Nature vs. Nurture
Psychology 101
Donna L. Herrera
March 7, 2012
Running head: Nature vs. Nurture 2
Nature vs. Nurture My husband and I ran a group home for teenage girls for over nine years. The girls were struggling with “major” life issues, some had been abandoned, others had sexual identity issues, a few were addicted to drugs, and struggling with Bulimia and Anorexia Nervosa. Many of these girls survived their environments and some did not. Was it something they were exposed to or was it something they were predisposed to? Nature or Nurture, or perhaps it was a little …show more content…
Nurture theory has been argued, fought over and debated for centuries by such intellectuals as Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Darwin. The phrase Nature vs. Nurture has been attributed to Francis Galton, who was also the cousin of Charles Darwin. Galton became an openly anti-Christian bigot. Galton wrote about prayer: "I do not propose any special inquiry whether the general laws of physical nature are ever changed in response to prayer: whether, for instance, success has attended the occasional prayers in the Liturgy when they have been used for rain, for fair weather, for the stilling of the sea in a storm, or for the abatement of a pestilence. The modern feeling of this country is so opposed to a belief in the occasional suspension of the general laws of nature that most English readers would smile at such an investigation." (Memories of My Life, Galton, Nabu Press, August 28, …show more content…
An informed starting point is to remember that child development requires the interplay of biology and society, the characteristics children bring with them into the world and the way the world treats them, nature and nurture. Sociobiology emphasizes a genetic origin for social behavior: some characteristics promote survival, and thus reproduction, more than other characteristics. In contrast, what researchers Benjamin Pasamaniack calls social biology concentrates on the social origins of biological phenomena (e.g., the impact of poverty on infant health). The key is that there are social implications of genetically based individual behaviors; the social impact of biologically rooted traits can affect the survival of individual people and groups of related people, and thus the likelihood that a particular genetic pattern will be passed along to surviving offspring.” (Lost Boys, James Garbarino, Ph.D. Simon and Schuster Inc., 1999 pp.