Nature Vs Nurture In Child Development

Regarding how we learn and grow, nature and nurture are the two most debated influences that affect humans. Nature, being more biological and omnipresent from birth, and nurture, emerging from the experiences we go through throughout life. Though both serve very important roles in shaping who we will become, I believe that nurture has a slightly larger effect on the molding of a person than nature alone. When it comes to nature, many believe that the qualities we are born with are the most important ones that we have. John Bowlby states in his theory of attachment that, “children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to form attachments with others, because this will help them to survive (McLeod). The nature of a newborn child in this case, is that the mother is the source of it’s survival, therefore all the way up until the child is around five years old, the mother is the primary source of comfort for the child. According to Bowlby, whenever the child encounters a stranger, fear is a natural response as a survival mechanism.

When I think of nature in relation to raising a child, I think of a mother’s instinct to protect and care for their child, especially at its infancy stage. This “maternal instinct” in the beginning of the mother/child relationship eventually forms into a more nurturing bond. Saul McLeod states, “From this [environmentalists] point of view psychological characteristics and behavioral differences that emerge through infancy and childhood are the result of learning” (McLeod). Not only is the child learning to navigate around its environment, but the parents are learning how the child interacts with them and other people. The period of just going with basic instinct by this point has diminished greatly and now the parent’s must begin to mold the child into a functioning human