Nature vs nurture: why parents’ genes determine who we become, not how they raise us, according to professor
- Parents have little effect on their children’s outcomes, beyond the blueprint that their genes provided, Professor Robert Plomin writes in a new book
- Experiences matter – family, friends, school – but they do not change who we basically are, he says. Unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees
Parents matter, says King’s College London professor of behavioural genetics Robert Plomin in his recently published book, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are.
But all that hard work, all those parenting manuals and all that money showered on children today do not count as much as parents would like to believe.
The most important thing parents give their children is their genes, says Plomin, pitching in on the old question of nature versus nurture.
During the past four decades scientists have researched “special” relatives such as twins and adoptees to test the effects of genes (nature) and the environment (nurture), Plomin writes. “This research has built a mountain of evidence showing that genetics contributes importantly to all psychological differences between us,” he says.
The environment does play a part when it comes to the psychological differences between us, but Plomin writes that “genetic research has shown that the environment does not work the way environmentalists thought it worked”.
“For most of the 20th century, environmental influences were called ‘nurture’, because the family was thought to be crucial in determining environmentally who we become,” he says.