The Nature/Nurture debate - Solved!

You can help your child make the most of whoever he or she is. It is well documented that biology is not a life sentence.

All humans - even animals, are a product of both their biology and the world in to which they're born. One child may be "born shy" because she inherits a gene that gives her a low threshold for the unfamiliar, but her parents can help her feel safe and teach her strategies for over coming her shyness. Another child might be "a natural risk taker" because of his / her serotonin levels, but his / her parents can help them learn impulse control. In summary, understanding your child's temperament enables you to plan ahead.

Suomi's monkeys: biology is not destiny

Stephen Suomi and a team of researchers at the national institute of child health and development purposely bred a group of Rhesus monkeys to be "impulsive". In the monkeys as in humans a lack of control and high risk taking is associated with low levels of the brain chemical Serotonin (which inhibits impulsiveness) it seems that a recently identified serotonin - transporter gene (found in humans as well) - prevents serotonin from metabolising efficiently.

Suomi found that when monkeys who lacked this gene were raised by average mothers they tended to get into trouble and end up at the bottom of the social hierarchy. But when they are assigned to mothers known to be exceptionally nurturing, their futures are far brighter. Not only do the monkeys learn to avoid stressful situations or to get help dealing with them (which, not suprisingly, raises their social status in the colony) the extra nurturing actually the baby monkey's serotonin metabolism into normal range "virtually all of the outcomes can be altered substantially by early experiences", says Suomi. "Biology just provides a different set of probabilities".

Adapted from "a sense of health", 'News week'   fall / winter 2000.