Are children born a certain way, or do the parents have tremendous influence?

Well believe it or not a mother’s actions while she’s pregnant can affect the baby. I’m not just talking about the obvious physical outcomes, but any stress she experiences so does the baby. A baby’s first learning experience is in the womb. So if a mother is constantly stressed out the baby will be a more anxious child. I forget what type of memory this is called, but it has to do with memories that are ingrained in us but we can’t remember them if that makes sense. Things that helped shape us before we even had the capacity to be able to recall them.

In two separate documentaries I heard about the same case of this. It had to do with a famine in Denmark I believe. All the women that were pregnant at the time gave birth to babies that ended up being born with high blood pressure due to the constant stress and as adults all of them had weight issues because they were making up for the lack of food they received during the pregnancy. Yes, they actually tracked down all the adults born during that time. There is also the case of the great depression and the pregnancies during that time as well. Pretty much the same outcome.

Kind of scary that babies get influenced that early on by what we do. All in all, be really n ice to pregnant chicks.

As for outside of the womb, there is no just nature or just nurture it’s a mix of both. Here is one of the documentaries I saw that went through what I mentioned above. Moving Forward

Parents IMO are only a part of that process that molds and shapes a person. I know I had teachers, Religious teachers, uncles and aunts and most of all friends and peers that did more to shape who I am and what I do than my parents had. My parents planted the seeds and my outside influences fed and watered those seeds. Almost everyone I know has that one person in their life that was a true mentor other than a parent.

@Cruiser But this question is focused on inborn personality vs. external influences, not so much an aunt compared to a parent.

It wasn’t Denmark. It was the Dutch Hunger Winter. I would recommend watching the link I sent I think until the third part. I’m not sure when the human nature one ends, but that relates to this topic.

I think that nurture has some impact, but that genetics accounts for a lot more than we like to let on.

@Ajulutsikael Even if the parent influenced the fetus in utero, I would consider it for the purposes of this question, that the baby was born with a certain temperament.

@marinelife Why do you think people are resistent to the possible genetic role regarding this?

@JLeslie Because they like to think of themselves as being governed by free will.

@marinelife Not an answer I would have ever guessed. Interesting. My mind had gone to a very different place.

If it’s born a certain way [ psychological issues or mental instability ] I don’t think it’s the parents .. maybe only when it’s about genetic and such .

But when they grow the influence can adjust them [ if I can say so ] . It’s less likely though they won’t be influenced at all .

While in the mother the kid feels everything the mother feels but th kid’s brain can interpret it different than the mothers .. So basically here we have a lot of situations and a lot of ways how it can end up .

I’m thinking things like shy, outgoing, detail oriented, smiles a lot, giggles, doesn’t care about rules, rule follower. Not any major mental diagnosis. Just the typical varied personalities we observe in children.

In the case you mentioned @JLeslie, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, I think it’s all on the parents. Or whoever is training the person, because people can change that over the course of their lives.

I can’t say everyone is trainable, but I’ve had some experience with training, and I always assumed the person could make their own decisions. Not all of my trainees succeeded, although more of mine succeeded than other trainers trainees. I can’t believe they all grew up in intrinsic motivation environments. But they had to make their own choices and figure out how to do the work, and that’s the way I wanted it. I am not interested in micro-management. If they didn’t do this before, then they were able to change.

I’ve had people tell me they really appreciate my management style. There was one person who thought I was horrible and really wanted to be micro-managed. Oddly, she seemed to like me the best, because she kept coming back to visit me long after she had finished her appointment. Dunno what that was all about.

I believe we make our own desicions. While what @Ajulutsikael said is true, who we are friends with, who we marry, what career we choose, and where we live can all affect this. For example, my mother has 4 sisters. When they were kids, my mother and 3 of my aunts had Puerto Rican friends (My grandparents both came from Puerto Rico) My other aunt had friends from different backgrounds. Both that aunt and her husband, the only non-Latino uncle I have, are big shot lawyers in New York City. They have one 7-year old son who is, to put it nicely, a brat. He goes to a fancy private school, even though the public schools in his area are the best in NYC. He gets whatever he wants and is impolite.
So, although this might not really answer your question, I believe it shows that both the parents and the kids are responsible for the way they are.
Aso, I’m not saying that being friends with kids from different races is bad. My mom grew up on Long Island. She told me that the Puerto Rican kids were the minority, and therefore stuck together. My aunt who is now a lawyer just wanted to fit in more and ended up different from her sisters.

Oh .. personality differs a lot from the mother [ in most cases I saw ] .
The mother likes to spend X hours socializing while the kid not wanting to share any word with others around him .. but this takes time while he improves [ so to speak ] his personality .
Indeed it’s most on those who teach the kid but one might learn from more than one so you can’t know how he\ll end up .

Back to being born .. it all depends how the kid brains interpret what the mother feels .

I agree with all of @marinelife. I feel strongly about this issue. My son looks identical to me and has few of my characteristics, but is extremely different than I am.

I think it’s a combination of both. My oldest daughter has ADD/ADHD and mild dyslexia. I have ADD and her daddy is dyslexic. Several people in my family have ADD and dyslexia/dyscalculia, and several people in my husband’s family have ADD and dyslexia/dyscalculia. And most of us in the family have very stubborn personalities. So do both my daughters. Quite a few of us are fairly anti-social and incredibly moody. My oldest daughter has been displaying those traits from a young age, and my youngest is slowing easing towards them.

