NATURE-NURTURE TUSSLE: CHILDREN IN THE LOOP
By
Ikechukwu Peter Ovuoba, BSC, BPHIL, MNIM (Dedicated to Nigerian Children on their Children's Day Celebration dated this day 27th May, 2020) ikechukwulementor@gmail.com
Introduction
The nature-nurture tussle is the debate of whether human behavior is determined by the environment, either prenatal or during a person’s life, or by a person’s genes. However, researchers have shown that both genetic traits and the environment affect a person’s development through life. Hence, the onus of this piece is to spotlight on how nature-nurture tussle affects children. It shall educate parents (especially intending parents), stewards and caregivers to have a balanced knowledge of the tussle in order to raise healthy children.
Historical Documentary on the Nature-Nurture Tussle
Although the concepts are ancient, its modern use was popularized by Francis Galton, the modern founder of eugenics and behavioral genetics. In it, he discussed the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement (Francis Galton, English Men of Science: The Nature and Nurture, 1895, p. 9). The influence dates back to John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that the human person is a tabla rasa (blank slate) from birth whence the environmental experience is the chief-influencer of our behaviors as contrasted with Rene Descartes’ Innatism that holds that we have innate ideas from birth. By the way, the interest is to synthesize by drawing implications for the debate in raising healthy children in the contemporary times.
The Kantian Mediation of the Tussle as I Propose
It is arguably true that nature and nurture has its role to play in our lives and so, the belief in nature or nurture only would amount to an absurd thinking as the two has its indispensable parts to play in raising children. However, it is to a large extent more creditable to infer that nurture is the chief-determinant of how we live our lives. Therefore, parents (especially intending couples), stewards and caregivers must painstakingly pay careful attention to the environments and what or who they allow or let into it to avoid corrupting the positive values that children need to grow mature.
This was why Watson said “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors” (John B. Watson, Behaviorism, 1930, p. 82). In other words, a child can be born by parents who have the best of genes but just with a little grip of the negative environmental influences the child can become a beast and vice versa.
By extension, this was what Steven Pinker meant when he talked about noble savage and ghost in the machine. For him, there's a human soul capable of moral choices and that people are born good (which affirms nature or innatism) but are corrupted by good or bad influence which points to the power of nurture (Steven Pinker, The Blank: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002).
For example, twins who share identically the same gene if separated and raised in different environments are bound to behave differently to life. Notwithstanding, genes are a substantial contribution to psychological traits such as intelligence and personality. Therefore, we must take to duty to live out our responsibilities of providing an enabling environment for the children and ourselves.
This implies that the environment has the power to influence an individual regardless of their natural or genetic hereditary traits.
What, then, is environment?
Environment is the totality of the social experiences an individual is subjected to. Environmental influences ranges from conception to birth down to death and they include: At conception, everything that a woman eats, the vitamins, drugs and all her activities culminates to the prenatal nurture/environmental influences that influences the child's formation. Therefore, parents should pay great attention to whatever a woman eats during pregnancy. You are expected heretofore to eat healthy and take necessary vitamins and supplements that will aid in right formation of the child.
At childbirth till death, the nurture/environmental influences cuts across the feeding of the mother and child, the atmospheric conditions, Church, School, friends, associations, culture, lifestyle, information we access, what we watch, our discussions, human agents, peer groups and other agents of social integration that makeup the environment or society even external influences, degenerates to form the chief-determinant of a child's formation and success pedigree even as an adult. This was why John C. Maxwell advised that nurture of a child or people needs a growth environment when he opined that "leaders should be raised in a growth environment where others seem to be ahead of them; where they're continually challenged; where their focus is forward and atmosphere is affirming; where failure is not seen as an enemy but a tool to be positively leveraged for success; where others are growing, people desire change and growth is modeled and expected; where they lam out of their comfort zone and wake up excited" (John C. Maxwell, What Successful People Know About Leadership, 2016, p. 20-21).
Conclusion
It is high time to stop those assumptions that whatever will be, will be. Success is a process and not a thing of luck. Even the beginner's luck at the final stage is subjected to purgation and purification just as gold passes the purgation and purification from fire by the goldsmith. Therefore, parents, stewards and caregivers ought not undermine the need for creating a growth environment for our children or wards and even for ourselves as adults because although we can't deny the importance of hereditary traits we still cannot close our eyes to the raw truth that our environment determine our social, intellectual, emotional and success quotient by 75% and above especially this time that there are so many environmental (nurture) factors that hamper growth and good values.
