nature v nurture

[fabulousmum]

which do you think has the most impact?

The psychologist I mentioned below thinks attachment theory is not supported by any evidence, btw. The gap between the two points of view is very interesting. His argument is when you look across all the research into personality, parental treatment has no effect at all - it's innate.

Well I would refer my learned friend to the following (might be interesting to Sophable - a titbit to for your conference chat perhaps):

www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v7/n8/abs/nn0804-791.html

Which really blew me away when I first read it. There are other reports on epigenetics indicating liks between parental diet and/or behaviour and gene expression. The article above regards a study on mice, but the genetic mechanism involved is a mammalian one and it would be reasonable to expect something similar to occur in humans.

As for all being innate - well I do tend to be in the innate camp, and I have read the research that implies that parental input counts for very little (unless it's of an extreme kind). But I really don't think that's the whole story. The problem is that gene-environment interaction is a new field and not well understood. There may be areas that are relatively unaffected by parental influences, others that are more affected, and some individuals are more affected than others. The research to date has tended to focus on specific aspects of personality and intelligence - but there's a lot more to investigate. For example, I'm interested in behavioural inhibition/activation which is related to stress and anxiety and could be moderated by the kind of mechanism in the study above.

Starlight - you just can't win with this really. I have exactly the opposite worry. My dd, 2.8 is a velcro child and always has been. I feel that if she is securely attached she should be less clingy and wonder what I might have done wrong.

I remember reading about the transactional model of development. Both the child and his or her environment influence and are influenced by the other, and this is an ongoing process. Teasing out the competing influences of genetic and environmental factors seems to me to be a hugely complicated task. I'm surprised people can come down so firmly on it as things now stand, for the reasons Acinonyx describes above.

Cat64
"I don't understand what you mean about no 2 children every having the same parents - explain to a mere mortal please ?"

I'm pretty sure that what is meant by this is that parents respond to each of their kids slightly differently even if they think that they are treating them identically.

On the BF thing, most scientific studies are able to tease out the effect of the IQ of the parents that do BF and that don't. So in effect they can control for this. So the IQ increase is thought to be genuine though IMO 7 points (or whatever it was) is tiny and much IQ testing is thought to be flawed (a debate for another day perhaps ). PS no BF axe to grind I BFed for a long time!

On the BF thing again (just reminded myself of the paper). Studies showed that those with the IQ uplift had a particular variant of a gene, so it wasn't the case for everyone. Much of the work in the recent BF study I think predates the formula being made to mimic the fatty acids of breast milk. I would be interested to see the data for babies fed modern formula which contain a more human mix of fatty acids eg more very long chain fatty acids.

Sorry for going on, like I said above, very pro BF. Hope everyone should etc..