Hurray! We can breed!

"Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are tabula rasa….  An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess.  An instinct is an unerring and automatic form of knowledge.  A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living.  And even man's desire to live is not automatic… Your fear of death is not a love for life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it."  Ayn Rand

Human beings are social creatures by nature - without someone to feed and protect an infant, that infant will die.  Most of us develop with the innate capability to learn (DeCasper & Fifer with their nonnutritive nipples), and the few instincts we do have upon birth (Meltzhoff and facial mimicry) are meant to solidify our place in the social hierarchy.  Infants require years of supervision and guidance (i.e. language, fear, empathy, memory) before we trust them to fend for themselves as young adults.

There is merit in the notion that "good enough" parents are just that - thousands of years of evolution back up the claim that children will turn out just fine as long as you don't beat them, starve them, or emotionally/psychologically torture them.  Placing blame solely on parents for the minor aggravations or misdirection in your life is like blaming Maytag for burning your chili.  Were you stirring it often so it didn't settle?  Did you have the burner on the simmer setting instead of rolling boil?  Even if your parents never taught you to cook, either friends and YouTube have given you pointers by now or you've learned from smoky, rancid experience.

There are several stages of life we travel through (Erickson, Piaget), countless facets of influence, and at the end of the day research into genetics is relatively unexplored compared to the centuries of philosophy we have behind dissecting the human being.  While nature very well may determine intelligence (MZT vs DZT), nurture more often than not determines moral and social standing (Bowlby).  Personally, I've debated this topic with myself for years.  Based on personal experience with my own mother, I've come to a very important conclusion - even if I am working to overcome the lack of nurture in my childhood, my nature is to seek a life outside of the confines of that definition.  I am driven to become more than what I was raised to be - but had I been born to an affluent & affectionate family, would that drive still exist? 

I don't know where we should focus our attention on developing humans.  It shouldn't be a question of crunching enough numbers to create near-perfect specimens, and over the course of this semester I've had a hard time equating the human condition with math.  Studying developmental formulas makes it seem like the normative majority is just a bunch of coincidence converging into a lump of reproductive success.  Trying to decode the mystery of humanity through trending statistics is the same as blaming parents for their children turning sour (or commending parents for raising productive citizens) - sure, there's science behind it, but I don't believe that's all there is to it.  

  

Responce to promt 12/9

I believe her argument does have merit.  She has good points on how we are looking at the belief that parents raise the children too much and not at the other aspects of their lives.  Like peer and societal influences.  I believe one of her strong points in here are that if parents have such huge effects on their children, why is it that if there are 2 siblings, after similarities do to genetics are removed, they turn out completely different.  Also children are not just learning from their parents they are learning what is excepted and normal for their society.  Like how they should act whether they are male/ female and kid/ adult.  To grow up and be accepted by your society you must adapt and act like them.  It is more about the child’s environment as a whole and adapting to the society norms expected of you, depending on age and sex, which you live in.

Prompt for 12/9, to be completed by 12/12

You recently read a chapter by Judith Harris on the role of parents, peers, and genes. Consider her argument from all theory and research we have discussed throughout the semester. Does her argument have merit? Explain why you think her explanation is sound or unsound. Based on if she is correct or not, explain where we should focus our attention for developing humans.

Potato responce

I believe the most controllable and changeable factors to juvenile delinquency would have to be the peer factors.  Our peer groups have a great influence on our lives especially when we are in our middle adolescence or teen years.  From the moment we start school of any kind we are constantly with our peers or friends.  Now whether the children like or not parents can have control on whom they have as their peers and whom they hang around.  Starting by choosing a school or daycare, ect. of which they want their children to attend.  They can search until they are content with the people and children who will peers, involved with that facility.  From the beginning this can instill a sense of who may be good peers and who may not be.  I also believe that environmental factors fall into this because you as a parent or who ever from controlling what schools they are going into are controlling into what environment they are going to be included into.

            I believe the factors that should least focused on are the individual factors.  I think that these individual factors can be results from all the other factors in the lists in the Potato.  So instead of being directly main factors in juvenile delinquency they are more of round about effects are caused by the other factors.