On the
discussion of parenting, Shenk explains that while parents are not the sole
determinants of the development of their children, they are not entirely “uninfluential”
either, as claimed in Harris’ The Nurture
Assumption (133). Specifically, Shenk describes that it is the parents’ job
to “find the process that produces the best possible individual.” (132).
However,
considering all the various factors such as genetic inheritance, epigenetic
inheritance, and GxE, to what extent can parents truly have control over the development
of their children? Why do you think parental influence has reached this level?
Also, why is it that human offspring require so much care and attention compared to other
species, whose parents provide little to none?
-Diane Kuai
(dianekuai@gmail.com)
Shenk bluntly states that "yes, parents matter" (135). He supports his argument with 4 specific instances in where parental influence greatly directed their child to success or failure. He advocates parents to "believe," "support, don't smother," "pace and persist," and "embrace failure." (136-142). This heavy influence by parents can be supported through the cases of genetic imprinting. Campbell textbook notes that parents influence their offspring at a young age to form a "long-lasting behavioral response" (1126). This instinctive trait by offspring has been noted to be solely dependent on the parents' own characteristics/personality. Therefore, Shenk makes a plausible argument that, through GxE environments, inheritance, etc., parents exhibit a level of control over their children's development.
ReplyDeleteI believe that human offspring require more nurturing than other animals' offspring because of our decreased abilities as a baby in comparison to other mammals. For example, an elephant stays in the womb for 22 months and is able to walk a day after being born. A human baby obviously takes 9 months to be born, and can't walk for approximately another year. A scientific study shows that this walking ability (just one aspect of why human babies are more needy) is due to brain development. According to the study, "brain development occurs along this continuum that extends from conception through early development out of the womb" (Garwicz). Therefore, a human baby can be thought of as fetus-like with respect to its inability to care for itself.
http://www.livescience.com/9760-study-reveals-infants-walk.html
Nathan Ro (nathanro94@gmail.com)
In our today’s world, parents seem to play an enormous role in their children’s life because of their constant presence. Parents raise and nurture their children from the time they are born until they leave the house at 18. Despite this, arguments that parents may not influence the development of their children as much as previously thought have become more prevalent. Parents still have a large amount of control over their children’s development but like David Shenk points out they “don’t have anything close to complete control (135).
ReplyDeleteParents still have a large amount of control because of GxE. It is the parents’ genes that compose the child’s genes. In addition, the parents are a big part of the child’s environment, especially during early childhood, which contains critical periods for children. In Kathy Sylva’s paper “Critical Periods in childhood learning", which was published in the journal British Medical Bulletin, she notes that a sensitive period represents the time “in which the developing child is particularly responsive to certain forms of experience or particularly hindered by their absence” (.http://bmb.oxford journals.org/content/53/1/185.full.pdf). Hence during this time period, parents would be particularly influential upon the development of their children. Epigentic inheritance also points the parents’ epigenome having control over the child’s development. However, the parents cannot consciously control this.
The reason parents cannot have complete control over their children’s development is the environment. Different environmental variables can turn genes off or on. In addition, I think that parents of this age probably have less control over their children’s development than parents of previous generations because their children have greater access to many different environments. With the advent of the internet and social networking, children can expand their environments and expose themselves to more variables that could influence their development. With a larger number of variables, their development is more uncontrolled.
Human offspring require much care and attention because in the human species, there is a tradeoff between high frequency of reproduction/large number of offspring and fewer offspring/increased investment in parental care. Humans are iteroparous, meaning that they reproduce repeatedly, which is in contrast with semelparous organisms, who reproduce only once in their lifetimes and do not care for their offspring (Campbell 1179-1180). Since humans (for the most part) live in dependable environments, it is more evolutionarily advantageous to produce “few relatively large, well-provisioned offspring” that have a better chance of surviving (Campbell 1180). The species in which parents do not or provide little care for organisms made the tradeoff from parental care to another survival trait. In response to Nathan’s point that we have decreased abilities as babies compared to other mammals, that could be attributed to our relative lower maturity levels as babies—humans are one the longest living mammal species (we’re outlived by whales) so we mature slower. Like Nathan said, the human baby would be a fetus compared to other animals.
Jessica Hua (jhua33@yahoo.com)