Influence of Nurture on the Process of Becoming a
Abstract
This is a research paper that presents connections between family’s part in the process of becoming a successful adult. It concentrates on answering specific questions: “How do families with all their complexity influence their children’s psychological development since the early childhood? In what way are the family background and students’ academic achievements (successful/unsuccessful life) related?” These questions are answered through analysis of a group of 15 people from different familial backgrounds, each of whom had a simple task of telling about their childhood experience. Information obtained is later compared and contrasted with various scholarly studies of the matter. Conclusions present that families and familial connections play a major role in child’s development, and that educated parents consequently have educated children, who tend to do much better in life as opposed to those whose parents did not receive a college major. These findings allow to follow through the importance of conscious parenthood as well as the importance of being an educated adult.
Keywords: family, parenthood, children’s psychological development, maturing, education, success.
Influence of Nurture on the Process of Becoming a
Introduction
Research Background and Motivation
The collective process of growing-up is an incredibly complicated one; it includes very many factors, both internal and external, and demands quite a few specific ones in order to be completed successfully. It is in studying those factors that scholars find reasoning and consequences behind the childhood, and the ways in which they translate into the adulthood. Parenting exceeds the basic survival needs of a child greatly, families influence their children on a far-reaching scale: their personality, emotional development, and behavioral habits, and many other factors; parental support is vital for children’s confidence and growth in many areas (Moges, B., & Weber, K., 2014). Subsequently, understanding of the underlying processes of growing-up leads to understanding of how exactly one becomes successful and satisfied with their life. It has always been a huge question in science, what has the largest impact on maturing: nature, or nurture. This argument has been going on for quite a long time, and while scientists are still trying to determine, which one is more important, they are undeniably sure, that nurture is a vital part of becoming a successful adult. In the other words, families often shape the future of their children, and if this process is studied closer, there are great prospects of making sure that as many parents as possible become aware of what it means to bring up a child, and learn about the best possible ways of doing so. Conscious parenthood equals generations of successful and happy people, and successful and happy people usually tend to do well for the world, which means that understanding of how familial processes and parental practices relate to a child’s future can possibly be of a great aid to the whole planet.
Research Project
This research paper is meant to dwell upon the influence families have on people’s lives. It is generally based on answering specific research questions: first one is based on the overall psychological development, second is about academic achievements, and general success in life. In order to get real-life answers, an anonymous questionnaire has been performed on a group of fifteen people divided into three categories, each based on the modern stereotypical idea of success. Then these answers were contrasted and compared with several scholarly sources in order to comprehend a fuller picture on the matter. This allowed to get a deeper understanding of the meaning families have in the lives of adults, as well as to learn about some smaller particular traits that may have a great impact on one’s future.
There were a lot of expectations placed on this research, because it does indeed appear to be a very important topic, which, if studied carefully and thoroughly, is capable of changing many lives in different ways: firstly, to help families learn about the future consequences of their actions, and secondly, to help some already-adults to eliminate those consequences in case they play a negative role in their lives. Results were not shocking, but they were still very specific, suggesting that parents are responsible greatly for their child’s future – not only in the matter of success, but also in means of becoming a normal well-developed member of society. Parents are in fact able to aid their children in becoming emotionally stable by securing them with a supportive environment, positive feedback, and by being positive role models and careful listeners (Moges, B., & Weber, K., 2014).
Research Structure
The paper is structured into four main sections:
Introduction is an extended presentation of the topic, as well as of the overall structure of this work. At first, ‘Research Background and Motivation’ is presented, which is the ‘why’ of this work: reasoning behind this topic’s choice, and its general necessity and importance. Then follows the ‘Research Project’ part, which is the ‘what’ of this paper: presents an extended summary of the paper, as well as its results and conclusions. The last part of this section is the ‘Research Structure’: an outline of the organization of this paper, with a list of each section, subsection, and their main points.
Methodology is a section, which explains and theoretically analyzes the ways in which information has been collected for this research. Its first subsection is called ‘Research Questions and Methodology’, and it contains the general presentation of the research questions and of the methods that can be used to answer them. ‘Participants’ introduces those who participated in the research, and states the criteria used in their selection. ‘Data Collection Procedures’ allows to learn about the ways in which data has been collected using the abovementioned methods. Lastly, ‘Data Analysis Procedures’ is the explanation for how the collected data was used in giving answers to the research questions.
