Do parents make a difference?

The jury is still out.

A quick note: This post is missing a section on adoptive parenting but the implications of the topics discussed here remain true regardless of the kind of parent you are. I may write a separate piece dedicated to adoptive parents in the future so if you are one, that may speak more directly to your curiosities.

I. Parental Pressures

Parents are always scratching their heads to figure the best way to instruct, scold, reward, love, punish, raise their children. Your mother will tell you to feed the child carrots, the author you are reading advises you to feed them pumpkins, the influencer you follow feeds their child broccoli. You go bananas.

The frustration is understandable. When it comes to child rearing, there is so much pressure to be the greatest. From the moment you lay eyes on your child or even before that, you are forced to make choices. Which lullaby to sing, which stroller to pick, which diaper brand to trust, what clothes to buy and which babysitter to pay. The choices only get more complicated as time passes. Which school do I send them to? Should I send them for art or piano? Maybe both. Sports will be good for them. Which sport though? Outdoor or indoor? Individual or group? They must not lose focus on academics in between all this. Should he pick Science or Commerce? Which one will help him get a good job? Maybe Science. I think he should pick Science. I don’t see her talking to anybody, does she not have friends? Maybe I should find her some friends. Or in other cases, he is on the phone all night. Who is he talking to? Should I say something? 

It’s tough, the life of a parent. 

If your child gets caught stealing, you are called to the principal’s office. If your child bullies (or is bullied), you are called to the principal’s office. If your child is caught smoking, you are called again. The offences don’t have to be grave. Wearing socks of the wrong colour, scoring poorly on Math, swearing, are all things that your kid can do that will get you in trouble. You are their guardian, after all. You are the legs your child stands on until they learn to stand on their own feet. Parenting appears to be truly a scary business. 

Maybe this explains the decline in people’s desire to have kids nowadays. Incomes are rising and technology is fast developing but baby manufacturing rates are falling. Among the top reasons cited by people for not having babies are career, environment and finances. Further motivation to go child-free are provided by the need felt for work/life balance and personal independence. I get it. You see parents all around you spending what could be their life’s savings on their children’s healthcare, daycare, education, college, weddings, grandchildren, the list does not end. It’s rare to find another group that is as stressed, broke, anxious and worried as parents are. When compared to child parenting, plant parenting has a more blooming future, no doubt.

II. Pop-psych and parenting

Pop-psych practitioners say that parenting matters, a lot. To help make their case, they borrow theories that sound important.  One that has risen to fame in recent times is the attachment theory. For the unfamiliar, attachment theory suggests that the relationship we form with our early caregivers influence how we engage in relationships as an adult, especially romantic relationships.

The original set of studies was conducted by Bowlby, Ainsworth and their colleagues. To give you a quick summary of the study design and results, they got different baby-mother pairs to come into a room. The mother at some point, would leave the child to be by themselves in the room and return after a few minutes. Ainsworth noticed that babies reacted differently to the short absence and subsequent return of their mum. Some babies cried a lot, others calmed down quickly, some seemed to not care etc. Based on how each baby reacted, the researchers came up with 4 main attachment styles - secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant and disorganised. Attachment theorists and its supporters tried to apply these findings universally. Relationship issues became attachment hypotheses. “He is avoidant and she is anxious, no wonder they are struggling to make it work”. Attachment theory was (and probably still is) used to predict psychopathology. People even attribute sexual dysfunction to attachment styles.  

When I first came across attachment theory, I was fascinated. It made a lot of intuitive sense. I was able to find clear, causal-ish explanations that linked everything that happened to me as a kid with how I turned out as an adult. It made total sense that I had an avoidant personality given the conflict-ridden environment I grew up in. All around me, I saw attachment theory come to life. I have friends who are the “anxious type”. According to attachment theory, anxious attachment has roots in inconsistent caregiving. Sure enough, if I looked closely enough, I could find periods in their childhood when their parents weren’t around or they were going through some kind of a family crisis. It added up.

At some later point, I managed to get out of the attachment aura (such a clear example of confirmation bias). I interacted with anxious folks who grew up in very loving homes. I met many people who self-identify as avoidant but whose parents were always super available and present. I also found secure adults whose childhood environment was the definition of precarious. Another gigantic loophole in attachment theory split open when research showed that people can attach differently across relationships. That is, you can be securely attached to your partner but be avoidant towards your parents. Or in some other cases, a person can be securely attached to their friends, avoidant with their partner and anxious with their parents. These inconsistencies of the theory are now reasonably well documented. Despite this, I see therapists on Instagram base their entire practice on attachment work. I see relationship coaches diagnose their client’s marital gaps as primarily attachment gaps. When therapists and coaches do this, it is not surprising to see the general pop-psych world commit to spreading the attachment gospel far and wide. Needless to say, I don’t buy it.

Attachment theory's weak legs are actually great news for parents. Looks like parents don’t make or break their children. We’ve gotten this wrong a few times before in history as well. Autism, for example, for the longest time was blamed on poor parenting, in particular, poor mothering. Mothers peered at their autistic children, ridden with guilt wondering what they did and where they went wrong. It took some time for science to debunk this myth but today, autism’s heritability is established and its links to poor parenting largely severed.

