Nature or Nurture
This is a tough decision. I have thought about this for the last two days to try to develop an opinion. I have decided that there is overwhelming evidence that both effect each and everyone of us in different ways.
I can see many different ways that one can argue that nature is a big reason how we develop into social beings. Lets look at ourselves. We were made either male or female. Each of us have different duties in the world. By this I mean that females are made to carry and give birth to children and to feed the offspring. Men are typically more muscular and are able to provide for their families. I am not saying that females can’t, I am just pointing out differences. Men cannot bear children. With these differences comes different hormones and actions. Men are typically more risk takers then females. Even after I typed that comment, I am thinking of my daughter who likes to climb up furniture unlike my son.
Now with the nurture side of the argument I think that we are definitely influenced greatly by outside sources. One of the biggest sources that I see is in almost every single house hold in America. This is the television. Think back to when some of you were growing up. For me this was 70’s and 80’s. The shows on television were typically family oriented with little swearing and minimal violence. There was a wide variety of cartoons on that I would not hesitate to let my children today watch. Now you have shows that have even more violence, sex and language during the times that children are watching television. I have an antenna for my television and have been told by friends that I need cable. The main reason for the cable is it is a great baby sitter, so my friends tell me. This means that our children are not being raised by their parents but by the television. On the same lines as television is video games. Instead of parents sitting down and playing games with their kids they by them video games which can give kids a warped sense of what is right in society.
There are could be a lot of arguments made for either nurture or nature being the only factor but I think the more appropriate argument is which one affects us the most socially. I believe that the answer would have to be nurturing.
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I came to the same conclusion as you, that predominately it is the influences that a person experiences, particularly in their younger years, that shapes who they turn out to be. This is of course, looking at it from from a microsociological perspective. From a macrosociological level, when you look at everyone from the same community, there are some behaviors that most will exhibit, and the same will be true for an entire country. It is these behaviors that then form the norms that we looked at last week. You do a good job of showing both of these in your examples. Good post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comments about the influences of television and I am glad you pointed out that video games likely have a nurture influence as well, I did not think of that. And your friend is right, it seems as though families are going away from traditional baby sitting methods and or/child supervision methods and letting electronic entertainment take the place of family time. Like i mentioned in my post, I think the rise of technology has brought with it a rise in the nurture factor.
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