infinite - nor are thier likelihoods equal. You cannot actually get off the leash.

I have changed my opinion a lot since motherhood. I used to think it was mostly nurture; now I think it's at least half if not more nature, up to 25% nurture and up to 25% other (most likely peer and community).

I am a mother to four, one is neither mine nor DH's biological child, one is DH's biological child but not mine, and two are biologically both mine and DH's.

I think that nurture is around 25% but that in part probably depends on how skilled you are at nuturing the nature of each individual child? I find it easier to nurture my highly sensitive child than some of my others.

I'm another one who thought more nurture than nature, until becoming a parent. I think I am still more like my step-father than my father (so no adoption link in this saga) but feel that as a parent I am more like my father than my step-father (and not in a good way )

My bro has three adopted kids from the same bio family, will be interesting to see how that influences the mix. We're used to a 'blended' family anyway with having one half-sister, one step-sister and two step-brothers, and I think in the way of the saying "what unites us is greater than what divides us".

Interesting points, Acinonyx. Have just read a book by Daniel Nettle who says the sum of all the psychological studies shows your personality is in your genes. Adopted children are no more like their adopted siblings than random strangers but are very like their biological relatives, he claims. And there is no measurable difference in personality between identical twins raised together or apart - they are as alike as they were going to be, environment has no influence at all.

He reckons even parental behaviour is actually a reaction to the child's genotype - they weren't being unfair treating your sister differently from you, they were reacting to you as different people IYSWIM.

Oh, meant to say, heritability increasing with age definitely rings true in my family - I can see more and more of my stepmother in my youngest (half) sister, her daughter. My full sister and I used to look nothing like each other but have grown to look so alike ds was very confused when he met my sister after a gap of a few months when he was a toddler. He was really spooked by this woman who looked like his mum but wasn't his mum.

I got very involved in the nurturing of my PFB (DD) who is quite pliable and took direction. I was trying to help/nuture my more sparky second-born (DS) the other day and he told me to butt out of his life!

So, perhaps, the assimilation of nurture depends upon the child?s nature?

my dd1 is upstairs asleep in her bed whilst right next to her dd2 is beating lumps out of her cot with the head of her babydoll
I don't think I've treated them any differently
well at least I hope I haven't

My ds's are very different from each other. A TA asked if they had the same father when they were younger (rude!)
Definitely nature plays a big part.
Agree with fembear's point that,
'the assimilation of nurture depends upon the child?s nature.'

one thing I wonder about if I may.....

am first born biologically but second within adoptive family (older brother is biological)

am wondering if that makes any difference?!

Most twin studies (largely considered highly unethical now) come down on the side of mostly nature. It's depressing I suppose in some ways to think that though.

Agree with the behavior of parent is often a response to childs genotype/phenotype, lots of biologists/psychologists believe this is true.

ds's (14 mo) love of cars is definitely genetic from his dad. I have NEVER encouraged it.
Interestingly, I wonder about musical ability. It is supposed to be a genetic thinghave a genetic component, but surely anyone who is musical will expose their dcs to music and so they will develop some kind of an ear. I think some things that are 'nature' oare actually nurture, because we expose our children to things just in the way we live our life iyswim.
except for a love of cars. That is NOT nurture.

ok, just remembered something

my parents told me they chose me as they wanted a 'musical' child so picked me

have since found out my biological father was a singer

now WTF?!?!? was there really a time when they could pick and choose or it that another load of old toss?!?

I think that nuture has a massive affect, if a child grows up in a really abusive setting then it can wreck their life totally.

Nationally a lot of children in local authority care underachieve. Sadly its unusual for a child in local authority care to get 5 good GCSEs. Is this because most LEA are cr@p at being the corporate parent? or their birth parents have screwed up the kids for life?

Or is it genetic in that people with learning difficulties are more likely to have problens coping and hence have their children taken into care.

I suspect its one of those questions will never find out the true answer.

It's not that twin and adoption studies show it's ALL nature - but they do suggest a very significant innate component to various traits. The very interesting thing is that the remainder does not appear to come from shared environment but from non-shared environment i.e. things specific to the individual including random developmental 'noise'. And one has to wonder anyway if there is really or could be any such thing as shared environment.

Which book of Daniel's was that Edam? I work in the same general area.

Fembear - I'm sure that is true and consequently some parents are a better 'fit' with some children.

dizzy - as far as I know the only thing that they are obliged to match is religion - if specified. Nowadays they tend to match ethnicity if possible. But I seriously doubt they could select a musical child - only in some private adoptions (of the kind illegal in the UK, but in the US...hmmm..).

I've worked with an adoption charity for many years and we have noticed a couple of things that would be interesting to investigate. Firstly, you might reasonably expect that relatives seperated by adoption might be similar in general ways but differ in specifics - but it frequently seems to be more the other way around - bizarrely so sometimes. Secondly (and perhaps connected) children and sibs sometimes seem to be MORE like their seperated parents or sibs than sibs and children raised together - as though the abscence enabled them to develop without reacting against thier similarities. No idea if these are real phenomena - would need a systematic study.