Findings and Discussion is a section that presents a report of the factual matter of results revealed through data analysis (findings), which is followed by their further interpretation through the usage of various published works (discussion). It is presented by research questions, which are followed with the presentation of findings related to these questions, and all of that is concluded with a discussion of those findings.
Conclusion is the last major section of this paper. It presents final judgments that are derived from the complete discussion on the matter. Results are examined all over again for the purpose of understanding whether they have satisfied all of the research questions, and conclusions are made based on the completion of the overall analysis.
Methodology
Research Questions and Methodology
The main focus of this study lies within answering these specific questions:
How do families with all their complexity influence their children’s psychological development since the early childhood? In what way are the family background and students’ academic achievements (successful/unsuccessful life) related?
In order to answer these questions, there have been selected fifteen people with different state of present life:
Category 1 – five successful college students with a lot of ambitions and good hopes for the future.
Category 2 – five young adults who have chosen to skip pursuing their degree (they fall in the category of having low-paid jobs, and are not trying to learn any specific skills on their own).
Category 3 – five homeless people, who are not trying to change anything, and are generally satisfied with their current situation.
All of them were chosen specifically with the idea of family influence in mind: in retrospective, people who have achieved high positions in their studies should be expected to go on living a successful life (and thus should have had good families). Those not proceeding to study further on after high school do stereotypically tend to lead a not luxurious life, and usually keep working various low-paid jobs (this definitely does not apply to the individuals planning to start their business, or those working in order to make money for college education, and also to those very few exceptions, who are geniuses on their nature, and can simply do anything perfectly without studying) – they were expected to have families with similar values. Finally, those living on the streets tend to have a rough past, which is often translated onto their future, and sometimes expressed through their childhood.
These people were mostly chosen randomly, questionnaires were completely anonymous and confidential, but all of the participants had to fall somewhere in-between those three stereotypical groups, which were all created using the common ideas about success, and they also had to be of a somewhat young age. Complications arose when searching for participants of the third category, because it is rather difficult to find young people that would fall within such social boundaries. For this reason, the previously planned pool of participants had to be reduced, and the age limitations of the term ‘young’ had to be broadened to 25 – 35 years.
Research Collection Procedures
All participants were asked to answer few general questions about their childhood and growing-up. First, they were asked to talk about the structure of their family. Secondly, to recall some information about the ways their parents treated each other, and describe some particular parental techniques they have applied. Thirdly, they were asked to describe (or recall) their academic achievements throughout growing up. Lastly, they were asked about their personal opinion on the matter, and whether they thought that the way in which their families had treated them has influences their present as well as their prospects for the future.
All these answers were asked in an oral form, and answers were later recorded carefully in a written form by the researcher due to some participants not willing to be recorded using a voice recorder. This has resulted into loss of some minor details, but apart from that, everything told remained intact.
Data Analysis Procedures
When all data has been collected, it was grouped together and analyzed with attempts of finding some specific patterns in order to derive connections between family backgrounds and becoming a successful adult. Success was mostly measured from participant’s past academic achievements (present where applicable), and their own opinions on whether they are satisfied with their current lives. Apart from that, personalities of participants were evaluated judging from their behavior while conversing, and analyzing both their body language and their speech in order to understand a) whether they were telling the truth (of course, to the maximum possible extent), b) whether they behaved positively or have shown either passive, or aggressive attitude.
Then this information was compared to the already-existing empiric articles, which allowed to broaden the experience of learning about the matter, as they were written using larger pools of data, and therefore were a bit more reliable statistically. Both these steps allowed to acquire a full picture and answer each research question specifically.
Findings and Discussion
How do families with all their complexity influence their children’s psychological development since the early childhood? In what way are the family background and students’ academic achievements (successful/unsuccessful life) related?
The study has revealed that participants from all three categories had quite different emotional backgrounds in their families. Each participant has told a completely different story, but all of these stories had common traits.
