This paper compares the functions or influences of 'nature' and 'nurture' on child development. Nature refers to the traits or genetic factors that a child inherits from the parents, while Nurture refers to various environmental factors that influence people’s childhood experiences and personality traits. Nature genetically influences a child’s cognitive, social, and emotional development. All the development processes during childhood require a healthy environment to nurture a child's behavioral characteristics. Therefore, Both nature and nurture influence child development in different ways. While nature influences a child’s development genetically, nurture influences a child’s development environmentally. However, 'nurture' appears to have a greater influence on child development than nature.
Introduction
Nature refers to the traits or genetic factors that a child inherits from the parents. Nature often defines a child’s physical appearance and contributes to building a child’s personality traits (Rutter, 2002). Nurture, on the other hand, refers to various environmental factors that influence people’s childhood experiences and personality traits (Sameroff, 2010). Different psychological theories have diverse opinions regarding the role of nature and nurture in child development. While some psychologists believe it is nature that is predominantly responsible for defining a child's behavior, others think that a child's behavioral characteristics are defined by the way a child is nurtured (Sameroff, 2010). In the past, psychologists considered nature to be more important than nurture. However, most psychological experts today emphasize the contribution or role of both nature and nurture in the development of a child (Sameroff, 2010). According to modern psychological concepts, children are born with specific traits inherited from their parents. However, beyond a child’s basic genotype, there is usually a deep interaction between their genes and their environment (Wahl " Thomas, 2003). Children's unique experiences in their environment influence the expression of particular traits. At the same time, children's genes affect how they interact with their environment. In other words, there is a reciprocal interaction between nurture and nature since they both play a role in shaping a child’s behavioral characteristics (Wahl " Thomas, 2003). This paper compares the functions or influences of 'nature' and 'nurture' on child development.
The influence of Nature on Child Development
There exist several genetic factors that influence the development of a child. Most psychological theories have explained how nature or genetic factors shape a child's development process. According to Karmiloff " Karmiloff-Smith (2011), nature significantly impacts heredity or genetic inheritance during childhood development. In their study, Karmiloff " Karmiloff-Smith (2011) found that there exists a consistent genetic influence in several psychological areas during childhood development, including mental ability, personality, attitude, psychological disorders, and interests. According to Ahmed Zaky (2015), the genetic influence is on a child’s behavioral characteristics is dispersed, which indicates polygenetic inheritance resulting from the combination of various activities of different genes. Nature, therefore, greatly impacts a child’s development in the context of behavioral genetics (a division of genetics that relates to the inheritance of psychological and behavioral traits) (Ahmed Zaky, 2015).
However, nature also influences a child's cognitive development, and the level of genetic influence on a child's cognitive development can be evaluated by testing the IQs of identical and fraternal twins. For instance, fraternal twins with half-shared genes have lower IQ similarity than identical twins (Rutter, 2002). Genetic inheritance can also affect a child’s brain function or cognitive function in the context of mental disorders. Children who receive excess genes from their parents may develop medical complications, such as Down syndrome (Rutter, 2002). Also, according to Wahl " Thomas (2003), genetics has a significant influence on a child’s academic performance. In their study, Wahl " Thomas (2003) found that up to 80 percent of children's differences in learning how to read and write is genetic.
Nature also affects a child’s social interactions by making a child to develop social interactions that are similar to those of the parents. For instance, if a parent appears to be very shy and uncomfortable when addressing crowds, the child has a high likelihood of acting the same way if the child inherited the parent’s genes responsible for attitude or temperament (Guruge, 2010; Sameroff, 2010). A child can also inherit other social traits from the parents, such as being kind to people, aggressiveness, and honesty among other personality traits. Nature can also shape a child's emotional characteristics when a child inherits some of the parent's emotional behaviors, such as being happy (Guruge, 2010; Sameroff, 2010). Children whose parents have depression problems may also inherit such emotional characteristics and may suffer from depression during their childhood development or adulthood. The impact of nature on the development of a child is usually due to the passage of DNA from the parents to the child (Guruge, 2010; Sameroff, 2010).
Apart from behavioral, social, and cognitive influences, nature also has physical effects on the development of a child. Children usually inherit their physical appearance from their parents or their ancestors (Ashdown " Homa, 2011). During the initial stages of child development (at conception), a child often receives genes from both parents, and the genes usually compete for dominance, and the most dominant genes often define the child's physical appearance. For instance, if one parent has the gene for brown eyes, while another parent has the gene for blue eyes, and the gene for brown eyes is dominant and that for blue eyes is recessive, the child will develop brown eyes (Ashdown " Homa, 2011).
The influence of Nurture on Child Development
A nurturing environment enables children to acquire all the positive influences or characteristics that are presented in their lives. For example, some children may be born with an exceedingly high cognitive ability or academic capacity (Sameroff, 2010). However, such academic potential could never be maintained without the proper development of the child in a supportive environment. A child's cognitive development is quite tricky because everyone is born with a given level of cognition capacity, and that cognitive ability cannot be realized if the environment does not properly influence the child. According to Sameroff (2010), ensuring effective utilization of a child’s cognitive capacity requires parents to allow their children to participate in activities that expose children to educational or academic experience, such strategic games or memory games.
When a child gets exposed to a negative environment during the early stages of development, a broad range of adverse outcomes may occur, including poor decision making, horrible temperament, and poor cognitive ability, which may make life more challenging on children as they mature (Guruge, 2010). On the other hand, when a child is exposed to a nurturing and stable environment, they become mentally and emotionally stable. According to Guruge (2010), children’s emotions and cognitive ability have significant influences in their memory, decisions, learning ability, and attention span.
