But don't tend to hear acknowledged that less ideal circumstances are less pleasant for the time that a kid is at home!
When do children "turn out?" 18? 30? 40?
It *counts* that a child is unhappy when beaten, for example.
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choiceful- Shannon
- I'm a Life Coach!
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no fucking kidding. Even when kids "overcome" their fucked up backgrounds as adults, I bet that's only for overt values of "overcome". Thanks for the post Shannon.
And how exactly do these claims manage to separate out cultural and nurture factors from genetics exactly?
That's always been the problem with this kind of research.
That's always been the problem with this kind of research.
Sigh. When you express definite opinions about things you don't know anything about, I feel annoyed, because I feel disrespected. I hear it as "Even though I don't know anything about this subject, I don't believe your opinion."
It is actually pretty straightforward to separate genetic and environmental factors. Identical twins raised apart have same genes, different environments. Adopted kids raised together have same environments, different genes. And fraternal twins, siblings, half-siblings, provide additional data points with different levels of overlap (fraternal twins have 50% gene overlap, just like siblings, but they share the prenatal environment, like identicals, so they let you see how much is due to sharing the same womb. Which is surprisingly high - like 7% or something of variation between people on some characteristics is from the pregnancy).
If identical twins raised apart have a 70% correlation in IQ, and adopted kids raised together have a 0% correlation in IQ, you can be pretty sure that IQ has closed to a 70% genetic effect, and a 0% family effect.
This makes more sense to me. Though I imagine peer group has been more influential mostly since parents these days rarely spend much time with their kids. Is there research from a time (or culture) when parents and family spent a larger amount of time with the children? I'd be curious to see how that compared.
Granted, that isn't relevant to modern America since peers really do spend the most time together nowadays.
Sigh. When you express definite opinions about things you don't know anything about, I feel annoyed, because I feel disrespected. I hear it as "Even though I don't know anything about this subject, I don't believe your opinion."
Thank you for stating your feelings this way. If you want me to learn anything from you, this is a much more effective way to get me to listen.
It is actually pretty straightforward to separate genetic and environmental factors....
Ok, I see your point, however, does this explanation factor in the differences in how children are treated by the same parents?
Children are not necessarily treated the same. And admittedly that might still be a marginal factor compared to the points you make.
Those types of effects are possible to observe on an individual scale, but very difficult to do studies for. Peter, for example, could have been utterly broken emotionally in his first 3 years without hurculean efforts on my part. He is still somewhat fragile, but I think we're over the worst of it.
Amber, I try not to break her and I try to nurture her well, but she is less fragile than Peter ever was. In terms of adult outcomes, I belive that Peter's adult outcome will be better than it would have been had I not cared so much for him his first 3 years. Amber's outcome should be awesome no matter what I do (as long as I don't let her get run over a car.)
If Peter (genetically) were born to a poor family and placed in less-than-stellar group care, or possibly even if he weren't my firstborn (or if I had had a "twin" Peter genetically instead of Amber, I believe his outcomes would be statistically less than they are likely to be now. It is not ethically possible to do reasonable adoption studies of twins raised in worse and better environments because in order to adopt, families must meet certain standards. Adopted children, generally speaking, are wanted. If someone didn't want (yet still raised) Peter, he would not be the person he is now.
It is possible to look at firstborn effects, which I believe are documented. The gains aren't huge, but then again, it is my personal belief that the gains are larger for some personality types than others, so any study would have to control for innate personality type to see large meaningful differences, which is difficult to do.
So my point is, statistically across the whole population, studies would more likely find differences in genitics to be larger than differences in environment (Peter is more likely to do better than random Joe Schmoe, reguardless of their environments). However, you are more likely to be able to increase the outcomes of people who are already born by paying attention to their environment and how they're raised. Peter with me is more likely to do beter than a hypothetical Peter-prime raised by distant uncaring corporate staff and televisions.
Essentially, early identification of kids for whom environment matters, and then intervention for those kids, is significant.
--Beth
PS. Did you get my message about belly-dancing and ice skating? Do you have any interest in ice-skating? What are the belly-dancing details?
Belly dancing is beginner lessons Wednesdays @ 11:30 in downtown Sunnyvale. Its walk in: no signing up for ongoing classes. I'm not so interested in ice skating right now.
--Beth
Here's the website: http://www.lunaticfringebde.com/
I'd also like to know how "turning out" is measured: financial success? Happiness ratings? I figure if I read through Judith's material she answers that, so I can't make arguments about it, although I'm very suspicious about her measuring "turning out" in all of the aspects that I might consider important.
Oh, people love to listen to what they want to hear...
Hmm, yeah, how do I measure "turning out well"? I suppose HS diploma or GED is a minimum, the standards are so low that nearly everyone without diagnosed brain damage who puts in the seat time and works "hard enough" at it can get one. "Turning out well" for someone who is mentally retarded through no fault of their own is an entirely different ball game not covered by this post.
After HS, I suppose choosing a life path that leaves one satisfied and a productive member of society are important. Happiness is important, but to me, to be "successful" one must make not only oneself happy, but others as well. If my child had an attitude of "I got mine, screw the world" my internal metric doesn't define that as "success."
Part of being a productive member of society is filing tax returns that pay out more than one receives in services, and eventually retiring with enough savings to largely care for oneself. The other part is showing concern for others, both in the family and in the community. Using one's talents not just to make a buck and buy more toys, but to help others.
The simplest way to score productivity is certainly by the tax return (married returns certainly count in my book, one spouse can very much enable another) but that clearly misses important aspects of a person. I'm sure the Enron top guys filed some pretty impressive returns for a while, but did they turn out well? I don't think so. Having ethics is important to me in the "turning out" equation.
--Beth
Of course it matters whether children are happy, neurotic, etc. when living with their parents, just like it matters whether an employer makes an employee miserable. Yet many people feel a need to show long-lasting effects of the former but not the latter.
I'm not surprised at all that personality and intelligence are not effected by upbringing, but those are not what I think of when I consider how someone "turned out."
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/200
Sarnoff A. Mednick, William F. Gabrielli Jr. and Barry Hutchings (1987), Genetic factors in the etiology of criminal behaviour
David C. Rowe, Joseph L. Rodgers, Sylvia Meseck-Bushey, Sibling Delinquency and the Family Environment: Shared and Unshared Influences
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/jour
ML Rutter, Nature-Nurture Integration: The Example of Antisocial Behavior. - American Psychologist, 1997
I don't know if it's true, but she says that the data supports this idea, and it resolves the contradictions between various studies - the ones that show an effect are the ones that ask people in the family about personalities, the ones that don't show an effect are the ones that ask people who interact with the kids in the outside world.
Beth's point about there being personalities for whom environment matters more than others is worth thinking about -- I'd love to see if there's research along those lines.