Participants from Category 1 recalled having a rather happy and light childhood. Four of them grew up in full loving families (one has parents of same gender), and one’s parents divorced when they have already started attending college. All off their parents have successfully graduated college, some went further on pursuing a higher degree (one participant mentioned a parent, who has a Ph.D. in natural science, and told that this inspired him to proceed with higher education). All these participants present high academic achievements and are aspired to become successful members of society. As for the parental techniques, several participants remember their parents reading books on child upbringing, two said that their parents never hit them and rarely raised their voice, other three do admit to be told-off on a couple of occasions, and one participant was especially particular to say that whenever punishing her, parents would always make sure she knew why.
Participants from the Category 2 remember having a nice childhood; some in fact recall living quite happily. However, this time ratio of full families is much less impressive: two participants stated that they have full families, two said that their parents have divorced and then remarried (one of them remarried several times in a short time span), and one participant lives with a single parent. When describing relationship between their parents, no one used words such as ‘loving’, ‘supportive’, ‘attentive’, but two referred to them as ‘cold’ and ‘tired’. In the parental technique, only one participant recalls being punished often, most of the time without any reason (this participant behaved rather meekly, spoke quietly and did not present evidence of big confidence). Nonetheless, none of these participants stated that they had warm relations with their parents, and were far more likely to describe them as ‘distant’ and ‘neutral’. As for the education part, only five biological parents (of the total ten) went to college, but one dropped out during their sophomore year. Participants of this category speak about education unwillingly, one of them said that colleges are not important; three revealed that they dropped out of high school; one was home-schooled and only one finished studying. Judging from their physical appearance, three participants were overweight and one was a very heavy smoker (three cigarettes in a span of approximately 70 minutes).
Participants from Category 3 had rather mixed memories about their childhood, some cried when telling about it, one got particularly angry when recalling cases of domestic abuse she and her mother had to experience. There were no one who had a full family: only two people said that their parents live with a partner (who is not their biological parent), rest had single parents. Four participants mentioned some kind of domestic abuse involved in their childhood experience, two participants remembered their parents being involved in criminal activity (selling drugs, one of them went to jail for this). Only one person said that their parents received college education, but they got divorced soon after the child was born, and mother became a drug addict when they were of a very young age. Three participants said that their parents dropped out of high school (two because of being pregnant). People from this group presented a partial absence of emotional stability; they would cry or get angry for no good reason, and presented a rather strong belief that they have no control over their life and actions, and that there is someone else to blame for everything.
All these findings are tied directly to the matter of the participants’ present. For instance, families where strong connections were present have raised children confident in their strengths and abilities (Category 1). This is a result of meaningful connections, and having a normal fully functioning family, where children had their rights and duties, were able to talk to someone, and were taken a good care of. In his 2006 work “Family Influences on Early Development: Integrating the Science of Normative Development, Risk and Disability, and Intervention”, M. J. Guralnick stated, that “development of social and intellectual competencies that enables children to pursue their own goals as effectively as possible and to do so in the context of larger family values, expectations, and routines” (45). Alternatively, in families where deep meaningful connections were not present, and parents paid little attention to their kids’ upbringing, children have failed to develop such personality traits.
It is important to note, that people in Categories 1 and 2 had very similar classes, and families with low and high income where present in both groups. As it appeared, while identification with class is important for children, their relationship with parents plays a far greater role, and by being a positive role model, parent increases child’s prospects for the better future. This is greatly illustrated in Jerome Kagan’s work “The Role of Parents in Children’s Psychological Development” (1999), where he presents examples of parent-child identity, and states that if a child was praised for academic achievement by parents who presented vast knowledge themselves, it had far more influence on them as opposed to those whose parents only demanded good grades without showing any academic interests on their own: “Children tend to honor what parents do rather than what they say” (165).
Not only that, but it is also a fact that in the vast majority of studies, it was revealed that parental education is the single strongest correlate of children’s success in school, the number of years they attend school, and their success later in life (Egalite, A. J., 2016, 72). Children whose parents have attended colleges are far more likely to choose pursuing a higher degree, because they feel a need to be similar with their parents, and because they can see that education results in being successful, which emphasizes its importance.
A Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development conducted by NICHD revealed that children behaved better, and were better developed when “parents were more educated, when families’ incomes were higher, when mothers had fewer or no symptoms of depression, and when families had well organized routines, books, and play materials, and took part in learning activities” (Bock, R., 2006). This is a direct proof of the fact that families shape their children’s future, as they shape their behavioral patterns, ambitions and expectations for themselves.
