Due: Thursday, October 11th
Please answer the question below:
Question: Chapter Three explores “nature” (heredity) versus “nurture” (the social environment) in terms of how our human characteristics are developed. What are your feelings on this? Would you attribute the development of human characteristics to nature, nurture, or a combination of both? Please cite examples from class, the text and your own personal experiences to support your position. How has sociological research/observation responded to this question?
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Nature and Nurture both play equivalent roles in the well being of a growing child/adult. There are many examples that can be used for both sides. For example I always use myself, as a young girl I grew up in public housing where teen pregnancie was no big deal. Yet,the older I get the more astonished I become at having become a parent at the age of 14. Now, I personally live in a nice area and the mere thought of my daughter becoming a teen mother is horrifying. Expectations definitaly make a difference in a childs life. Becoming a parent early in life has allowed me to gain the knowledge and respect it takes to pursue goals. In essence as the chapter states those of us who grow in lower class do feel older quicker, this is in part due to the many life lesson learned early in our teens years. At the same time nurture can have a lot to do with the success or future failures of someone who has made a mistake will face. My mother emphasized every day that I was now a mother and no longer did I have the option of doing nothing, I had to instantly set goals.From this point on I became not only a mother,but also an adult overnight. Yet, there are so many young mother who I believe give up on life because they have become mothers early in life and now believe their goals are dead or that their life has to be put on the back burner. While these young mothers are doubting their own ability to continue on to college, their own peers most time abandon them which makes the situation even worse. So, if these young moms do not find the nurturing they need they might indeed just become another statistic.
I would attribute the development of human characteristics to both nature and nurture, however, I feel that nurture does outweigh nature. Nature forms the initial structure of who we are by many things including, as the book states, our ability to share the universal expression of emotions. Through nurture, we develop why we feel the need to express these emotions. We develop so much of our personality through our language, family, peers and personal experiences as we grow. In class we discussed our family heritage or background and how we interact and treat other members of our family and how those of us from this area that are Pennsylvania Dutch tend to not be as physically affectionate with our families as an Italian family would be. An example of a personal experience of nature vs. nurture is that neither of my parents nor any of my grandparents had ever gone to college. So I feel that it is in my personal hereditary genes that I too would not go to college. But nurture has proved otherwise. I have been influenced by my generation, friends and personal goals to attend college and obtain a degree.
I feel that sociologists can lean towards one side or the other by their observations and research, but they certainly cannot stand strong by saying that it is ALL nature or ALL nurture. They would be completely having a closed mind and not considering all aspects of human development.
I believe that human characteristics are developed through heredity and social environment. I think a persons views and morals are determined by the way the person is raised. Your personality will reflect the personality of the people who you were raised by. While I beleive that this is true, I also think that a persons genes influence who they are as a person. An example of this from the book is the case of Oskar and Jack, the identical twins seperated in birth. Oskar was raised to hate Jews and love Hitler. Jack was raised as a Jew and learned to hate Hitler. They were raised in opposite environments but when scientists brought them together they realized some interesting similarities between the twins. They both performed extremely well in sports throughout their childhoods, and they both struggled in math. They also both liked sweet liqueur and spicy food. The most interesting thing psychologists found they had in common was that they both flushed the toliet before and after using it. So although they grew up in totally different social environments, they still shared many things in common due to their genetics. So liked I stated earlier, I think that human development is based not only on nature or nuture but both of them combined.
I feel that nature is how we are made or born. the things we inherited from our parenets that will alway be with us. On the other hand, i beleive that nurtures are the things we learn from the environment around us. Which also as to do with the places that we were raised. Well i feel that nature and nurture work hand in hand because without one, you cannot get the other. I think that the human characteristics is the combination of both nature and nurture because it has to deal with our environments. For instance, the two twins that were raised in a diffrent enviroments. By nature, they both have the same gene and act the same in a certain things. But by nurture, they were raise to believe in a diffrent morals like catholic and jewish. Another example is the feral children. This kids leaved in the wood because their was nobody to care for them. But were raise by money. That does not mean that they are diffrent from any other human being, is just the way that they were raised.But when they were found and brought out to be taken care by real people, they actually turned out to be normal. Like the picture in the book illustrated. Another example is that i was not born and raised in the United states. So no matter how many years that i will leave here, that does not mean that because i was not born here i am diffrent from people that were born here.
I would definitley say that it's the nurturing process that makes us human. Even the book agrees that only our parents can teach us how to eat right and have proper hygiene. It is our parents, relatives and religion that teach us right from wrong. Nature can not teach us how to speak or learn or to adapt to our environment. Nature can help us get bigger and stronger.
If we had to leave up to nature we would all probably become that wild boy.
Also once that boy and Isabella got properly adapted to society they became normal people.
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