I think a ton of junk that kids walk around with is completely genetic, but some of their personality is learned from their parents and their environment.

Both. I know that my wife and I have an influence on the way our two little ones behave and think, but right from when they were born, each of my girls had her “own distinct personality”, one more abiding and quiet, the other more stubborn and feisty. You could see it even when they were just infants. Now that they’re young girls, they still have those personalities, though as parents we try to shape them so that they become more “well-rounded”. My older daughter (who just turned 7) is the quieter, more submissive one——she’s always been easy to teach (lol), and my younger one (who just turned 5), is the more feisty one. I have to say she puts up a good fight sometimes, and Daddy almost always loses! I’m too easy to sway. With her mother she can’t get away with it. I guess that’s why my little 5 year-old always comes to me when she wants something, because she knows Daddy is a push-over and can be easily defeated! Sigh….. So much for parental influence, huh? :D

I agree with @marinelife and think it is mostly genetic. Parents can encourage children but they can’t change them. I love what Kahlil Gibran wrote about children…

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”

This is a theme in Western psychology, and the answers to the question in general are always yes, and yes, both, and more (culture, circumstances, friends, strangers, teachers, TV, random decisions, etc.). Though some traits may be only or mostly one or the other. However I think the question itself tends to be a limiting perspective.

@JLeslie Sorry if I expanded on your question with my answer but you did just say “this question is focused on inborn personality vs. external influences,” and friends, teachers and Aunts etc. are very much an external influence and IMO very influential in the development of likes, dislikes and certain behaviors they certainly were not born with or picked up at home.

@Cruiser I agree they are all part of external influences. It seemed to me in your answer you were saying lots of different people influenced you, not just your parents, so are you saying the environment is what mattered most when you were a child with how you behaved, over a possible personality you were born with? If that is what you meant then you did answer the question in a way.

I think I worded the questions poorly to be honest after seeing many of the answers. A few people touched on what I was getting at, but most did not, and so I think it has to be my fault in the wording. I did not expect any answers regarding genetics, although I understand why people went that way. @MRSHINYSHOES probably touched on what I was looking for most. He described the various personalities of his children, and it seemed he was saying they are rather locked in, no matter what he and his wife do, but they are trying to have some influence.

Anyway, no need to apologize, I was not angry, just trying to get what I was looking for. Again, I take responsibility for the question itself.

I think a kid is born with a certain pre-disposition since their personalities show through early on because I parent the same way (I like to think). My older child is turning out to be more like his bio-dad in his spacey-dness and not being able to pay attention much once he goes floating into his own world. My younger child is very much like me, unstoppable and aggressive, a warrior, really. Nonetheless, I take a lot of responsibility for shaping my children and am committed to controling myself and my urges to lash out, even when I’m tired. I DO NOT agree with ANY form of spanking or hitting or beating as discipline. I believe I smacked Ark’s hand once when he was being completely crazy and trying to hurt himself but felt terribly afterwards and knew it was time to leave the room. A parent that can not hold themselves accountable for losing it to a point of corporal punishment is in the wrong, in my opinion. A child is not their equal in strength and spanking never helps anything. I am a big fan of natural consequences and being uber consistent with remembering punishments or giving 10 strikes and you’re out (at this point Alexey is at Strike 4, if he gets to 10, no birthday party).

I believe the answer is fairly close to 50/50. There are definite traits in both my husband’s and my families that were passed down to my kids. My first two are fairly easy going but my third child sent us to family therapy when he was 3. He is the most intense person I have ever known…with the exception of my mom. He is a lot like my mother.

It makes sense that we get to choose who we mate with in the hopes of certain outcomes but that the environment takes over and moulds you.

I had three children in the span of four years. Same parents, same house, same everything, and they are all girls. They have had their little personalities from day one, and they are vastly different. I can say, in our case anyway, that their personalities greatly influenced our parenting styles. One of my girls needed way more discipline than the other two did, and what worked for the other two generally did not work with her. We usually had to be much more forceful (and inventive) with her discipline, just to get a baseline of ‘good behavior’.

We tried many, many methods and I’m sad to say we even tried spanking her, to no avail. (As soon as we realized that didn’t work, either, we quit doing it… no sense hurting a child for absolutely no return.) I’m pretty sure that if it wasn’t against our planned-on parenting style, or if we had less control over our anger, we would have continued to spank her, just out of sheer frustration. (NOTE: I’m not saying that everyone who spanks is out of control… just that we would have had to be, because we didn’t like it as a disciplinary method.)

In a nutshell: Our kids were born with their personalities, and we did respond with different ways of disciplining them based on that.

Side note: She’s a good kid these days, for the most part. Mostly, I think this has to do with growing up, with a little influence from us.

Let’s settle for 50–50.

Well if you think of it in real generalized terms parents have a 100% influence on a child’s personality. Genetics from the parents will shape certain traits, a child could have the temperament of one of their parents or another relative, but still from the genes that were supplied by the parents. Once they are born the parents continue to supply influence over the personality, either nurturing it and helping it grow or retarding it and changing a child’s personality altogether.