This week's article summary is Does Parenting Even Matter?

I liked this article because it provides the historical context of how parenting in America transitioned from ‘kids should be seen and not heard’ to ‘child-centered parenting’, beginning in the late 1950s.

 

We’re all aware of the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate. This article posits that nature (our genetic make-up) vastly outweighs environmental influences.

 

When my kids were in middle school, I tried to set a good example of being studious, organized, proactive, and focused by having quiet time after dinner for the entire family: no TV, music, or electronics from 7:30-9:00. My hope was my kids would be positively influenced by this structured home learning environment and by the positive adult role modeling of my wife and me and thus develop good study and organizational habits for the increased work load of high school.

 

Did it work? Hardly. More an epic disaster! All my kids learned was how to passively-aggressively wait me out until I was frustrated with their lack of effort and focus and with me getting bored reading or doing school work. 

 

My evening quiet-time experiment ended after one dismal week, after which my kids went back to going to their rooms after dinner to multitask and my wishful hope that they were completing their homework and maybe even reviewing their notes. (What a dimwitted parent I was!)

 

Eventually, though, my kids did become pretty good students and today are responsible adults. Yet, as the article attests, this was more because my wife and I passed them genes of being pretty good students and responsible adults, not because of our parenting style or my naïve attempt to create a studious environment to influence them.

 

The reality, of course, is parenting does matter. Having parents who provide love and support and set appropriate parameters certainly helps children grow and develop and gain confidence and assurance. Yet we shouldn't overestimate our influence on them and hence give them ample them room to make choices within the adult-established parameters of expected behavior. 

 

Trust them and their genes!

 

Joe

-----

In 1980, a popular news story swept the US media. It was about three college-age boys—Eddy, David and Bobby—who, through a series of coincidences, had discovered they were identical triplets who’d been separated at birth and adopted. 

 

After being joyfully reunited, the handsome, affable teenagers were caught up in a whirlwind of public attention. They did the daytime talk-show circuit and laughed as interviewers marveled over their similarities: They all smoked the same brand of cigarettes, had the same favorite color and even liked similar women. They were, in many ways, seemingly indistinguishable, despite having grown up in entirely different families on different sides of the country.

 

But as a recent documentary, Three Identical Strangers, explores, it turns out there was a chilling secret at the heart of this feel-good story. The boys were being used as subjects in a sociological experiment aimed at testing the age-old question of which matters more: Nature or nurture?

 

Have you ever agonized over whether you should even bother nagging an unmusical child to practice piano? Or wondered why two siblings raised in the same home can turn out to be so wildly different? Perhaps you’re starting to suspect that all those hours you spent straining organic parsnips, attending sing-and-sign classes, and smiling over flash cards didn’t actually make much difference to the person your kid is turning out to be.

 

As modern parents, most of us believe we have significant control over who our kids become and that, by extension, their future successes or failures ride largely on our shoulders.

 

But what if that just wasn’t true? What if the most effective thing we could do as loving, responsible parents was to simply sit back and relax?

 

A new body of groundbreaking genetic research points to a glaring truth: As parents, we’re not as important as we think we are.

 

The role of genetics: How people become who they are has been the subject of psychologist and geneticist Robert Plomin’s research for years, and his book Blueprint explores how DNA forms human character. “Parenting matters,” he said, “but not in terms of determining a child’s psychological outcome.” What Plomin means is that while it’s hugely important that we love and care for our kids, other things matter far less. New data shows things like how many books you read them when they’re small and how hard (or if) you push them into certain activities, aren’t likely to have much, if any, effect on who they fundamentally are now, or who they become. Put another way: If your child is defiant and strong-willed, they’re almost certainly going to spend their life challenging authority whether you run your household on a strict military timetable or unschool them in a yurt. 

 

It’s a thought that flies in the face of virtually every piece of parenting advice you’ve likely ever encountered, but Plomin’s research is largely conclusive. He’s concluded that many character traits widely assumed to be the result of environmental factors and social conditioning—like curiosity, diligence, intelligence, fastidiousness, academic inclination and drive—are, in fact, highly heritable. For decades, Plomin writes, sociologists have mistakenly attributed such factors to environment, but breakthroughs in genetics now prove that’s just not the case. You can’t effectively control for genetics, and genetics are the key determining factor in everything we are.

 

The effect of our nurturing instincts: Research shows that while the “extras” of parenting (like music lessons) might not be crucial, the basic care we provide actually matters significantly. Ann Pleshette Murphy, a therapist and parenting counselor who has disagreed with Plomin, says that while she doesn’t dispute the role genetics play, environment is also hugely important and should not be discounted. She points out that in recent years, several key neurological studies have found that the architecture of infants’ brains is demonstrably affected by the often seemingly subtle ways in which they are parented.

 

“Genes matter,” says Pleshette Murphy, “but the house must be built on love. Even if we concede that DNA accounts for 70 percent of our character traits, the remaining 30 percent can make 100 percent of the difference.”

 

The Rise of Child-Centered Parenting: So if love matters but everything else is incidental, how did we get to the point where every day we are bombarded with messages that if we only parented a little harder, a little better or a little differently, we would send our kids down a path of well-adjustment, happiness and prosperity? The act of parenting, in the child-centered sense, didn’t really exist as a marketable concept until the middle of the last century, when Dr. Benjamin Spock published his book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, the first bestseller on the subject. Throughout the late 1960s, the genre proliferated, and a new crop of self-anointed experts began churning out books designed to fill the needs of anxious baby boomer parents who craved baby- and child-rearing advice.

 

Prior to that, most people simply raised their kids by example, and the unique emotional needs of children were, by and large, considered subordinate to the needs of adults. With the rise of youth culture in the ’50s and ’60s, many middle-class baby boomers decided they wanted to do things differently when they had their own families. My parents, for instance, grew up in a time when corporal punishment was widely accepted and school teachers hit students as a matter of course. Like many of their generation, however, they chose not to continue the tradition.

 

While the move toward child-centered parenting has been beneficial for children on a societal level, it also means we have come to substantially overstate the effects (positive, negative or otherwise) of parenting in the home. While our own parents were mostly on their own with Spock, today’s parent are overwhelmed by a tsunami of unsolicited parenting advice. As a consequence, it’s easy to be seized by the notion that every little choice matters hugely as a new parent, but lots of data suggests the opposite is true.

 

Child-centered parenting seems lovely in theory, but what about all the unnecessary guilt and anxiety it has caused parents who fail to live up to its exacting standards? Recent research from Cornell University found that an overwhelming majority of parents thought a hands-on approach to parenting was superior to a ‘natural growth’ approach, where parents set rules but kids have more freedom.

 

Parenting does matter—of course it does—just not in the overly complicated, competitive, anxiety-ridden way most of us have been led to believe. Our kids are born who they are, Plomin says. As parents, it’s our job to love, support, accept and enjoy them. The rest is gravy.