Nature Vs. Nurture: A Genetic Analysis

After spending sixteen-years observing the trends of families with respect to their individual triumphs and setbacks, I cannot say that nature or nurture is strong enough of a singular foundation to determine the whole of our lives. Instead, I would argue that it is a combination of both nature and nurture that shapes human outcome. I tend to look at it like this: we cannot escape our genetic predispositions, but we can change the psychology surrounding them. Thus, it is possible to raise a child who had an incredibly dire utero experience into a functional, happy person and vice versa. Paul gives explanation of this with regards to PTSD and how this genetic marker could be both a hindrance or survival testimony (Paul, 2011). So, I cannot say that I fall on one spectrum more than the other. …show more content…
I confess, I tend to grab at the granola a bit more than others, but found myself ignited by a world of predetermination and wondered how could experiences be so extreme to change the outcome of our internal coding. Foster children may have less favorable outcomes than adoptive children regardless of their utero determinations (Family Research Institute , 2010). Beslky and Pluess write (2009) in their study of the nature and nurture of plasticity, “Indeed, there is now extensive work showing that very early experiences occurring in the womb can affect later development,” (p.348) this is of course buffered by Paul’s explanation of the Hunger Winter and a predetermination for metabolic diseases (Paul, 2011 ). To this, I feel there has to be some portion of us that will be