By
Ikechukwu Peter Ovuoba, BSC, BPHIL, MNIM (Dedicated to Nigerian Children on their Children's Day Celebration dated this day 27th May, 2020) ikechukwulementor@gmail.com
Introduction
The nature-nurture tussle is the debate of whether human behavior is determined by the environment, either prenatal or during a person’s life, or by a person’s genes. However, researchers have shown that both genetic traits and the environment affect a person’s development through life. Hence, the onus of this piece is to spotlight on how nature-nurture tussle affects children. It shall educate parents (especially intending parents), stewards and caregivers to have a balanced knowledge of the tussle in order to raise healthy children.
Historical Documentary on the Nature-Nurture Tussle
Although the concepts are ancient, its modern use was popularized by Francis Galton, the modern founder of eugenics and behavioral genetics. In it, he discussed the influence of heredity and environment on social advancement (Francis Galton, English Men of Science: The Nature and Nurture, 1895, p. 9). The influence dates back to John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that the human person is a tabla rasa (blank slate) from birth whence the environmental experience is the chief-influencer of our behaviors as contrasted with Rene Descartes’ Innatism that holds that we have innate ideas from birth. By the way, the interest is to synthesize by drawing implications for the debate in raising healthy children in the contemporary times.
The Kantian Mediation of the Tussle as I Propose
It is arguably true that nature and nurture has its role to play in our lives and so, the belief in nature or nurture only would amount to an absurd thinking as the two has its indispensable parts to play in raising children. However, it is to a large extent more creditable to infer that nurture is the chief-determinant of how we live our lives. Therefore, parents (especially intending couples), stewards and caregivers must painstakingly pay careful attention to the environments and what or who they allow or let into it to avoid corrupting the positive values that children need to grow mature.
This was why Watson said “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors” (John B. Watson, Behaviorism, 1930, p. 82). In other words, a child can be born by parents who have the best of genes but just with a little grip of the negative environmental influences the child can become a beast and vice versa.
By extension, this was what Steven Pinker meant when he talked about noble savage and ghost in the machine. For him, there's a human soul capable of moral choices and that people are born good (which affirms nature or innatism) but are corrupted by good or bad influence which points to the power of nurture (Steven Pinker, The Blank: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, 2002).
For example, twins who share identically the same gene if separated and raised in different environments are bound to behave differently to life. Notwithstanding, genes are a substantial contribution to psychological traits such as intelligence and personality. Therefore, we must take to duty to live out our responsibilities of providing an enabling environment for the children and ourselves.
This implies that the environment has the power to influence an individual regardless of their natural or genetic hereditary traits.
What, then, is environment?
Environment is the totality of the social experiences an individual is subjected to. Environmental influences ranges from conception to birth down to death and they include: At conception, everything that a woman eats, the vitamins, drugs and all her activities culminates to the prenatal nurture/environmental influences that influences the child's formation. Therefore, parents should pay great attention to whatever a woman eats during pregnancy. You are expected heretofore to eat healthy and take necessary vitamins and supplements that will aid in right formation of the child.
At childbirth till death, the nurture/environmental influences cuts across the feeding of the mother and child, the atmospheric conditions, Church, School, friends, associations, culture, lifestyle, information we access, what we watch, our discussions, human agents, peer groups and other agents of social integration that makeup the environment or society even external influences, degenerates to form the chief-determinant of a child's formation and success pedigree even as an adult. This was why John C. Maxwell advised that nurture of a child or people needs a growth environment when he opined that "leaders should be raised in a growth environment where others seem to be ahead of them; where they're continually challenged; where their focus is forward and atmosphere is affirming; where failure is not seen as an enemy but a tool to be positively leveraged for success; where others are growing, people desire change and growth is modeled and expected; where they lam out of their comfort zone and wake up excited" (John C. Maxwell, What Successful People Know About Leadership, 2016, p. 20-21).
Conclusion
It is high time to stop those assumptions that whatever will be, will be. Success is a process and not a thing of luck. Even the beginner's luck at the final stage is subjected to purgation and purification just as gold passes the purgation and purification from fire by the goldsmith. Therefore, parents, stewards and caregivers ought not undermine the need for creating a growth environment for our children or wards and even for ourselves as adults because although we can't deny the importance of hereditary traits we still cannot close our eyes to the raw truth that our environment determine our social, intellectual, emotional and success quotient by 75% and above especially this time that there are so many environmental (nurture) factors that hamper growth and good values.
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