Education Has Nothing To Do With It?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

When my parents raised me, there was only one style of parenting, the only requirement of which was to keep the child alive.

And that's all.

If something could kill my brothers and me - like trying to ride bicycles off the roof of a garage with umbrellas instead of parachutes - we were forbidden. If something could take us more than five minutes, our parents were generous enough to spend money so that we could have it (books, LEGO, Nintendo).

My mom even started a Nintendo Club for my classmates. As a result, almost the entire area was carried away by game consoles, and parents got a little more time to sleep, stroke and see the "General Hospital". (It was the 1980s. Then everyone ironed their clothes before going to bed and watched “General Hospital.” They say it was called “Reaganomics,” but I don't know what that word means.)

My mom was a hero to local parents - and probably the worst enemy to Ganon.

Many styles of parenting have emerged these days. There are tough "mother tigers". There are helicopter parents circling over their children. At the other end of the spectrum is "free-range" - like chickens on a farm.

Many books have been written about all these styles, and articles on parenting on the Internet attract users like a magnet.

At the heart of this endless debate about how best to raise children is the idea of the special importance of parenting. Many fathers are afraid that if they do not come to their daughter's next bassoon concert, one day she, like Miley Cyrus, will rub her backside against Robin Thicke. Pop culture, church, press, family and greeting cards inspire this idea. However, there is one question that participants in parenting wars rarely ask: what if parenting style does not affect children so much?

Meanwhile, according to many studies based on the observation of twins and adopted siblings, parents are not as important as moms, dads and the powerful music teacher lobby claim. Research shows that when it comes to things like character, health, and chances of success in life, nature (genes) usually outweighs parenting.

So parents don't mean anything? Nobody says that. They can, of course, push children towards more or less sensible choices, especially in the short term. The question is: how strong is the long-term parenting influence? Scientists are actively trying to find an answer to it, and every year new information appears, but so far nature looks like a much more significant factor. Especially when it comes to …

# 5 - … education

If you have five brothers and sisters and all of them have good grades and you have bad grades, perhaps your real dad is a postman. It's a pity, of course, that you had to find out about this from the article on our website, but we are not to blame for this. Any questions to your postman.

Apparently, genes affect not only money, but also values. In 2013, British researchers looked at the academic performance of more than 11,000 identical and fraternal 16-year-old twins, and it turned out that genes influence grades more than teachers, schools and family environment. Other studies and the popular 1980s TV series Diff'rent Strokes are about the same. Remember how his character Willis had problems with his studies, although he and his brother Arnold were adopted by a wealthy Manhattan businessman?

Data on American-adopted Korean children show that having a college degree from an adoptive mother increases the child's chance of graduating by 7%. In contrast, a higher education in a biological mother increases this chance by 26%, regardless of how wealthy or educated the adoptive parents are.

Probably something similar happened to Willis.

# 4 - … life satisfaction

A Minnesota study of twins found that life satisfaction is inherited by about 50%. According to sociologist Arthur C. Brooks, according to other studies, approximately 40% more satisfaction with life is determined by current events, that is, constantly changing parameters. The remaining 10% are mainly determined by the person himself (which partly explains such phenomena as life coaching and large cocktails).

In his book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, economist Bryan Caplan writes that parents greatly overestimate their ability to actively influence child happiness. He makes this conclusion based on the fact that identical twins, who have the same DNA, tend to have closer levels of happiness than identical twins, who differ in DNA.

The good news for parents of sullen teens is that research shows that dissatisfaction with life comes from genetic rather than external factors. That is, the point is not that in childhood someone lacked a mother's embrace. "When an adult is unhappy," Kaplan writes, "it's not because of mistakes that his parents made long ago."

He should have added, "You have to come to terms with this."

# 3 - … character

Nobody says, admiring the child in the cradle: "I hope we will be able to raise him as a full goat." However, for some reason there are enough goats around - on the road, in the comments, in bars, at work. The world is full of self-confident, scandalous freaks. So what is causing the catastrophic rise in store parking tensions - poor parenting or something deeper?

Observations of twins (they are bred for scientific purposes, or what?) Have shown that genes affect personality, although it is not yet clear how exactly. Billions of dollars spent on DNA research have not yet helped identify specific genes responsible for dishwashing and road-friendliness. (Dear scientists, please do not stop studying this - we need such people.)

Biology explains criminal behavior? More than 100 studies say inherited traits play a role. However, the mere fact of predisposition does not mean that a person will become a criminal. Education is also important. Ultimately, criminal impulses can be suppressed and redirected - for example, engage in hand-to-hand combat or run for Congress.

# 2 - … weights

Everyone who has seen parents trying to feed a 3-year-old baby something that he does not want to eat, and everyone who stumbled upon broccoli peacefully rotting in a toy box has witnessed with his own eyes one of the battles of the endless war between nature and nurture … In matters related to being overweight, nature puts upbringing on a fork, dips it in syrup and eats it down with soda.

According to researchers, being fat as a child or as an adult is "largely an inherited property."

The mice have even been found to have a gene that influences weight (so there should be more lean and sexy mice now). The subjects ate the same amount of calories, but only mice with a certain genetic change gained weight. Scientists hope this information will someday help people manage weight.

The fact is that, as you know, genes affect how much of the food is burned, and what is converted into fat. The good news is that diet and exercise still help. The bad news is that for those of us who keep hiding broccoli under the table, it will be much more difficult to get lean.

# 1 - … education

Yes, even how the parents treat them depends on the child's genes. More precisely, the genes passed on to the child by the ancestors, manifested in the child, in a predictable way affect how the parents will behave with him. Such is the "domino principle", a complex chain of diapers, tantrums and children's drawings.

Dozens of studies, during which scientists worked with data on 14, 6 thousand pairs of twins, showed that the genes of the child "seriously" affect the behavior of the parent. To give one example, in boys, the serotonin transporter portion of the genetic code predicts how angry a mom will get if her son, say, hides her car keys in the toilet. However, the impact of socio-economic and cultural differences, as well as families and schools, scientists also recognize.

As the authors of one of the articles write, "parenting depends not only on the characteristics of the parent, but also on the characteristics of the child." “There is no perfect parenting style. Each child needs a special approach. Therefore, parents should not try to treat children in the same way - on the contrary, they need to track individual characteristics and take them into account,”they add.

Of course, explaining this to children who want everything to be "fair" is not easy, however, parents can reassure themselves that even if they do not know how to do it, they most likely will not cripple their child for life.