The debate continues.
An article by Motoko Rich quotes several authors about the role of parents in the outcome of their children ("Nature? Nurture? Not So Fast ..." New York Times, April 17, 2011).
On one side is Amy Chua, the self-professed Tiger Mother, whose behavior suggests that she feels parents can create rules that will mold their children into productive adults ("Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," New York: Penguin Press, 2011). On the other side of the spectrum is an economist, Bryan Caplan, Ph.D., who feels that parent-made rules are irrelevant ("Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think," New York: Basic Books, 2011).
Ms. Rich goes on to introduce two more positions that I find more appealing. Judith Rich Harris feels that peers have more influence than parents ("The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do," New York: The Free Press, 1998). And in "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" (New York: William Morrow, 2005), Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner say, "It isn’t so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it’s who you are."
It is this last quote that agrees most closely with my observations after more than 35 years as a pediatrician and parent. Every argument about nature vs. nurture is really about which is more important. No credible observer would deny that who we become as adults is influenced by both our genetic makeup and the environment in which we matured. For the bulk of my career, physicians, or for that matter anyone else, have had little influence on the genetic side of the equation. As for the nurture side, my interest has been primarily in the roles played by peers and parents.
Two aphorisms characterize my observations about the role of parenting.
The first is "monkey see, monkey do." At all ages, one of our most powerful learning tools is mimicry. Our ability to learn by observation has been hard-wired into our nervous system many branches back on our evolutionary tree. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, feels that many of the things we do are the reflection of "memes," which were originally learned by copying our living ancestors and then passed down from generations following a pattern similar to genes, but lacking the physical counterpart of DNA. Trial and error may be more powerful, but mimicry is generally safer.
It may just be semantics, but I disagree with the distinction between who we are and what we do, made by the authors of "Freakonomics." While for short periods of time what we do may not be a reflection of who we are, in a home setting it doesn’t take long for children to see through the veneer of what their parents do in public, and to understand who they really are. Unfortunately, children can model the badness in a parent as easily as they can model the goodness.
The second aphorism is "talk is cheap." Too many parents seem to believe that they can talk their children into a desired behavior. It is really a parent’s behavior and not so much what he or she says that sets the example that a child will model. Even very young children understand the sarcasm in "do as I say, not as I do." But a parent must be around to serve as a model. The problem is that parents have a relatively small window in which to model good behavior before the often more powerful force from peers begins to dilute their influence.
The good news in this nature vs. nurture debate is that none of this is absolute. We all know situations in which children have risen above seemingly insurmountable genetic disadvantages. And we have seen successful adults emerge from environments that seemed to lack positive parental modeling. It’s rare, but it happens. Not every apple rots where it falls. Some are lucky enough to roll into a fertile sun-drenched spot and sprout.
Dr. Wilkoff practices general pediatrics in a multispecialty group practice in Brunswick, Maine. E-mail him at pdnews@elsevier.com.