Being involved in children’s life is a vital trait of good parenthood, and parents’ education also plays a major role here. In a study conducted by Duke University, it was revealed that if parents have gone to college, they know about the importance of choosing classes wisely, and through their involvement they make sure that children are doing their best in school, while those parents who did not go to college usually know very little about the importance of decisions their child has to make as early as in the seventh grade (Duke Today Staff, 2004).
A negative side of coming from an uneducated troublesome family is that their children are far more likely to have a child as a teenager, or become a criminal, which has long-lasting effects on their future (Ratcliffe, C., 2015). To top it all up, although their parents were far from being good role models, they nonetheless where role models, and such maladaptive behaviors can definitely be perceived by children as normal or even desirable. This often becomes evident in adolescence, and is clear from the stories told by the project participants, which only supports this works thesis.
Conclusions
The idea of this paper was to follow through the correlation between familial experiences and their influence on becoming successful adults. The main focus of it was on the questions of how exactly families affect their children’s psychological development, and what relation this has to their future academic and personal success. In order to answer these questions, 15 people were asked to tell about their childhood and families, and then this information was compared to the studies of articles on the matter.
Category 1 has good impressions of their parents, and have good memories of their past, which has resulted into them maturing on time, and being confident and well developed. They want to do as good as their parents did, and in many cases are willing to exceed their success. Category 2 presented families without any particular common traditions and with very distant relations, which has resulted in them having very little ambitions, being happy to settle for less, and unwilling to do more than their parents have done. Category 3 presented fractured families with very low income, troublesome situation, and with an often violent approach to their kids’ upbringing. All of that resulted in adults living on the streets, having no money and, more importantly, having no desire to change anything, because they are completely sure that all of this is unchangeable and they should only blame someone for doing wrong to them without trying to change anything.
This research was definitely limited in numbers; it did require a larger pool of people. Another thing is that sometimes brain substitutes some memories for other ones, and what appears to be bad was not in fact that terrible. Alternatively, what appears to be good was in reality much worse. This might result into some inaccuracies, but was not considered when doing this research, because in order to outskirt this gap, children would have to be monitored constantly and in close quarters for at least 15 to 20 years. Another difficulty is the very notion of success itself: here it was taken as a very general ‘good grades/job/ambitions’ cliché, but a better definition of this entity is definitely important for further research.
Main conclusion of this paper is that people are greatly shaped by their family background, their parent’s attitude towards their children and towards each other. Parents’ education if of a particular importance, because it shapes children’s outlook on the matter of pursuing a degree, which subsequently results in them either becoming successful or not. Another thing to mention is that educated adults tend to make for much better parents, and all men and women willing to become parents should be educated about the importance of such step and about their requirements as good and conscious parents.
References
Bock, R. (2006, October 3). Family Characteristics Have More Influence On Child Development Than Does Experience In Child Care. Retrieved January 25, 2017, from https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/family-characteristics-have-more-influence-child-development-does-experience-child-care
Duke Today Staff. (2004, August 14). Parents Influence Children's Success, Duke Social Psychologist Says. Retrieved January 25, 2017, from https://today.duke.edu/2004/08/success_0804.html
Egalite, A. J. (2016, Spring). How Family Background Influences Student Achievement. Education Next, 70-78.
Guralnick, M. J. (2006). Family Influences on Early Development: Integrating the Science of Normative Development, Risk and Disability, and Intervention. In K. McCartney & D. Phillips (Eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Development (pp. 44-61). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Kagan, J. (1999). The Role of Parents in Children’s Psychological Development. Pediatrics, 104(1), 164-167.
Moges, B., & Weber, K. (2014, May 7). Parental Influence on the Emotional Development of Children. Retrieved January 25, 2017, from https://my.vanderbilt.edu/developmentalpsychologyblog/2014/05/parental-influence-on-the-emotional-development-of-children/
Ratcliffe, C. (2015, September 9). What affects the future success of poor children? Retrieved January 25, 2017, from http://www.urban.org/urban-wire/what-affects-future-success-poor-children
