Parental Influence: Overrated?

[Adebisi]

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I have a problem with this. What they specifically failed to find is similarities between the parents and the children. That doesn't equate to failing to find that the parents have an effect on their children. The parental-influence camp don't claim that parents can or do produce clones of themselves personality-wise, so it's really a strawman that's being dismissed.


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Nice catch. I'd be willing to bet a substantial amount of money that people who had really f'd up things going on in the family when they were kids are significantly more likely to have issues as adults. Parents might not be able to shape their kids' personalities however they please, but to assert they have no effect is pretty absurd. If you took two cloned babies and placed one with stable, loving parents, and the other with an abusive, alcoholic father and mentally unstable mother, you'd probably be able to see how big an effect parents can have.

I think maybe the way that parents really affect their child's development is through how they behave, rather than how they try to raise their kid. If the parents are constantly fighting about money, I think their kid is more likely than average to be either really tight with money or really reckless with it as an example.

[Dominic]

Og course your peers influence you as you grow up. However, if you have caring, decent parents, they influence who your peers are!

It's not one or the other, both influence you. And I think it depends on each individual case as to which is more influential.

[jfk]

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I have a problem with this. What they specifically failed to find is similarities between the parents and the children. That doesn't equate to failing to find that the parents have an effect on their children. The parental-influence camp don't claim that parents can or do produce clones of themselves personality-wise, so it's really a strawman that's being dismissed.

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What is being dismissed is that parents are more influential to a child than the effect of his peers. You're overreaching. The key sentence here is this:

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The Colorado study says that the only reason we are like our parents is that we share their genes, and that--by any measures of cognition and personality--when there is no genetic inheritance there is no resemblance.

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In other words, if you have an adopted child in the house it would make relatively little difference in the end if you and your spouse raised the child or if your neighbors raised the child, assuming that you're both reasonably competent parents.

from Adebisi:

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but to assert they have no effect is pretty absurd. If you took two cloned babies and placed one with stable, loving parents, and the other with an abusive, alcoholic father and mentally unstable mother, you'd probably be able to see how big an effect parents can have.

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Nowhere does the author say that parents have no effect. She specifically states that bad parenting can have a negative effect on a child.

Both of you are taking positions well outside of what the author contends.

[entertainme]

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Keep in mind, that one of my beliefs is "the thin red line", basically that it takes one wrong decision, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, to have a major negative impact on the rest of your life.

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I wonder what you mean by this. I mean sure in one sense it's trivially true; you might have decided to accept a job with a high-powered firm in the Twin Towers, starting Sept 10th.... but in general life is unpredictable and in practice people jump from great to awful things, and vica versa, all the time.

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committing a felony springs to mind.

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Another example: A colleague's grandson got into his car angry, drove too fast, wrecked it. He's now a quad.

Of course there are other less tragic examples. Having a kid in high school can be overcome, but makes success that much more difficult.

[Jamougha]

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The Colorado study says that the only reason we are like our parents is that we share their genes, and that--by any measures of cognition and personality--when there is no genetic inheritance there is no resemblance.

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In other words, if you have an adopted child in the house it would make relatively little difference in the end if you and your spouse raised the child or if your neighbors raised the child, assuming that you're both reasonably competent parents.

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The thing is that what you just said is not the same as what that quote says. Think about it.