I recently have been researching a paper for my psychology class, and the paper has to do with the nature vs. nurture argument. For a long time, I used to believe that nurturing was way more important on the scale than nature. I for years have truly thought that children were a product of the environment in which they were raised and gave very little credibility to the fact that some personality traits are inborn.
Since researching this paper, I have discovered that nature has more of a role in how a child is than pretty much any other factor. It was hard for me to accept at first, and honestly it was the stories on twins that really got to me. In one of the separated at birth stories I studied, they talked about twin girls that had been separated at birth. With no idea that they even had a twin out there in the world, they went about living their lives. At the age of 38, they discovered they had a twin and met up together for the first time. These twins had the same strengths and weaknesses. For instance, they both were excellent in math, but had struggled with social studies significantly. Both of the women had the same favorite color, liked the same type of music and the same foods. These women had similar hair styles and both were married to men named Paul. They married within a year of each other and each one had 2 kids a boy and a girl. They each even went to the Bahamas for their honeymoons. Each of them was very athletic and ran every morning. They also had each run in the same marathon 20 years earlier.
Another set of twins, men in their 50’s, had not only experienced similar health problems, but had the same likes and dislikes, had both married their high school sweetheart, and both were contractors and had played tennis in high school and collected model airplanes.
Although this may sound like a very freaky set of coincidences, this type of thing has been documented about all different twins that have been separated for years. In every case that was documented in this book, the twins unknowingly were making the same choices at the same time. I find it so interesting that somewhere inside of their DNA they must possess a set of certain traits unknown to scientists so far that cause their likes and dislikes.
I guess perhaps this would explain how serial killers can come from seemingly normal families and circumstances, and turn into such horrible beings. I am not excusing away the idea of choices and responsibilities for ones actions, I am just saying that maybe when we have children, we should consider the fact that we can’t change who are kids are, all we can do is help them find a positive way to channel their inborn energies. Working with our kids to try and put their natural abilities and talents to good use, may be the only power that we will have over the fate of the world.