Therefore, allowing children to have control over their emotions creates opportunities for increasing other cognitive processes. Wahl " Thomas (2003) also found that emotion and cognition are associated with the brain and complement each other. In other words, a child's patterns of thinking and feelings affect the development of the brain, which indicates that a child's cognitive and emotional development are dependent on each other. Wahl " Thomas (2003) further found that all the processes of childhood development ultimately interact with one another in the brain to encourage healthy development of a child. Although all the processes of childhood development do not occur at the same point, they are closely related and are linked together by the brain. Thus, the activities of one development process in one part of the body will directly influence another development process in a different part of the body and vice versa (Wahl " Thomas, 2003).
However, all the development processes during childhood require a healthy environment to nurture a child's behavioral characteristics. Therefore, there are certain conditions that a nurturing environment must meet. One of the most critical environmental factors in the development of a child relates to the role of play in a child's development process (Heffelfinger, 2002). According to Heffelfinger (2002), children who get exposed to playful simulations or playful environments develop cognitive and imaginative advancement. In their study, Ashdown " Homa (2011) found that play is crucial to a child’s physical, social, intellectual, and emotional development. Ashdown " Homa (2011)’s finding is particularly true for the unstructured, imaginative, self-motivated, and independent form of play, where children initiate or create their own games and formulate their own rules. Ashdown " Homa (2011) basically argue that a playful environment allows for a child’s advancement in every form of development, including mental, physical, emotional, and social development.
Apart from helping a child socially, emotionally, mentally, and physically, playing also encourages fun and creates a better way of learning a language. When children play, they make all sorts of noises as they try to explore the new language that they learn in the playing process (Ahmed Zaky, 2015). According to Ahmed Zaky (2015), playing during early childhood assists children in developing communication skills that they cannot acquire in any other way. For example, Bab-bling is a self-initiated type of play that enables children to create the sounds they require to learn their parents' language effectively. For parents and educators to provide children with an environment that promotes various types of development, they have to include playfulness and positive reinforcement (Ahmed Zaky, 2015).
According to Karmiloff " Karmiloff-Smith (2011), language forms the bridge to the world and children cannot achieve much in life without the ability to speak. Language does not only sparks children’s minds and get them thinking but also provides them with a means of expression and communication. Also, since language is a form of communication, it allows children to exhibit or show their emotions. All such development processes create a ladder effect in the sense that for children to have language, they have to be exposed to a playful environment, and for a child to develop playfulness, he or she has to have an encouraging and healthy environment (Karmiloff " Karmiloff-Smith, 2011). In their study, Wahl " Thomas (2003) found that as children’s language skills and abstract thinking increase, they become more comfortable and free in explaining or discussing their emotions with others.
Therefore, it is evident that children's emotional and language development directly influence each other, which indicates the need for a healthy or nurturing environment. Language development also promotes proper emotional control by enabling children to express or share their feelings with others (Rutter, 2002). In a study conducted by Ashdown " Homa (2011), the researchers found that language allows children to have better regulation of their self-soothe and feelings in response to negative emotions or emotion-provoking situations. Language and emotional development, therefore, fall closely together and directly influence one another. However, for children to have strong language ability and emotional stability, they have to be exposed to an environment that promotes both language and emotional development (Ashdown " Homa, 2011).
Feral children are examples of children who have not been able to grow or develop appropriately due to exposure to an unhealthy or harmful environment. A feral child is often considered as a child who has been brought up in the wild without proper or adequate human contact. Feral children do not know human customs or language (Heffelfinger, 2002). In other words, everything normal appears totally strange to them because of the lack of exposure to a healthy environment that promotes human contact. Due to the lack of a healthy or positive environment, feral children usually suffer from mental retardation created by the lack of affection between the child and the caregiver (Heffelfinger, 2002). An environment that encourages affection between the child and the caregiver is crucial for a child’s cognitive, language, and emotional development. In other words, family life forms one of the essential factors in child development, and the family environment often has a profound and permanent influence on a child's development (Heffelfinger, 2002). In their study, Wahl " Thomas (2003) found that if parents are loving, consistent, and reliable, their children will develop emotionally, socially, and mentally into active and productive members of the society. Meaning, the development of a healthy environment for a child’s development requires parents to have nurturing relationships with their children. Without a sense of affection and love, children are likely to be left alone in their journey of development, thereby leading to unhealthy growth (Wahl " Thomas, 2003).
Nurture also influences a child's cognitive and social development in the context of education. The presence of education in a child's life has a significant effect on a child's cognitive and behavioral characteristics (Ahmed Zaky, 2015). Without education and training, children can never advance their cognition. Besides, for children to develop socially, they have to be in the presence of their peers. According to Ahmed Zaky (2015), an educational environment plays a pivotal role in a child’s emotional, cognitive, and social development. Most educational institutions usually emphasize the importance of children’s social and emotional development by developing curricular that promote children’s expression, positive experience, management of emotions, as well as the ability to create positive and beneficial relationships with others (Ahmed Zaky, 2015).
Conclusion
Both nature and nurture influence child development in different ways. While nature influences a child’s development genetically, nurture influences a child’s development environmentally. In other words, nature is responsible for the genetic or biological influences, such as talents, physical appearance, cognition, and abilities, and certain illnesses, while nurture is responsible for environmental influences, which include all the traits that children acquire through the interaction with their environment. Therefore, both nature and nurture play pivotal roles in child development and they both help in shaping a child’s development. However, in my view, 'nurture' appears to have a greater influence on child development than nature. Although both nature and nurture play important roles children's emotional, cognitive, and social abilities, nurture ultimately overrides nature because for a child to develop correctly, there has to be a healthy and encouraging environment. Nurture plays a more significant role in defining a child’s emotional, cognitive, and social behavior, which can either be positive or negative depending on the environment in which a child is brought up.
References
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