Nature AND Nurture AND Parenting

Let me begin this blog on the classic issue of nature and nurture--and the proposal that children vary in how much they are affected by the parenting they experience in the family--with a quick and, hopefully, relevant observation about financial investing.

What is perhaps the first piece of investment advice that any financial counsellor gives--or should give--to a would-be investor? Diversify your investments! In other words, don't put all your eggs in one basket, should you be lucky enough to have more than one egg. In fact, should you have several, put some in stocks, which can be risky, as the value of stocks can go down as well as up; some in bonds or the equivalent which are (typically) less risky, but also tend to provide less upside potential than stocks; some in the bank where you know exactly what you are going to get even if it is typically modest, as it most certainly is today in the USA (but not in the UK where I live); and perhaps even some under the mattress, because even banks can go under (as one more or less did recently on this side of the pond).

It is this investment principle of diversification that is central to my evolutionary-informed view that children vary in their susceptibility to parental rearing, as well as to other environmental influences. We all have heard about and even debated Nature--we are born a certain way and that is why we are as we are--and Nurture--we were raised a certain way and that is why we are the way we are. Most now appreciate that simplistic nativist-environmentalist debates about what matters more in the case of human development and behavior, genes or environment, are outdated. Indeed, most credible scientists appreciate that either-or thinking is not a particularly productive way to frame the issue. After all, there can be no nature without nurture. Even genetically determined psychopaths, should they exist, and I suspect some do, need to be fed and clothed to get to the point where they can exact their toll on their victims. And even the child prodigy whose piano playing is of the calibre of a maestro for mostly genetic reasons could not achieve such were she or he never exposed to music!

Exactly how nature and nurture work together--or not--remains a fascinating topic, one that I will no doubt return to repeatedly in this blog. For today, though, I want to assert that some of us, or at least some aspects of some of us, are principally a function of nature; and for others of us, or at least some aspects of others of us, are principally a function of nurture. Take two children who are highly aggressive, for example. One may well be that way because he was "born" that way, whereas the other was, more or less, "made" that way. The same probably goes for children high in verbal ability or those with limited social skills. Indeed, I have come to the conclusion that no matter what aspect of development or behavior may especially interest us, some children will function as they do with respect to it principally as a result of their nature and some will function as they do primarily because of how they were reared; and this will be so even if their level of functioning--high, moderate or low--is exactly the same. Moreover, this will be especially the case within families; that is, whereas one child will likely be the way he or she is primarily because of his or her genetic make up, a sibling will be the way she or he is principally because of the family rearing environment.

Why should this be the case? My answer is informed by evolutionary theory and based on a fundamental truism about the world we inhabit: The future is uncertain. As a result, no parent in human ancestral history could know for certain what would be best for his/her child and children, with best defined in reproductive terms, the passing of genes on to future generations--the currency of the realm in the case of all living things. Would it be best to be highly cooperative, highly self centered, hard working, lackadaisical...? Now, like many of us today, ancestral parents probably believed, whether consciously or unconsciously, that they knew the best way to parent and for their children to develop if their progeny were to prove economically, socially and, ultimately, reproductively successful in adulthood. But just like parents today, they could have been proven wrong--and certainly some were. The best and most dramatic proof I know of this comes from recent human history--the killing fields of Cambodia.

Who were among the first whom the Khmer Rouge murdered when they came to power around the time the US was being driven out of Vietnam? It was people just like me and perhaps you, ones who had no calluses on their hands or who wore glasses or who were otherwise judged to be educated--because educated people were considered serious threats to this murderous regime. Now what Cambodian parent ever imagined that a time might arise when being educated would prove a death sentence? So what Cambodian parent ever considered the possibility that by encouraging their child to work hard at school--to be able to get a job using your mind rather than having to do back breaking labor in the field--they would be consigning their coffspring to an early death? Surely none. The fundamental reason that life--and death--proved so surprising was because, tragically in this case, the future proved uncertain: Education, or even just the appearance of being educated, generated anything but greater opportunities in life when the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia.

Given that natural selection is all about how history and environmental pressures shape living things over long stretches of time and generations to be successful in dispersing their genes across future generations, it stands to reason, I believe, that the uncertainty of the future has shaped human behavior, including parenting and child development. To insure that not all eggs--read children--end up in the same basket--read follow parental leads--parents bear children who vary in the degree to which they are influenced by family experience. Simply put, some will prove highly responsive to the parenting they experience, having their development shaped by it, but others will not--or at least some will be more influenced and others less affected.

By following this strategy of diversification--which is not consciously chosen by any means--parents end up taking out insurance of a kind, thanks to the wisdom of evolution, against the uncertainty of the future. If the direction that parents or others encourage children to develop proves, eventually, to be misguided--as in the Cambodian case--then those who are not particularly susceptible to parental influence will be less likely to pay the cost of developing in a way that turned out to be counterproductive. By the same logic, if future circumstances proved parental guidance to be sound and perhaps even wise, then those children who were shaped by it would benefit by virtue of their malleable natures--just as I have from following my parents' entreaties. They encouraged all three of their sons to work hard in school--though only two of us really ever did--so that we would not have to stand on our feet all day to earn our livings, as they did while running a successful luncheonette business in midtown Manhattan for 30 years.

By not putting all their eggs in one basket--that is, by bearing children who vary in their malleability--parents end up diversifying their investments. "Plastic" children may prove to be a great bet when parenting proves influential and the future ends up being more or less in line with (conscious or unconscious) expectations; but children with less malleable, more "fixed" characters may end up being a better bet when the uncertain nature of the future proves parental guidance to have been misguided. In sum, human development and behavior are determined by both nature and nurture, but it turns out, I think, it is more nature for some of us and more nurture for others of us. This, of course, is not a typical resolution to the so-called nature-nurture controversy, but as I will show in future blogs, it may be very much on target.