Okay so if parenting is not a dealbreaker for how kids turn out, what is then?

III. Genes 

How many sibling pairs do you know who grew up in the same house but have contrasting personalities? I’m willing to bet at least one. It’s remarkable how kids who were raised by the same parents in the same house grow up to be different people. One will turn out to be quiet and the other, loud. One will be determined to earn money, the other will run far far away from it. One will be a fighter, the other will take flight at the first sign of conflict. If parenting is what determines how kids turn out, what explains this? Surely parents can’t treat their kids so differently no matter how partial they might be? Even if some parents do play favourites with their litter, it is unlikely that so many of them do it.

On the other hand, studies of twins who were separated at birth show astonishing similarities. Even when separated by whole geographies, these egg-mates are eerily alike. Resemblances are seen even when you compare traits that are otherwise thought to be determined by one’s environment such as religious preferences, social attitudes or political leanings.

Genes make up a huge part of your children’s proclivities and preferences. And these predispositions remain irrespective of how you raise your child - in your house or your mother’s house, with money or without, with regular schooling or homeschooling, with tech or without. Your child’s biology to a great extent influences (different from determines) your child’s IQ, how agreeable they are, how extroverted they are, if they are good at chess or swimming, if they become expert liars or guilty ones. These preferences will exert themselves regardless of socioeconomic status, education level, adverse experiences, location, religion, occupation or marital status.

A child raised in a loving home and one raised on the streets can both turn out to be addicts. The rich addict might have expensive alcohol, the other one might sniff cheap whiteners is all. Kids from both affluent and precarious backgrounds are prone to mental health illnesses. Some kids do well in academics by staying away from the “bad gangs”. Other kids do well in academics despite being part of the same gangs. If a parent’s nurturing abilities are so powerful, what explains the character pitfalls of children who come from seemingly perfect families? 

The influencing power in a parent-child relationship is bidirectional. Children shape their environment as much as, if not more, their environment shapes them. A child that is aggressive will influence their parents to adopt a stricter parenting attitude while parents might adopt a more relaxed attitude with a rule-following child. Scientists call this reactive correlation, child effects etc. This pattern can be seen clearly in households where there is a sharp contrast between the sibling personalities. The parent will encourage the introverted child to go out  while imposing curfews on their extroverted kid who loves to party. Kids notice this, and complain. “Why is she allowed to go to that party but not me?. Most likely, the parent is responding to the child’s genetic drivers. You buy books for a child who is already into books, rocks and dino toys for a child already fascinated by dinosaurs and mini kitchen sets for a child who spends her evenings anyway hosting high teas for her dolls. What should parents take away from this?

That who you are and become is influenced by the environment (that’s evolution for you), yes, but it is your genes that adapt or maladapt to the environment, not the other way around. Remember the wolf boy? Being raised by wolves did not change the human boy into a wolf. What it did do was make him walk on fours and eat raw meat. None of these are impossible to do for humans. We usually don’t crawl into an office or eat raw chicken because there is no need for us to, not because we can’t.

Now this has implications for how parents parent. If genes are the primary predictor of how your kids will turn out to be, then your focus as a parent should be to figure ways for desirable gene expression. In other words, perhaps our focus as parents needs to shift from creating the perfect environment for our children to creating adaptable children that can survive in any environment. How to do this?

IV. Neuroplasticity is our superpower

Neuroplasticity is one of the greatest gifts bestowed on mankind. Neuroplasticity is the ability of our brain to break old habits and learn new ones i.e., our brains can rewire and adapt based on our experiences. Think of it like going to the gym. The muscles that you use while exercising get strengthened, the others become weaker. Our brain works pretty much the same way. Just like we have muscles in the rest of our body, we have neurons in our brain. The neural pathways that we end up using get denser and stronger. The ones that we don’t use as much get pruned over time. Neuroplasticity is the reason why our kids remember to not touch a hot plate ever again after doing it once. It is also the reason why our children can learn complex Trigonometry and Calculus.  

What this means is that a lot of what we see in our kids is driven by their gene matter yes but genes can be influenced and modified even if they can’t be transcended altogether. Here’s where the role of environment comes in, and by extension, a little bit of parenting too. Our neuroplasticity allows us to learn and unlearn from experience. While we are born with a set of genetic characteristics, which of those genes get expressed and which ones retreat depends on how palatable our environment is for our genetics to parade. For example, if your child ranks high on narcissism, they might have a tendency to bully more and cheat more. That they are genetically predisposed to narcissism cannot be helped. What can be helped is how you react to their displays of low empathy. For example, when found bullying, the appropriate set of consequences when implemented consistently can help your kid manage this undesirable trait better. Similarly, if your kid is high on conscientiousness, rewarding their diligence can help cement its place in your child’s personality better.

