On Monday in London's Emmanuel Centre a
debate took place that pitted two
Quillette contributors -
Robert Plomin and
Stuart Ritchie - against two "experts" on child psychology -
Susan Pawlby and
Ann Pleshette Murphy. The motion was "Parenting doesn't matter (or not as much as you think)" and we knew from the outset where people stood thanks to the format adopted by
Intelligence Squared, the company that organized the debate. The ushers asked people to vote for or against the motion on their way in and then again at the end, the idea being that the "winners" would be the side that persuaded the most people to change their minds rather than the side that got the most votes. Which was just as well for Plomin and Ritchie since only 17 percent agreed with them at the beginning of the evening, with 66 percent against and 17 percent saying "Don't Know." Would they be able to level that up a bit over the course of the next 90 minutes?
Plomin, a professor of behavioral genetics at King's College London, went first, summarizing the evidence from twin and adoption studies - his area of expertise, having designed and overseen many of those studies himself. Using slides, which is unusual in a public debate, he drew the audience's attention to two key findings that have emerged from this research -
that siblings raised together are as different from each other as siblings raised apart, and identical twins raised separately are as similar to each other as identical twins brought up in the same home. In short, genetic differences between people influence how different they are from one another, but parenting seems to have little effect.
Comment: The debate about whether nature or nurture are more important in who we come to be as people seems to be leaning more toward the nature side. As was said by a number of the debate participants, it is no-doubt a mix of both, but the argument for our personalities being predetermined at birth seems to be gaining traction with the role of genetics. It would be interesting, though, to hear more about Ritchie's objection to epigenetics. Is it simply that not enough research has been done to draw conclusions or is there an objection to the idea that genetics can be affected by environment?
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