Nature and Nurture: Form a Child's Personality

Nature and Nurture: Form a Child's Personality

  • Submitted By: abevill
  • Date Submitted: 03/04/2009 6:56 PM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 287
  • Page: 2
  • Views: 1421

I believe that both nature and nurture form a child’s personality. Nature alone does not determine a child's personality, and neither does nurture. It is a combination of the two that create the child’s personality. Nature is defined as the innate characteristics a child is born with and hereditary features a child receives from his relatives. Nurture represents the physical and social environment that a child is placed in. My wife and I adopted our son “W” at the age of 9 from Ukraine. Prior to “W” being adopted, he lived on the streets of Kiev, Ukraine from the age of 5 until the age of 7 and at the age of 7 he was placed in an orphanage where he stayed until we adopted him at the age of 9. Living on the streets was a negative environment and presented many different negative experiences for “W”. Even in the early years of development, “W” was able to develop some innate copping skills to survive either from his environment (nature) or hereditary (nurture). Now at the age of 14 “W” has become a “normal” American teenager due to his new family (his environment / nature). According to Anastasi, that neither heredity nor environment can exists separately. They are always connected and working together. One looks to the “how” question that a number of scientists askhow the two work together to produce a behavior. Anastasi suggest; “it is a hopeless task to identify “which” of the two factors produces a particular behavior or to determine “how much” each contributes”. (Vander Zanden et al, 2007, pg. 59) Resource Vander Zanden, J. W., Crandell, T. L., & Crandell, C. H. (2007). Human development (8th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

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