There is a chance that a narcissistic child grows up to be narcissistic and violent any way depending on how strong their genetic propensity is for it. Point being that parents can’t erase genetic tendencies altogether but they can certainly play a role to influence it and in some cases, their attempts can be successful. The interplay of genes, environment and their expression is quite complicated, so it is difficult to give full credit to just your parenting style even when you end up being successful. But hey, your kid has your genes, that nobody can take away from you. The world may dismiss your parenting but they can’t dismiss you as a parent. This brings me to my last point.

V. Who you are as a parent matters more than your parenting

Just like your kids’ genes matter, yours do too. The kind of person you are and strive to become perhaps makes a bigger difference to your kid than the kind of parent you are to them. 

When you try to become a better version of yourself, you are for real influencing your genetic code for better survival. You are rewiring your brain positively and this will show up in your genes over time. It’s all really just Darwinian. When you learn to adapt better to your circumstances, you increase your chances of survival. When you survive well, you give your kids a chance to survive well, your lineage continues uninterrupted. I have several family members from my grandfather’s generation who were alcoholics. Their children (my father’s generation) no doubt could have gone the same perishable route, their genes were in full support of their endeavour. But to my knowledge and observation, many of them took active steps to not repeat history and chose to be teetotallers. When the risk of addiction was so high, abstinence seemed like a necessary and surprisingly bearable sacrifice. My generation of the family is reaping the rewards of the battle our parents’ fought with their genetics. They made it slightly easier for us to manage these tendencies better and course correct when necessary. The addiction gene of course hasn’t disappeared, it has just gotten a little weaker which is all you can hope for really.

If you are an addict yourself, lecturing your kids against addiction or punishing them for using will not make them not use even if you do it with a lot of love or as per the instructions given in the latest edition of the parenting textbook. You have a real shot at saving your kid if you manage to go sober yourself. 

If you want your kid to read, start reading yourself. If you want your kid to become a scientist, engage more with rationalist and scientific ways of thinking (resign from Whatsapp University). If you want your kid to be happy, take more deliberate steps towards your wellbeing. If you want your kid to be successful in life, start battling procrastination yourself.

When you get better, you subject your kid to better experiences and make yours and also their neuroplasticity sway in your favour. Even if your kid might not get to experience all the rewards from your efforts at bettering yourself, your grandkids or their kids probably will. They would be grateful to their grandparents for making it a little easier for them to keep the undesirable family genes in check and bring forth the ones that help them lead a better, happier and more successful life.

VI. Bringing it altogether

Every once in a few years, a parenting fad continues to emerge. There are baby toy subscription boxes now because children need special toys that are delivered by mail to hold, throw, bite and destroy. There are baby shows on Youtube aimed to “educate” the baby. Some parents buy smart devices for their babies and dumb it down with kid-friendly blockers. Others vow to not let their baby even sniff a screen until he turns 18. Earlier parents used to go to embarrassing lengths to get their kid into the best schools. Today, parents proudly “unschool” their child. I won’t be surprised if a parenting influencer gets started tomorrow on the importance of bathing kids with milk instead of soap. I find this stuff particularly remarkable because when you look at the science, none of it seems to matter so much. So should one abandon the pursuit of good parenting altogether? Does it not make a difference at all?

What matters most in how your kids turn out both fortunately and unfortunately has got to do with their genes. Fortunate because it means that your kids are not born blank slates. They come out of the womb with a personality. They have likes, dislikes, people they are fond of, people they are suspicious of, and this is good. It helps them navigate their world and communicate their preferences even as they are lying in their cradle. The genetic material that you, your parents and their parents have passed on to your kid will determine to a great extent not just the shape of their nose but also the size of their brain, the year they will get diabetes and who they might marry. The monopoly of genetics is also a tad bit unfortunate because it limits how much you can do as a parent. A lot of the stuff that we do as parents don’t actually end up making a big difference.

But there are certainly ways in which we can contribute to our child’s upbringing. Genes are powerful but we can institute a system of checks and balances to combat the extent of their influence. Rewarding desirable traits and discouraging undesirable behaviours such as cheating can be helpful to ensure that the genes that do get expressed in your children are the ones that ultimately help them survive. But an even more influential way to help your children bring out the best in them is by bringing out the best in you. Our ability as humans to change and adapt mean that your efforts at self-improvement will influence your genome which in turn will influence your family’s genome. And kids anyway prefer parents who lead by example than the ones who just preach.

If you are a parent reading this, know that your kid is going to be alright and if they don’t, there is not a lot that you could have done any way. You are just going to exacerbate your concerns for no good reason by worrying excessively and following a 100 parenting influencers who probably themselves are clueless about what they are doing. I also know that this is easier said than done.

The one thing that is emerging from all the literature on parenting is that who you are as a person (read: your family’s genetic history) makes the strongest impact on your child’s personality and predispositions. If you don’t want your kid to grow up to be an anxious mum or dad like you whose mental health is fraught with past regrets and future misgivings about their children, then you have to get a better handle on your mental health. Focus on your health and wellbeing, be there for your kid for when they need you and work towards being happy and successful, whatever your definitions of those are. You will be okay, and so will be your kid. And as for what to feed your child, don’t have to go bananas, just feed them one.